He often seemed unfulfilled after long years of waiting, and the acrimonious collapse of his marriage to Diana, Princess of Wales, his sometimes pointed political jabs and a slightly quirky character mean he’s not yet as beloved as the Queen. And the extreme heat that scorched Britain in the Queen’s final, platinum jubilee summer, heralds a building climate disaster that could be especially perilous for her island nation.Ĭharles, who like President Joe Biden in a slightly different context, waited most of his lifetime to claim his head of state role, faces an impossible task in quickly restoring the leadership and stability that his mother provided over seven decades. A second superpower conflict with China is brewing.
King Charles III inherits a nation that is divided, economically on the ropes and bracing for an awful winter as high energy prices and inflation brought on by its showdown with Russia, as part of the new Cold War over Ukraine, exact a heavy cost. Her death, quiet and somehow sudden despite the fact she was 96, removed that bastion of constancy and steadiness – just at a moment when Britain and the world seem more disoriented and volatile than in decades. But Elizabeth, stoic and formal, was always there and always the same. Kennedy, Mao Zedong, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir, Mikhail Gorbachev and Pope John Paul II all ruled and passed into history during the Queen’s long reign.Īlmost everything about the world changed unrecognizably since the day in 1952 that she learned in Kenya that her father George VI was dead and she was queen. Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle, John F. Spanning the Cold War and Northern Ireland’s civil war, Britain’s entry and acrimonious exit from the European Union and the disorientating spasms of a globalizing economy, the Queen was unmoved – a last link with a national heroic mythology forged during World War II.įrom the days of black-and-white television to the technicolor and the internet ages to a time of ubiquitous mobile devices with which mourners snapped selfies outside Buckingham Palace after she died, the Queen was a constant presence.
She died with the kingdom that she kept together itself at risk of splintering as she slipped away in Scotland, where independence fervor is rising.Įlizabeth presided – distant, dutiful but ever present – over a turbulent age of women’s liberation, expanding gay and lesbian rights, de-industrialization and immigration that changed the face of her country.
She ascended a throne wobbling on the tremors of a crumbling Empire. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images) Sean Gallup/Getty ImagesĮlizabeth II: The British Queen who weathered war and upheaval dies at 96ĭuring her 70-year reign, wars came and went, as did crises and tragedies and political scandals, pandemics and recessions. The Queen and Prince Philip are scheduled to visit Berlin, Frankfurt and the concentration camp memorial at Bergen-Belsen during their trip, which is their first to Germany since 2004. BERLIN, GERMANY - JUNE 24: Queen Elizabeth II arrives for the state banquet in her honour at Schloss Bellevue palace on the second of the royal couple's four-day visit to Germany on Jin Berlin, Germany.
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