Both Elizabeths reigned for a long time. Elizabeth I reigned for 45 years while Elizabeth II reigned for 70 years. The other Elizabeth, 400 years earlier, became queen of a country ripped apart by religious battles: her father, Henry VIII, had broken with Rome – its power and its faith – and declared himself CEO of an upstart religious institution – the Church of England. Her mother was Ann Boleyn, who was beheaded when her daughter was only 3 years old – so she never really knew her.
Elizabeth II was born
in 1926, two years before all women could vote on equal terms with men. Growing
up in a house in Piccadilly, overlooking Green Park, she did not expect to be
queen, and she was dismayed to become queen so young. She only became queen because her uncle Edward abdicated to marry an
American woman. That meant leaving behind the ordinary pleasures of a happy
marriage, out of the public eye. But, as she had said in a remarkable speech in
1947, when she turned 21: “My whole life, whether it be short or long, will be
devoted to your service.”
I go back to the speech Elizabeth I made in
1601, addressing the palace council chamber, her last speech before her death:
It
is not my desire to live or reign longer than my life and reign shall be for
your good. And though you have had, and may have, many mightier and wiser
princes sitting in this seat, yet you never had, nor shall have, any that will
love you better.
This is how many millions feel, I think, at the loss of Queen Elizabeth II.
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