She is the best-known woman in the world, and has been since 1952 when Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor, at age 25, became Queen Elizabeth II. Although she has a huge list of titles, she is to most people simply the queen. And she has been the only British monarch in most people's lives: She has always seemingly been there.
Once Queen Elizabeth was young and quite pretty; now she is old and quite beloved. She works very hard, whether it is presiding over meetings with prime ministers--she has dealt with 12 of them, starting with Winston Churchill--or applying herself to an endless schedule of charity events.
She has visited 116 countries. I have always wondered at her incredible tolerance and endurance watching cultural events in faraway lands: How many children's choirs, folk dancers or synchronized gymnasts can a human being watch? In the case of the queen, the number seems to have been infinite.
When she came to the throne, she set off a surge of hope in Britain and the Commonwealth. Popular mythology, as I remember, held that a new Queen Elizabeth would bring a revival of fortune for Britain--the second Elizabethan period would be as great as the first Queen Elizabeth's reign from 1558 to 1603.
She is a fabulous piece of English bric-a-brac in her omnipresent hat and gloves. Though perfectly dressed in her way, she is not a fashion idol. She was a fine horsewoman. She attends cultural events, but seems only to have a passion for horses and dogs. Critics have faulted her for how limited she is in some ways. It may be that at this point she is as much an anachronism as the monarchy, and there is strength in that.
No longer do comedians make fun of her piping voice and her ability to ride out gaffes, like the time in Canada when she read the wrong speech, having forgotten which city she was visiting. The British might have come to love her for her famously dysfunctional family--even Charles, her quirky son and heir to the throne. Scandals have touched all of her family excepting herself and her husband, Prince Philip.
When she does die, Britain will enter into the most extraordinary period of mourning, followed a year or so later by a coronation. The change will be enormously expensive, from the queen's burial to the coronation of the king. Tens of thousands of items stamped with ER (Elizabeth Regina) or the queen's face, including mail boxes, stamps and the 20-pound note, will have to be changed.
Happily and gloriously, after 62 years as queen, Elizabeth is, physically as well as emotionally, part of British life. She is also, in a way, the world's queen.
Editorial on 04/25/2015