Queen Elizabeth… An Obituary Reference….

The Celebrity Queen of the World… A gracious End of an Era of Royal Elegance.

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth ll of England, reigning on the Throne of her Kingdom from 1952 till date is the longest living and the longest reigning Head of the State in the World. Now at 93 , She is the World’ most gracious oldest living monarch too.Born in 1927 as the elder daughter of King George Vl , the younger one being Princess Ann who is no more now , Elizabeth succeeded her father who died rather young. It is considered a very strange fact of English history that while their Queens normally live 3 scores and 20 years and even more, their Kings always have a comparatively shorter span of years to live and reign!! Of the two celebrity predecessors of the present Queen, Queen Elizabeth I , the younger daughter of King Henry 8th by his controversial second wife, Anne Bolyin, Elizabeth ascended the throne on his father’s demise , after defeating her rival, Mary Queen of Scots ,who claimed herself the rightful claimant to the Throne as she was King Henry’s elder daughter by his first and legal wife, Princess Catherine, through a bitter military encounter.On winning the Civil War between the Catholic and the Protestant Armies by successfully rallying round her the more forceful protestant army and leading the battle by commanding her soldiers in person on horseback in the Warfield. Elizabeth enthroned herself formally as Queen Elizabeth l and ruled England for 45 years (1558– 1603 ) .

While Elizabeth l though remaining a spinster all through her life , tactfully declining all offers of a wedlock, she very secretly through feelers tempted Henry lll of France and King Philip ll of Spain that she would offer her royal hand to them, smartly misleading both of them simultaneously , as part of her acute political diplomacy to prevent any possible joint war by France and Spain against England which she successfully did do till she made her British Naval Fleet strong enough to defend the English Shores. And when her ploy was revealed once the king of France and the King of Spain met each other, an enraged Spanish King sent his Armeda of Ships.But it was of no avail since by that time Queen Elizabeth l was well entrenched with her Legion of English warships to beat the once powerful Spanish Armeda. The famous English historian Trevelyan has rightly complimented the Queen’s diplomatic skills by saying that Queen Elizabeth l was inimitably shrewd so that whenever she visited a town or a county, she used to publicly compliment the Mayor on his Latin and the Mayor’s wife on her cooking”.!!And Queen Victoria , who enjoyed also the title ” the Empress of India ” ( ruling the British Empire for 64 years from 1837–1901) was also very popular as a strong and powerful Monarch of the first order.

Queen Victoria was a class by herself and different on all counts, compared to Queen Elizabeth l. She was said to be arrogant and even a bit vainglorious, very possessive and evidently enjoying all royal paraphernalia . There were many stories and gossips going round about the regular daily wordy battles between the Queen and her royal consort, Prince Albert who loved his wife Victoria like anything, but much fed up with her over domineering words and style. Unfortunately there were even some stories of Palace scandals too involving Queen Victoria. Inspite of all these sins and talks , the people of England loved and admired Victoria as a strong and commanding Queen .

Queen Elizabeth ll makes a totally different story. Her very profile is pleasant, gracious and inimitably Majestic. She was well tuned and tutored for the Crown by the Queen Mother as also by her grand mother.And she was the pet of her father, King George Vl and his elder brother King Edward Vlll who abdicated the very Throne for the sake of marrying the one whom he loved, a woman of the common folk , a divorcee.Princess Elizabeth, entering the Wedlock in 1947 in a Royal Marriage with the equally handsome and elegant Prince Philip , who was serving as an officer commanding in the British Forces, was decorated with the honour and title of the Duke of Edinburgh ,consequent to his marrying the royal heir apparent. The Queen and the Duke has lived a happy married life of seven decades and more now, making them the most respected and the widely reputed popular Royal Couple in the World.Even the Queen’s son and the ever charming Prince of Wales, Charles nor his disarmingly popular first wife Diana could n’t diminish , even by an inch, the range and rating of the love and admiration the people of England have towards their Queen and her consort, the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip. They are still to them a Magical Couple.!!! On all counts, Queen Elizabeth ll is a Queen different, with an aura of a revered eminence as the Queen is also the formal Head of the Church of England. And she is doing full justice to the Spiritual Title too. She is constituting a class by herself.And she has now elegantly stepped into the peak of her glory with an inimitable royal dignity and eminence. England , rated as the best democracy in our times is convincingly reluctant to become a Republic because and only because of the fact that Her Majesty the Queen of England, Elizabeth ll has made the English Royalty and the Buckingham Palace so popular and so warmly close and dear to the hearts of her subjects. Whenever attempts are made , campaigning for the abolition of Monarchy in England, it is the decisive majority of the English speaking people who stand a guard and a protective wall around the Monarchy despite their deep-rooted century old democratic sentiments, for the one and the only reason that they love their Queen like anything. And even now, in many a morning and evenings, people throng at the gates of the Buckingham Palace and sing and pray from the bottom of their hearts ” Long live the Queen.”. And at 93 , still looking elegantly beautiful and gracious, and very meticulously and yet fashionably dressed in her royal decorum and dignity , the Queen appears on the balcony of the Palace and acknowledges the affectionate greetings of her subjects, whether that of the Commons, the Lords, or of the clergy, raising her shapely right hand royally and majestically .

Queen Elizabeth stood before the World so royally and now leaves a great legacy both as the longest ever lived and the longest ever reigned Queen the World have seen so far..

DR CYRIAC THOMAS.