Queen Elizabeth II of England, leader of the European monarchy, dies

Elizabeth II has died at the age of 96, at her residence in Bamoral and surrounded by her entire family, as announced by Buckingham Palace.

The health of the oldest and most popular monarch in the United Kingdom began to decline since the death, in April 2021, of her husband Felipe de Edinburgh.

The monarch was able to witness first-hand the celebrations throughout the country last July for her 70-year reign —the Platinum Jubilee—, and was even able, this week, to receive the outgoing prime minister at her Scottish residence, Boris Johnson, and to commission his successor, Liz Truss, to form a new Government in his name.

She was the fifteenth prime minister to receive a monarch who has been a fundamental part of British history in the second half of the 20th century and the first two decades of the 21st.

Decades of temperance, moderation, learning, corrected clumsiness and an anachronistic but necessary sense of duty were necessary for Elizabeth II to be the indispensable part of the landscape that no Briton was willing to do without.

She was the reason that an artist as raunchy and provocative as Tracey Emin, whose best-known work of art is a rumpled bed with stained sheets, declared herself a “secret monarchist”.

Or that Vivienne Westwood, the British fashion designer associated with the aesthetics of punk and

, declared, like millions of women around the world, to be "a big fan" of the queen.

Isabel II, the universal symbol of what a European royal house represents, was the most evident demonstration that the survival of the monarchical institution always depends on the personality of the one who holds the crown.

And hers was a perfect combination of traditionalism, invisibility, liturgy, modernity in small sips and a delicate constitutional neutrality that won the respect of the 15 prime ministers, Conservatives and Labor, who governed in her name.

Clement Attlee, the Social Democrat who built the welfare state in the United Kingdom and discouraged his own from flirting with republican sentiments, wrote that “all monarchs, if they are prepared to listen, acquire over the years a considerable inventory of knowledge about men, and about human affairs.

And if they also have good judgment, they are able to offer good advice.”

Seventy years of reign gave Elizabeth Alexandra Maria, the eldest daughter of George VI and Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, born in London on April 21, 1926, enough experience to seduce and gain the respect of huge egos such as Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair or Boris Johnson.

Portrait of the British Royal Family in April 1937. From left, King George VI, Princess Elizabeth;

her mother, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, and Princess Margaret.

Time played in favor of Elizabeth II, because as the decades of her reign passed, the British monarchy lost its discretionary powers to become a more regulated and limited institution.

She inherited an empire and at the age of 25 became the keystone of her constitutional architecture.

She ended up being the visible representation and the yearning for stability and unity of a fragmented country.

With her powers greatly reduced, but with an influence on the future of the British hardly attainable by any political figure.

In 1956, with the resignation of Prime Minister Anthony Eden;

o In 1963, with the resignation of Harold Mcmillan, the queen was able to exercise her power to appoint a successor.

In 1965, when the Conservative Party imposed its own method of internal election of the leader,

removed that prerogative from the monarch.

Fortunately, historians suggested.

"The monarchy benefited from all these restrictions on the powers of the queen, because any exercise of discretion necessarily tends to be controversial," defended Professor Vernon Bogdanor, the most prestigious British constitutionalist, in the conference he gave at the

in 2016 to celebrate Elizabeth II's 90th birthday.

On February 6, 1952, George VI died in bed, aged 56.

The man whose stutter and fits of rage foreshadowed him as an impossible king;

the young man who wept on his mother's shoulders when fate thrust an unexpected responsibility on him;

the monarch who earned the respect of the British by suffering with them, in London, the German bombing of World War II, had arranged for his eldest daughter, Elizabeth, to have the constitutional preparation to be the queen that he could never have.

Not only did he learn from private tutors such as the rector of the prestigious and elitist Eton College, Henry Marten, the parliamentary uses and customs of Great Britain —as several of the prime ministers with whom he dispatched verified with astonishment—, but he memorized from beginning to end the bible his grandfather also clung to,

the

essay written by Walter Bagehot, legendary editor of

Bagehot defended that the —unwritten— Constitution of England (in 1860 everything British was English, and everything English, British) had two branches: the solemn and the effective.

The Government, the Parliament and the Administration corresponded to the second.

The Monarchy, "which symbolized the State through pomp and ceremony", belonged to the first.

Elizabeth II acceded to the throne away from the United Kingdom.

She learned of her father's death in Kenya.

She was on the first leg of a long tour with her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, through various Commonwealth countries.

