Queen Elizabeth the 2nd, the longest-living monarch of England has recently passed away at the age of 96 and shocked the world with this seismic news. As the incident is still pretty new, shock waves are still all around.
Born on April 21, 1926, in London, England — died on September 8, 2022, Balmoral Castle, Aberdeenshire, Scotland — queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from February 6, 1952, to September 8, 2022. In 2015 she surpassed Victoria to become the longest-reigning monarch in British history.
Being the elder daughter of Prince Albert, duke of York, and due to the long list of names ahead of her in the bloodline she had so little possibility of becoming the queen. But Elizabeth is perhaps one character to surprise people and so she did by becoming the presumptive heir in line for the crown when her father became King George the 6th.
Princess Elizabeth traveled to South Africa at the beginning of 1947 with the King and Queen. Once returned, her husband-to-be, Phillip, was waiting for their marriage. Their first child, Prince Charles (Charles Philip Arthur George), was born November 14, 1948, at Buckingham Palace.
Prince Charles, who was named prince of Wales on July 26, 1958, became the heir apparent upon Queen Elizabeth's ascension.
England was a country that somehow managed to keep the continuity of the monarchy but the success of it is surely controversial. In the sense that the Queen appeared to be becoming more conscious of the monarchy's contemporary function when she permitted, for example, the legal breakup of her sister's marriage in 1978 and the televising of the royal family's private lives in 1970. But the royal family had a number of difficulties in the 1990s. Followed by Prine Charles and Princess Diana’s divorce, royal family had numerous separations in the family in 1992. Moreover Elizabeth, while being personally exempt, consented to pay taxes on her private estate despite the fact that the nation was experiencing a recession at the time.
Their power in the said decade, which Elizabeth referred to in 1992 as the "annus horribilis”, was further weakened by Charles and Diana's separation and subsequent divorce (in 1996). After Diana's passing in 1997, the backlash was particularly intense because Elizabeth originally refused to allow the national flag to fly at half-staff above Buckingham Palace. Queen was mostly criticized and not even politically correct in the whole Charles-Diana conflict where she was not offering much of a closure to Diana. But Diana was not the only bride she had trouble with; also Meghan Markle was in an era where statements about her and her future kids were harshly published and she was really upset for quite a bit. But her majesty was the Queen, criticizations only went so far.
Moving on from the royal family to rather international relations, Queen Elizabeth reigned for more than 70 years, 30 of which a bloody conflict was fought in Northern Ireland, a region of her United Kingdom. Between 1969 and the signing of a deal in 1998, there were almost 3,600 fatalities and over 30,000 injuries. This period saw conflict between those pushing for independence from British authority in Northern Ireland and those fighting to defend and maintain the union with Britain. However, two Irish soldiers still lowered Ireland’s tricolor flag to half-staff at a government building in Dublin to mark the queen’s death.
To come to an end it is a saddening incident because at the end it is a death, but the bitter truth is that as much as she did good, she also did bad and those would also be remembered. This news perhaps mean a lot more to certain people. Remember that it was just under a year ago that Barbados removed her as its head of state. Countries like India and Pakistan continue to wrestle with the economic, geographic, and cultural impacts of British colonialism. But in any case this is a commemoration piece where we pay our respects too, and hope her reign with all the faults and rights taught people some know-how on politics and what to do or not to do.
Works cited:
scaachi coul, buzzfeed, 09.09.2022
reem abdalezem 08.09.2022
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica •: Sep 9, 2022