London: Queen Elizabeth II, the UK’s longest-serving monarch, has died, Buckingham Palace announced late Thursday. She was 96.
“The Queen died peacefully at Balmoral this afternoon.
The King and The Queen Consort will remain at Balmoral this evening and will return to London tomorrow,” Official account of the Royal Family said in a tweet.
The Queen came to the throne in 1952. In 2015, Elizabeth became the UK’s longest-serving monarch, surpassing the record of Queen Victoria, who had ruled between 1837 and 1901.
The Queen missed some of the events because of her health, and Prince Charles and second in line Prince William attended them. She did appear on the balcony of Buckingham Palace at the end of the Jubilee Pageant.
For most of her subjects, she was the only monarch they had ever known, featuring on stamps, banknotes and coins, and immortalised in popular culture.
She lived through some of the biggest royal scandals – from the divorce of Charles and Diana to her second son Prince Andrew’s alleged links to convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein and Harry and Meghan quitting royal life.
But she was witness to some of the most eventful moments in modern history, from the assassination of US President John F Kennedy, to the moon landing, the fall of the Berlin wall and the Covid pandemic. She saw 14 Prime Ministers of UK during her reign, from Winston Churchill to Liz Truss. In a first, she appointed Liz Truss in Balmoral in Scotland as she was too ill to return to London.
Her husband of 73 years, Prince Philip, died in April 2021, just weeks short of his 100th birthday.
An image of the Queen sitting alone in the quire of St. George’s Chapel during his funeral, due to COVID protocol, moved the world. With agency inputs