The night before, they both slept on the top of a gigantic fig tree in Aberdare National Park.

“For the first time in human history, a young woman climbed a tree as a princess and came down the next day as a queen,” wrote British naturalist Jim Corbett, who was staying at the same hotel at the time.

The news changed her life, but unlike George VI, she was already prepared for her fate.

"Before all of you I declare that my entire life, long or short, will be dedicated to your service, and to the service of the great imperial family to which we all belong," the princess had said by radio from Cape Town, South Africa, on April 21, 1947, on his 21st birthday.

That "imperial family" has been dissolving over the years more into a cultural and sentimental community of nations than into an international organization with its own voice and weight.

But above all, the figure of Elizabeth II has been the ultimate reason for countries like Canada or Australia, of a republican nature, to keep the queen as their head of state.

the weight of the family

The House of Windsor has had its abundant servings of drama.

And it was normal for the family drama to become national.

Like the abdication of Edward VIII, later the Duke of Windsor, for his love of American divorcée Wallis Simpson.

Or the impossible romance of Princess Margaret, the queen's sister, with Captain Peter Townsend, a war hero.

In both cases, Isabel II was able to establish order in accordance with the rigid rules inherited from the monarchical institution.

Lady Di's earthquake pushed the queen and Buckingham Palace into an unknown dimension: the drama was already global, and the monarch was forced to deal with a concept hitherto unknown to her: popular culture.

It was on November 24, 1992, in a speech in which she celebrated 40 years since her ascension to her throne, that Elizabeth II defined that year as

.

Seen in perspective, the misfortunes of those months almost arouse a feeling of tenderness, compared to what would come years later.

In 1992, Prince Andrew divorced his wife, Sarah Fergusson.

Thirty years later, her mother would be forced to pay out of her pocket part of the more than 14 million euros that the Duke of York had to pay to end the disgrace of an accusation of sexually abusing a minor.

In 1992, the infidelities of Diana of Wales and Charles of England were aired through books or leaks to the press.

Five years later, the death of Lady Di put the entire world built around Elizabeth II in check.

In 1992, the island of Mauritius chose to leave the Commonwealth and become a Republic.

Twenty-two years later, Scotland brought the United Kingdom to the brink with an independence referendum.

And two years later, Brexit plunged the country into an identity crisis from which it has only just begun to recover.

Queen Elizabeth II, with her husband, Philip of Edinburgh, during the 40th celebration of her accession to the throne. PA Images via Getty Images PA Images (PA Images via Getty Images)

Elizabeth II was present at all those moments.

She discreet, when facing her family misfortunes.

Neutral, facing the threat of fragmentation of the kingdom from her.

"I hope that the voters think carefully about her future," she simply said before the Scots spoke.

She says a lot about the respect for her figure the fact that Nicola Sturgeon's proposal for independence from the Scottish National Party contemplated from the outset that Elizabeth II would continue to be the queen of the new country.

His true litmus test was neither the successive economic crises that he had to face, from his institutional role, nor the wars, nor the social unrest of the seventies, nor the terrorism of the Northern Ireland conflict.

His most delicate moment was the death of Lady Di, when the will to keep the family duel in the private sphere – and his evident lack of attachment to the “princess of the people” – collided head-on with a popular feeling of pain that bordered on hysteria. , and unequivocally blamed Buckingham Palace for the unfortunate end of someone who could have been queen herself.

The process of awakening and redemption of Elizabeth II was immortalized in the memory of all those who saw

(The Queen), the masterful film by Stephen Frears with the equally masterful performance of Helen Mirren.

That moment when the queen finally decided to return from Balmoral (Scotland) to London, and walk through the mantle of flowers that thousands of citizens had left in front of the Buckingham Palace gate, has remained in history as the moment when Elizabeth II reconciled with a people that did not deny her, but rather waited for a minimal gesture to forgive her.

Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, Philip of Edinburgh, look at the thousands of bouquets of flowers deposited by citizens outside Buckingham Palace, in memory of Diana of Wales, who died in a traffic accident, in a September 5 image. of 1997.

Robert Lacey told it in his book

: “Dressed in black, as she walked the long line of grieving citizens, an 11-year-old girl offered her five red roses.

'Would you like me to place them next to the others?' asked the queen.

'No, Your Majesty.

They are for you”, replied the little girl.

"We heard how people timidly began to applaud," recalled one of the palace aides.

'And I remember thinking: wow, everything is still in order.'

