BREAKING: Queen Elizabeth II dies at 96; Prince Charles takes the throne as king
She was stoic and carried on through the antics and scandals of members of her family. Most recently, she had to weather the public downfall of her son Prince Andrew for his friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein,
"She will be remembered for keeping the British monarchy going through the 20th and into the 21st century – and for leaving it in better shape," says, the British historian and biographer who has written four books on the queen."She was imbued with a great sense of duty and responsibility. In the long run, that would be a strength and her charm."
The abdication thrust Elizabeth's father to the throne as George VI , which made Elizabeth heiress presumptive and the likely next monarch. So she became a queen in training under the tutelage of her father and her austere paternal grandmother, Queen Mary. On her 21st birthday, during a visit to South Africa, then still part of the empire, Princess Elizabeth addressed the British people by radio, vowing that her life,"whether it be long or short," would be dedicated to serving the nation and the imperial family, now known as the Commonwealth.
As a queen, Elizabeth has been an unqualified success. As a mother, not always. She suffered grief and ridicule as head of a modern, often dysfunctional royal family trapped in public expectations of Victorian-era values. Still, her children were the chief source of distress in the most painful year of her life, 1992, what she called her"annus horribilis," when the marriages of three of her children collapsed, accompanied by reams of scandalous tabloid headlines.
While the queen's weeping subjects piled flowers waist-high outside Buckingham Palace and Diana's home at Kensington Palace in London, the royal family kept their grief under wraps as they holed up on their annual summer holiday at Balmoral, their estate in Scotland.
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