God Could Not Save The Queen, But The Queen Saved The Crown

Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary ascended to the throne in 1952 as a glamorous "fairytale Queen". Seventy years and 214 days later, on Sept. 9, 2022, she finally left it as a dearly loved mother of the nation.

On Feb. 6, 1952, the 25-year-old daughter of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, became the Queen of England in extraordinary circumstances.

While on a royal visit to Kenya, the princess and her husband, Prince Philip, had adventurously gone up to spend a night on a treetop house, dangerously surrounded by elephants, lions and leopards.

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, her father, King George VI, succumbed to deadly lung cancer in the middle of that fateful night. Unaware of her father's tragic death, she became the Queen of England under the rule of automatic succession while fast asleep inside the tree house amid the Kenyan jungle.

Her watchman for the night, the legendary British hunter Jim Corbett wrote in the King's condolence book: "For the first time in the history of the world, a young girl climbed into a tree one day a Princess… She climbed down from the tree the next day a Queen–God bless her."

The following day when she got the news, she stoically sat writing a letter of thanks to her hosts and also regretting that she had to abandon the royal visit.

This dignified firmness amidst an emotional upheaval became a hallmark of the longest-serving British monarch.

The times were tough, and the road ahead was bumpy. The Empire was in retreat. Britain had been displaced as the world's superpower in the post-war world. The Americans and Soviets carved the world into two rival camps, with Britain naturally joining the U.S.-led free world.

Let's not forget one of the principal war aims of the Allied Powers was 'to make the world safe for democracy’. So, one of the young Queen's main tasks was keeping the constitutional monarchy in tune with the new age of democracy. It was mainly due to her impeccable conduct as a constitutional monarch that republicanism failed to gain ground in the U.K.

She adroitly navigated the nation through icebergs and storms that could have sunk the House of Windsor. It was a journey that often required her to make sacrifices and sometimes flung her into deep despair.

One such moment came in 1955 when she stopped her sister Princess Margaret from marrying a divorcee, Group Captain Peter Townsend. The Queen was duty-bound to preserve the sanctity of a royal marriage. It created an enduring estrangement between two sisters who were until now extremely close to each other.

However, she did not hesitate to break tradition when it came to promoting the interests of the nation. In 1961, the Queen danced with Ghana's President Kwame Nkrumah at a farewell ball in Accra.

Britain's white establishment was horror-struck. The great white Queen sharing a foxtrot with a black African leader was until now unthinkable. It undoubtedly mollified the rising star of Africa, who seemed to be sloping towards the Soviet Union.

Ironically, the last public duty of the 96-year-old Queen was to invite Liz Truss to become the prime minister of the United Kingdom. In her long reign, she dealt with 15 British prime ministers.

She held her nerve against her first prime minister, the domineering "British Bulldog" Winston Churchill, who quickly realised that the young monarch could not be treated like a little girl. She saw through the machinations of Anthony Eden and Harold Macmillan.

When prime ministership passed from aristocracy to working classes, she inspired confidence in the newly elected Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson.

Initially, the grocer's daughter Margaret Thatcher could not comprehend the wasteful ways of royal life. Though never on the same ground, the two women lost no time devising a working relationship. When in November 1992, the Iron Lady was ignominiously booted out of 10 Downing Street by her cabinet colleagues, the final words of comfort came from none other than the Queen.

She made rigorous enquiries about the nation's state in her weekly meetings with prime ministers and yet remarkably kept a distance from politics. She had mastered the art of when to speak, what to say and how much to tell–never a word wrong and never a step faulty.

In a life full of paradoxes, being a monarch was perhaps more straightforward than discharging her responsibilities as a family matriarch. She expected her four children to remain disciplined, selfless and dutybound, an expectation none could fulfil.

An unusual train of tragedies stumbled at her doors in the year 1992. Her favourite castle in Windsor burnt in a devastating fire. Her eldest son Prince Charles and his popular but wayward wife, Princess Diana, announced divorce.

Sarah Fergusson, the separated wife of her younger son, Prince Andrew, was photographed in compromising acts with her new American lover. And her daughter Princess Anne broke her two-decade-old marriage with Mark Phillips. In a rare expression of public angst, the Queen in her Christmas speech, described 1992 as her "annus horribilis".

In 1997, the death of Diana in a car crash in Paris brought further heartache. Stuck in the old ways of royal protocol, she stayed in her Scottish castle, Balmoral, and did not allow the Union Jack fly half-mast at Buckingham Palace for four days.

As the public anger sizzled and the tabloid headlines screamed–"Where is the Queen" she arrived at Buckingham Palace to walk along a wall of floral tributes to the princess of the people.

She spoke to the mourners, shared their grief, and accepted flowers. The public anger quickly melted away. Later, in a live television broadcast, she paid tributes to Diana, calling her an "exceptional and gifted human being".

Queen Elizabeth visited India three times. The photographs of her 1961 visit are a lasting reminder of how much she enjoyed her stay in India. First, she paid homage at Rajghat to the father of the nation, followed by a visit to the Taj Mahal and a controversial tiger hunt in Rajasthan, hosted by the Maharaja of Jaipur.

In 1983, she came back to India to inaugurate the Commonwealth Conference. She was overtly formal, and so was Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Yet, with all their sophistication and official courtesies, they kept their distance.

Her last visit to India occurred in 1997, on the 50th anniversary of India's independence. While visiting the Jallianwala memorial in Amritsar, she admitted that the massacre was "a difficult episode". But, despite the widespread expectations, she failed to tender an apology for the gruesome massacre ordered by Brigadier General Dyer.

As an experienced head of the state, she knew what would please her guests. So, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to visit her in Buckingham Palace, she showed him the wedding gift that another Gujarati, the famous half-naked faqir, Mahatma Gandhi, gave her–a hand-woven 12x24 inch piece of Khadi–a gift that she did not know what to do with.

Her people loved her. However, their affection and gratitude could not save her from the tribulations in the twilight of her life.

The year 2021 proved another annus horribilis when her grandson Prince Harry and her wife, Meghan Markle, an American woman of colour, accused her family of racism.

Her dearest son Prince Andrew got a U.S. court summons for his sexual indiscretions. Finally, her life partner Prince Philip passed away. Fourteen months later, she, too, followed him.

God did not save the Queen as her people prayed for, but the Queen saved the Crown as she promised her people–indeed, a remarkable legacy.

Dr Vijay Rana is a London-based journalist and filmmaker and an ex-BBC radio editor. He has written extensively for the BBC, the Times, India Today and the Indian Express.

The views expressed here are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views of BQ Prime or its editorial team.