Queen Elizabeth II, the world’s longest-serving monarch, whose broadly popular seven-decade reign survived tectonic shifts in Britain’s post-imperial society and weathered successive challenges posed by the romantic choices, missteps and imbroglios of her descendants, died on Thursday at Balmoral Castle in Scotland, her summer retreat. She was 96.
The royal family announced her death online, saying she had “died peacefully.” The announcement did not specify a cause.
Her death elevated her eldest son, Charles, to the monarchy, as King Charles III. In a statement, he said:
“The death of my beloved Mother, Her Majesty the Queen, is a moment of the greatest sadness for me and all members of my family.
“We mourn profoundly the passing of a cherished Sovereign and a much-loved Mother. I know her loss will be deeply felt throughout the country, the Realms and the Commonwealth, and by countless people around the world.”
Earlier Thursday, Buckingham Palace said that the queen had been placed under medical supervision and that her doctors were “concerned” about her health. She had remained at Balmoral for much of the summer. On Wednesday evening, she abruptly canceled a virtual meeting with members of her Privy Council after her doctors advised her to rest.
On Tuesday, she met with the incoming Conservative prime minister, Liz Truss — the 15th prime minister the queen dealt with during her reign — though in doing so, because of infirmity, she broke with longstanding tradition by receiving her at Balmoral rather than at Buckingham Palace.
Elizabeth’s long years as sovereign were a time of enormous upheaval, in which she sought to project and protect the royal family as a rare bastion of permanence in a world of shifting values.
At her coronation on June 2, 1953, a year after she acceded to the throne, she surveyed a realm emerging from an empire of such geographical reach that it was said the sun never set on it. But by the new century, as she navigated her advancing years with increasing frailty, the frontiers had shrunk back. As Britain prepared to leave the European Union in 2020, a clamor for independence in Scotland was rekindled, potentially threatening to narrow her horizons yet further.
Her coronation was the first royal event of its kind to be broadcast almost in full on television. But it was a token of the changes — and global fascination — that accompanied her time as queen that her reign became the subject of a Hollywood movie and a blockbuster series on Netflix, while her family’s travails offered voluminous grist to the heated mill of social media.
...On Sept. 9, 2015, Elizabeth surpassed Queen Victoria as her country’s longest-serving monarch, and after the death of Thailand’s king on Oct. 13, 2016, she became the modern world’s longest reigning. Even in her older years, her subjects saw her as unusually robust and at ease with the pageantry of her office, as she was during a four-day celebration in June 2012 commemorating the 60th anniversary of her attaining the crown.
The only other British monarch to celebrate a diamond jubilee was Queen Victoria, Elizabeth’s great-great-grandmother, whose reign lasted 63 years and seven months before her death in 1901.
...So enduring was Elizabeth’s grip on the nation’s supreme office that her reign overlapped the tenures of 15 British prime ministers — from Winston Churchill to Liz Truss — and 14 American presidents, from Harry S Truman to Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Although her role was largely ceremonial as a constitutional monarch without executive power, her supporters maintained that she played an important, less tangible role as the nation’s anchor, held in place by an unspoken consensus between queen and subjects.
And while she wielded no formal political power, her weekly audiences with prime ministers gave her insight into the nation’s business, and her appearances at international gatherings were seen as enhancing British prestige.