Queen Mother Dies at 101: Britain's Beloved Matriarch

Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother was 101 when she died on March 30, 2002, in her sleep at the Royal Lodge in Windsor Great Park. She had outlived her husband King George VI by exactly fifty years, had buried her grandchild and the Duke of Windsor, and had watched the monarchy she helped stabilize through World War II navigate one of its most turbulent modern periods. Born Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon on August 4, 1900, in London, she was not born to royalty. She was the daughter of a Scottish earl, a minor aristocrat by the standards of the British peerage. She married Albert, Duke of York, in 1923 and became queen consort when his brother Edward VIII abdicated in 1936 to marry Wallis Simpson. She reportedly never forgave Edward for forcing the burden of kingship onto her husband, who had a pronounced stammer and never expected to be king. During the Second World War, she and the king refused to leave London during the Blitz. When Buckingham Palace was bombed in September 1940, she said she was glad because now she could "look the East End in the face," referring to the working-class neighborhoods that had borne the worst of the bombing. She visited bombed neighborhoods, hospitals, and military units, building a personal connection with the British public that endured for the rest of her life. After the king's death in 1952, she stepped back from the central royal role but remained a visible and popular public figure for five more decades. Her longevity itself became a point of national affection. Her 100th birthday celebration drew enormous crowds. When she died, the queue to file past her coffin at Westminster Hall stretched for miles. An estimated one million people lined the streets for her funeral procession.