Queen Elizabeth II: A life in footage

Throughout World Warfare II, Elizabeth joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service at age 18 in 1945, with the rank of subaltern. By the point the warfare ended, she had develop into a junior commander.

Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip, her third cousin and a member of the Home of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Gluecksburg, met in 1934 on the wedding ceremony of Philip’s cousin, Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark. Nonetheless, it wasn’t till July 1947 till the pair had been formally engaged. They married on Nov. 20, 1947, at Westminster Abbey.

A yr later, Nov. 14, 1948, Elizabeth gave delivery to the primary of her 4 youngsters, Prince Charles. Earlier than ascending to the throne, Elizabeth had two youngsters, Charles and Princess Anne (1950), who had been then adopted by Prince Andrew in 1960 and Prince Edward in 1964.

King George VI died on Feb. 6, 1952, making the 25-year-old Elizabeth queen. Greater than a yr later, on June 2, 1953, she was formally topped at Westminster Abbey within the first British coronation to be televised.

Members of the royal household symbolize quite a few organizations and charities worldwide. Greater than 3,000 teams record a royal as a patron or president. Lately, the queen was the patron of over 600 organizations, with the causes together with the setting, schooling and well being.

Being a member of the royal household means attending quite a few gatherings from sport and charity to gardening. Nonetheless, as an avid racegoer and proprietor of a number of horses, Elizabeth particularly appeared ahead to attending the Royal Ascot race in Berkshire, a county west of London, each June.

Ceremony and pageantry are a core a part of the British royal household. Among the many common duties Elizabeth carried out had been making the annual Christmas speech and attending “Trooping the Color.”

Elizabeth wasn’t alone in enterprise nationwide duties.

Elizabeth’s relationship with the British public was virtually all the time heat, though she was criticized for remaining at Balmoral Fortress in Scotland for a number of days after the 1997 demise of Diana relatively than to right away return to London. The household later mentioned they stayed at Balmoral to guard and put together the grieving Princes William and Harry, then 15 and 12, for his or her mom’s funeral.

In June 2002, the U.Ok. celebrated 50 years of Elizabeth’s reign. Celebrations had been held throughout the nation and the queen and the Duke of Edinburgh traveled to each area of the U.Ok. and the Commonwealth to mark the event.

On Nov. 20, 1992, the queen’s forty fifth wedding ceremony anniversary, a hearth at Windsor Fortress precipitated intensive injury that took years to restore. However that was simply one in all a string of occasions that prompted the queen declare 1992 to be “annus horribilis.” Prince Andrew’s separation with the previous Sarah Ferguson was introduced in March. The subsequent month, Princess Anne divorced Capt. Mark Phillips. In June, Princess Diana’s tell-all e book was printed. Its revelations included husband Charles’ affair with Camilla Parker-Bowles.

Throughout the coronavirus outbreak, the queen delivered a uncommon video speech on April 5, 2020, to vow her topics that they’ll prevail over the coronavirus. “We’ll succeed — and that success will belong to each one in all us. We must always take consolation that whereas we might have extra nonetheless to endure, higher days will return,” she mentioned from Windsor Fortress.

Other than horses, one other animal the queen beloved was the Pembroke Welsh corgi. As her husband was present process remedy for his last sickness in early 2021, the queen acquired two puppies, a corgi she named Muick and a dorgi, a cross with a dachshund, she referred to as Fergus. They had been named, respectively, after Loch Muick on the Balmoral property and her late uncle Fergus Bowes-Lyon, who was killed throughout World Warfare I. Sadly, Fergus the pup died of a coronary heart drawback in Might at age 5 months.

Being a royal, maintaining with appearances and official images was simply one of many many duties the queen undertook.

The queen sat alone as her husband’s casket was held by a army honor guard at his funeral at Windsor Fortress’s St. George’s Chapel. Philip died April 9, 2021, at age 99. The funeral was 4 days earlier than Elizabeth’s ninety fifth birthday.

The 96-year-old monarch made an look in June on the balcony of Buckingham Palace through the first day of her Platinum Jubilee, marking the seventieth anniversary of her accession to the throne. She waved to tens of hundreds of individuals gathered under and watched an aviation show in her honor, however was not capable of attend lots of the occasions that occurred over the 4 days of celebration resulting from her declining well being.

Elizabeth appointed Liz Truss as prime minister on Sept. 6 throughout a gathering at her Balmoral Fortress in Scotland. The assembly was a part of a routine by which the queen fulfilled her constitutional function of appointing a brand new prime minister — a sequence of occasions she oversaw 15 occasions. Nonetheless, she broke with custom and appointed Truss from Scotland relatively than touring to Buckingham Palace, as is typical.