“Because she has spent her entire life being such a closed book, people project onto her whatever they want her to be,” a former royal adviser says of the queen in Tina Brown’s insider royal tell-all The Palace Papers. She made being a little bit dull into an art form, of which she became the world’s greatest practitioner.Īs such, she provided her monarchy with its greatest asset: Queen Elizabeth II was anyone her people wanted her to be.Ĭhris Harris/The Times/AFP via Getty Images Elizabeth lived her life with ferocious discipline, pressing herself into the form of a blank slate onto whom onlookers could project practically anything.

“Never complain, never explain,” is the unofficial motto of the royal family, and the queen herself served as its living embodiment. She has been beloved for decades not for a sparkling charisma or great rhetorical flair, but for her steadfast and superhuman ability to give absolutely nothing away. The queen’s popularity comes from a source that can feel somewhat remarkable in America, with its glad-handing politics. In his biography Queen of Our Times, Robert Hardman quotes the Australian Labor Party leader Neville Wran as saying, “The biggest problem we’ve got is the Queen! Everybody loves her.” Advocates for a British republic frequently cite the queen’s popularity as the reason England remains a monarchy. It continued to be downright popular - and so was she.Ī recent UK poll showed the queen rejoicing in a favorability rating of 75 percent. But under her reign, Britain’s monarchy didn’t only survive. Elizabeth grew up surrounded by royal relatives fleeing their home countries amid the chaos of World War II and taking refuge in England. The 20th century saw monarchs across Europe deposed or exiled or executed. Her death marks the end of one of the most successful reigns in any contemporary monarchy.

She was 96 years old, and had been on the throne since the age of 25. Queen Elizabeth II, the longest-reigning monarch in British history, died September 8 at Balmoral Castle on her Scottish estate.

David starkey queen elizabeth ii