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IDECLARE before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great Imperial family to which we all belong.’ So pledged Princess Elizabeth in a speech to mark her 21st birthday, broadcast by the BBC from Cape Town on April 21, 1947.
When making this pledge of service, she could not have imagined the full magnitude of the commitment she was making, which she would hold to for the next 75 years. Yet the outpouring of grief that has followed her death is rooted in the fact that she kept her word so faithfully for so long.
Her accession to the throne as Elizabeth II came unexpectedly, less than five years later, and ushered in a reign that would span seven decades of tumultuous political, social and economic change. In the course of it, she invited no fewer than 15 British Prime Ministers to form 27 governments and travelled farther and further afield than any of her predecessors.
She died the longest-lived and longestreigning monarch in British history, Queen of the United Kingdom, Head of State in 15 independent nations and Leader of a Commonwealth comprising 56 countries and 32 small states around the world. For a figure of such authority, she commanded, and still commands—to a quite exceptional degree—admiration, affection and respect.
The monarchy is an institution, but the Queen served so long that she became less a figure in that role than a personification of it. In all he
