Elizabeth II Ascends: A Six-Decade Reign Begins

Princess Elizabeth was watching elephants from a treehouse observation platform at the Treetops Hotel in Kenya’s Aberdare National Park when she became Queen of the United Kingdom. Her father, King George VI, died in his sleep at Sandringham House on February 6, 1952, from a coronary thrombosis at the age of fifty-six. The exact moment of succession passed without ceremony or witnesses. Elizabeth learned of her father’s death hours later when her husband, Prince Philip, received a coded telegram at a nearby lodge. George VI had never expected to be king. He ascended the throne only because his older brother, Edward VIII, abdicated in December 1936 to marry the American divorcee Wallis Simpson. George, a shy man with a pronounced stammer, had guided the monarchy through World War II, visiting bombed-out neighborhoods, broadcasting to the nation, and refusing to leave London during the Blitz. His health had deteriorated sharply in his final years. A left lung had been removed for cancer in 1951, and Elizabeth had been taking on an increasing share of royal duties, including the African tour she was on when he died. The new queen was twenty-five years old, the mother of two small children, and now the sovereign of a global empire in the process of dissolution. India and Pakistan had gained independence five years earlier. African and Caribbean colonies were pressing for self-governance. The monarchy itself was being reimagined as a symbolic institution rather than a governing one, and Elizabeth’s role would be to manage that transition with enough grace to justify the institution’s survival. Elizabeth’s coronation took place on June 2, 1953, the first to be televised, drawing an estimated 27 million British viewers. Her reign lasted seventy years and 214 days, the longest of any British monarch. She served through fifteen prime ministers, from Winston Churchill to Liz Truss, and presided over the transformation of the British Empire into the Commonwealth of Nations. The shy girl in the treehouse outlasted every political system and most of the countries that existed when she put on the crown.