Queen Elizabeth II
Queen Elizabeth II reigned for 70 years, becoming the longest-serving British monarch and one of the most recognised figures in modern history.
Queen Elizabeth II: The Last Great Monarch
Elizabeth II (21 April 1926 – 8 September 2022) was Queen of the United Kingdom and Head of the Commonwealth for seven decades, a reign that outlasted 15 British Prime Ministers, from Winston Churchill to Liz Truss. No other British monarch came close to her tenure.
She was born Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor, the elder daughter of Prince Albert, Duke of York, who became King George VI in 1936 after his brother Edward VIII abdicated. Elizabeth’s path to the throne was never supposed to happen, and yet it defined the 20th and early 21st centuries.
Her personal life was equally notable: she married Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh in 1947 and remained married to him for 73 years until his death in April 2021, one of the longest royal marriages in British history. Together they had four children: Charles, Anne, Andrew, and Edward.
People search for Queen Elizabeth II for an enormous range of reasons, her death in September 2022 triggered a global wave of grief, curiosity, and retrospection. Questions about her final hours, her family, her habits, and even historical trivia about other queens regularly trend online as her legacy continues to be debated and documented.
Her death at Balmoral Castle at the age of 96 marked the end of an era and prompted the accession of her son, now King Charles III. The world hasn’t stopped asking questions about her, and probably won’t for a very long time.