Isabel II had the virtue, as her reign progressed, of transmitting to the British, with her mere presence, with her strict fulfillment of the role that corresponded to her, that feeling that “everything was fine”.

She even if she wasn't.

Above all, because she did not always know how to correctly manage the excesses of her family members.

Or she did not always reciprocate her descendants with the respect due to her.

He endured until the sordid friendship of his son Andrés – the favorite, according to what the British media have affirmed for decades – with the American millionaire pederast Jeffrey Epstein became unbearable.

And he only decided to strip him of titles and honors, and remove him from public life, when his proximity became a danger to the institution.

Or he also decided to strip his grandson Enrique of rank and privileges when from a distance the American launched a campaign of accusations of abuse and alleged racism against his wife, Meghan Markle.

Not a word from the queen either way.

There is not even an interview of the monarch during 70 years of reign.

She was given by her husband, Prince Philip of Edinburgh, who died on April 9, 2021. She was given by her children Carlos or Andrés.

They have been given by her grandchildren, Guillermo or Enrique.

Elizabeth II was both an open book and a mystery.

Simple in her hobbies: nature, hunting, and especially horses.

Simple in his routines: he ended each day of his life with a brief entry in a diary of what he had done during the day, but, unless history throws up a surprise, without great reflections or value judgments about what he wrote about.

She was one of the main actors of the great theater of the world, playing the role that billions of spectators expected of her.

She received 12 US presidents, hundreds of international dignitaries, and met with four Popes.

The head of the Anglican Church, who prayed every night before going to bed and was a devout believer, saw the doctrine that she commanded when accepting divorces, or consecrating women and homosexuals, evolve with the times.

The queen and her prime ministers

The first time Elizabeth II commissioned the formation of a government in her name to a prime minister younger than her was in 1997. It was Labor Tony Blair.

When he acceded to the throne, in 1952, neither the newly appointed Prime Minister Liz Truss, nor Boris Johnson, nor David Cameron nor Blair himself had been born.

If the young queen admired and humbly listened to the advice of Winston Churchill, over the years it was she who was able to advise, from her own experience, many politicians who were victims of that evil so typical of the profession, Adamism.

The belief that history begins with them.

Although most of them gave the monarch the role that corresponded to her.

Anthony Eden shared with her the secret plans for that catastrophe that was the invasion of the Suez Canal in 1956.

And Margaret Thatcher kept her up to date on the Falklands War against Argentina.

The queen's role was at all times to express her doubts or concerns through questions, and the general conviction has remained in history that Blair, in one of the audiences prior to the invasion of Iraq, would be asked if it was not worth giving the initiative a little more time and seeking the support of the UN that was never obtained.

The pandemic and Felipe's death

The reign of Isabel II was the constant image of an accomplice and inseparable couple.

Philip of Edinburgh was the only person able to sing to the queen the truths of the ferryman, and to get her biggest smile in public.

"He has simply been my strength and my support during all these years (...) and I have a much greater debt with him than he will ever claim me for, or that no one will ever know about," she said of her husband in 1997, when celebrate their golden anniversary.

When on April 17, 2021, the British saw their queen alone, in black, cloaked in a mask, keeping vigil over the coffin of the Duke of Edinburgh in the chapel of Windsor Castle, many perceived the end of an era.

At that time, Isabel II had been confined in that castle for more than a year, along with her husband.

His public agenda had been drastically reduced, and the increased presence in the forefront of Charles of England, his son and heir, or Prince William (second in line of succession) and his wife, Kate Middleton, suggested that the monarch was going gradually handing over the baton to another generation.

But the pandemic ended, and Isabel II increased her official activity as the great celebration of the Platinum Jubilee approached, in 2022. The promise of service to its citizens until the end of her days, which she made on her 21st birthday, it implicitly carried the idea that a British monarch only leaves the throne when he dies.

The last years of the queen were plagued by rumors about her withdrawal from her public life and her decision to give free rein to the reign of her son Carlos de ella.

They were never confirmed.

The most affectionate description, and probably the closest to the feeling and general perception of their queen that many Britons had, was written by Professor of Politics and History, Ben Pimlott, the author of the most balanced and honest biography of Elizabeth II: "Always it was the little girl in the huge palace, with her nose pressed against the window pane.

She liked to think, and perhaps she was right, that many of her subjects saw in her someone very similar to themselves: prosaic, unpretentious, the kind of person who, in the words of one of her admirers, goes around the house to turn off the lights. that the children were left on”.