Elizabeth II, The Eternal Queen Is Dies at 96

Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor passed away on Thursday September 6, 2022 at the age of 96. For several generations around the world, she was "the queen", without needing to specify of which country even though she was that of no less than sixteen. Beyond the statistics - the longest reign in the history of England, the most photographed woman in the world... - and as Great Britain prepares to offer her a funeral that will join in the annals those of her great-great-grandmother, Victoria, Elizabeth II remains an enigma.

Faithful to Disraeli's motto adopted by the royal family - "never explain, never complain" - she was a great mute, to public speeches policed by the Cabinet and to speech private always preserved. While her reign is celebrated, her historical and personal reality is undoubtedly in her name: Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor.

Alexandra, her middle name says where she comes from. It is that of his great-grandmother, a (very beautiful) Danish princess, in the Andersen style of the 19th century. Wife of Edward VII, respected for her resistance to the escapades of her husband and the rigor of her mother-in-law Victoria, she compensated for her misfortunes with a marked taste for pearls, which Elizabeth II inherited.

Sister of the Empress of Russia, of the King of Denmark and of Greece, mother of the Queen of Norway, aunt of the Kaiser and the Queen of Spain, she was the symbol of the Victoria system, this network of family alliances which was to warn Europe against any war. That of 1914 and the October Revolution which killed his nephew, Nicolas II, shattered this Gotha fantasy.

Entry into modernity

It remains that Elizabeth II was born of this belief in the great family of kings, and in the sanctity of the monarchy. She was able to bring this mystique into modernity from her coronation in 1953 by authorizing cameras in Westminster Abbey. Except at the moment of the anointing which created her queen by the grace of God, defender of the faith and head of the Anglican Church. An incarnation which complicated his life, when it was necessary to manage the intermittences of the heart of his sister, the princess Margaret - who could not marry her love of youth, Peter Townsend -, and the matrimonial palinodes of her children.

Continuing to be cousins with all of monarchical Europe - ex-sovereigns were welcome at Buckingham from Constantine of Greece to Simeon of Bulgaria - it was a historical continuum that its successive governments knew how to use. Thus, when she went to Russia for the first time in 1994, she was received there both as head of state of the United Kingdom and as a little cousin of the tsar, at a time when the former USSR wanted to come to terms with her past… A pedigree from another era that made her a bridge between the 19th and 21st centuries.

Royal household at the service of the country

Mary, her third name is that of her grandmother, wife of George V, whose life and conduct instilled in Elizabeth a sense of duty - "duty first, self-second". A word that could have been invented by this “granny”. Duty as a little second-class princess - her parents, the Tecks, went bankrupt - who married without flinching the annoying younger brother of her flamboyant original fiancé, struck down a few days before their wedding, the enigmatic Duke of Clarence - reputedly homosexual and suspected for a moment of being Jack the Ripper.

A duty that made her endure the legendary mood swings of her gruff husband, George V therefore, whom Elizabeth II nicknamed "grandpa England". Duty which made him embody the domestic virtues after all very "middle class" of the same husband - before their accession to the throne, they lived in a cottage of more than modest proportions.

She thus shaped the image of a royal household in the service of the country, even if it meant sacrificing family life in the process. An antiphon taken up by his granddaughter, corgis and National Health Service glasses in addition. A duty of humility which saw her sacrifice the Romanov cousins in 1917, refusing them the political asylum offered by the Cabinet, so as not to stir up any anti-monarchical sentiment in the country.

She took the opportunity to buy back from the survivors their jewels, now in the sovereign's incredible case - rich with 20 tiaras and more than 116 brooches. A duty that always made her prefer the dignity of the throne to her own son, the short-lived Edward VIII, whose abdication in 1936 propelled Elizabeth from the status of little princess of York to heir to the Crown.

More than 25,000 commitments

An institutional trauma as much as a family one which explains the stiffness of the Crown in the face of the divorce and the discrepancies of Charles, Andrew or Diana. And illuminates the oath that the young princess made on her 21st birthday. She then promised to devote her life to the service of her peoples - the plural designating the Empire and then the Commonwealth to which she was deeply attached.

Elizabeth II thus honoured up to 90 years more than 25,000 commitments and more than 200 state visits, where she rubbed shoulders with the Ceausescu as well as Paul VI, the Shah of Iran, JFK or François Mitterrand, undoubtedly her favorite French president. . All while never neglecting the adornment, which became one of its distinctive signs. Elizabeth II was indeed in her public life a fashion icon, known for her bag and her varnished shoes, her hats coordinated with outfits playing the card of flashy monochrome. She thus sacrificed on the altar of representation her personal taste for simpler outfits, between Hermès scarves, Hunter rubber boots and old Barbour patched up with country woman.

Elizabeth II was never the image of the mother

Elizabeth, finally, the name of her own mother, who before being the very popular Queen Mother was a Scottish aristocrat, the first non-'royal' to enter the family. Even if one counts the psychoanalyst Marie Bonaparte among one's relatives, one can be resistant to any analysis. It remains that the maternal figure was monopolized by this woman who died at more than 100 years old, adored by the public despite or thanks to a proven propensity for gin and tonic - Elizabeth II preferred the Dubonnet cut with gin -, her passion for horses - a family virus from which the queen inherited - and abyssal deficits, an inverse reflection of the difficulties of the British housewife to make ends meet.

Conversely, Elizabeth II was never the image of the mother - her eldest son, Charles, sometimes echoed it. She is more successful on the “grandmother” side. No doubt her protective attitude towards her grandchildren, William and Harry, at the time of the death of her daughter-in-law, Diana, initially earned her the wrath of Fleet Street, summoning her to return to London when she barricaded her people at Balmoral, her Scottish residence.

Finally, by bringing family virtues to the fore – and no doubt also a touch of incomprehension of the contemporary media world – she won her stripes as a granny. A role that made her the most popular of sovereigns… and ensured her name, Windsor, a durability resistant to the younger generations of “royals”.

A very private couple

Windsor, therefore a recent surname since it dates from the First World War. In full anti-German paranoia, the name of the vast fortified castle replaced the real surname of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, considered too Germanic. A name that she returns intact to posterity. After his marriage and the accession to the throne of his wife, Philip of Edinburgh, born Mountbatten - anglicism also of the very German Battenberg - hoped that the sovereign would adopt his name, as well as their children. The battle was brought before the Cabinet, which ruled in favor of the status quo, creating a marital crisis that the newspapers of the time had the dignity to conceal.

Unlike her grandmother Victoria, Elizabeth II never associated her husband with affairs of state, and always received her 16 prime ministers alone, from Winston Churchill to Liz Truss. Remains that Elizabeth II always had for her husband the eyes of Chimene for the Cid, in spite of the funny protrusions of which Philip made his trademark, to the greatest turmoil of Whitehall.

In any case, he made his wife laugh, endowed herself with a very British sense of humor. Finally remains a couple who until the end was the private share of Elizabeth II, who probably only dreamed of Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor.