|
|
|
Remembering Queen Elizabeth II: When She Was Young
Her face is among the most famous in the world, but what Queen Elizabeth II's life likes is, for the most part, still a mystery despite all her years of public life.1 The news that her father had died came to Elizabeth, the story goes, when she was perched in a tree in Africa, watching rhinos at a watering hole.2 It was a life-altering event: not only had she lost a father, but she had become head of state of Britain and the Commonwealth. But people who were with Elizabeth on the African trip remember her stoic3 reaction: no public tears, just a calm acceptance of her destiny. This was a woman, after all, who had been trained since the age of 10 for her royal responsibilities. Her life, even before the King's death on Feb. 6, 1952, had been burdened with the job of being heir to the throne. When she was 19, she came as close as she would ever get to have her own place and complete independence: a suite of rooms inside Buckingham Palace4. After being dressed identically to her younger sister, Margaret, she was for the first time allowed choosing her own clothes as she accepted a larger public profile.5 But for the most part, clothes and the style of decoration of her rooms at the palace were of little interest to Elizabeth, who took the burden of duty as a future queen seriously. She was the opposite of the often boisterous6 Margaret. "Elizabeth seemed to have an inborn desire to do what was expected of her," her governess, Marion Crawford once wrote of her young charge. While the details of fashion and interior design were left to her mother, there was one touch in her suite of rooms that was completely Elizabeth's7: a framed picture of a young, dashing Prince Philip of Greece.8 The picture, writes Sarah Bradford in her book Elizabeth, "showed that in one most important matter she was determined to make her own choice." Elizabeth was not the immediate heir to the throne at birth.9 The course of her life was changed forever in December 1936 when her uncle, King Edward VIII, abdicated in a scandal over his love affair with American divorcee Wallis Simpson.10 Her shy, stuttering11 father became King George VI finally. From that time, she was often around when diplomats lunched with her parents. "Long before most people do she took an interest in politics and knew quite a bit about what was going on in the world outside," Crawford wrote. "The King would also talk to his elder daughter more seriously than most fathers do to so young a child. It was as if he spoke to an equal12." Elizabeth had first met Prince Philip when she was 13 in 1939 and she was taken with the older boy � five years her senior -- from the start. But when he came back into the picture13 seven years later, there were some in royal circles who looked down on him because he was a member of the Greek royal family, portrayed as the poor cousins of Europe's crowned heads. The King was not among them, although he couldn't fully believe that his daughter would marry a man she had practically fallen in love with at first sight. When Philip proposed in the summer of 1946, the King persuaded Elizabeth to keep the engagement secret until her 21st birthday the following year, and after she had returned from an official visit with the family to South Africa. The engagement was announced on July 10, 1947. They were married in November and the royal wedding was a tonic for the country in the postwar economic gloom that enveloped the United Kingdom.14 At the same time, Elizabeth had made the first step towards taking control of her own life. In fact the world is a much different place since the Queen first took the throne 50 years ago and with the changes have come new pressures on one of the globe's most high profile figures. The last decade in particular has been a turbulent time for the monarchy.15 But Elizabeth has succeeded in taking on more duties and getting access to state papers with the time. She is only the fifth British monarch to reach the royal milestone of 50 years on the throne — her great-great grandmother, Queen Victoria16 holds the record of with almost 63 years— and before 2002 is over the Queen will move up to No. 4 on the list of longest-sitting kings or queens. When she was asked what she was going to
call herself as Queen, she simply replied: "My own name, of course,
what else?" |