QUEEN+ELIZABETH+II

= Q U E E N E L I Z A B E T H II  = = INDEX: = 1. INRTRODUCTION Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; born 21 April 1926) is the constitutional monarch of 16 sovereign states, known as theCommonwealth realms, and their territories and dependencies, and head of the 54-member Commonwealth of Nations. She is Supreme Governor of the Church of England and, in some of her realms, carries the title of Defender of the Faith as part of her full title.
 * 1. INTRODUCTION **
 * 2. EARLY LIFE **
 * 3.HEIRESS PRESUMPTIVE **
 * -3.1. Second World War **
 * -3.2. Marriage **
 * 4. REIGN **
 * -4.1. Silver Jubilee **
 * -4.2. 1980s **
 * -4.3. 1990 **
 * -4.4. Golden Jubilee **
 * -4.5. Diamond Jubilee and beyond **
 * 5. PUBLIC PERCEPTION **
 * -5.1. Finances **
 * 6. FLAG **
 * 7. ARMS **
 * 8. PREZI **
 * 9. PICTURES **
 * 10. VIDEOS **

On her accession on 6 February 1952, Elizabeth became Head of the Commonwealth and queen regnant of seven independent Commonwealth countries: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Pakistan and Ceylon. From 1956 to 1992, the number of her realms varied as territories gained independence and some realms became republics. At present, in addition to the first four aforementioned countries, Elizabeth is Queen of Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, theSolomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize, Antigua and Barbuda and Saint Kitts and Nevis. Her reign of 61 years is currently the second longest for a British monarch; only Queen Victoria has reigned longer at over 63 years.

=** 2. EARLY LIFE **= Elizabeth was the first child of Prince Albert, Duke of York (later King George VI), and his wife, Elizabeth. Her father was the second son of KingGeorge V and Queen Mary. He was baptised by the Anglican Archbishop of York, Cosmo Gordon Lang, in the private chapel of Buckingham Palace on 29 May. Her close family called her "Lilibet".

Elizabeth's only sibling, Princess Margaret, was four years younger. The two princesses were educated at home under the supervision of their mother and their governess, Marion Crawford, who was casually known as "Crawfie".



= 3.HEIRESS PRESUMPTIVE = During her grandfather's reign, Elizabeth was third in the line of succession to the throne, behind her uncle Edward, Prince of Wales, and her father, the Duke of York. Although her birth generated public interest, she was not expected to become queen, as the Prince of Wales was still young and many assumed he would marry and have children of his own.] In 1936, when her grandfather, George V, died and her uncle succeeded as Edward VIII, she became second in line to the throne after her father. Later that year, Edward abdicatedafter his proposed marriage to divorced socialite Wallis Simpson provoked a constitutional crisis. Elizabeth's father became king, and she became heiress presumptive. If her parents had had a later son, she would have lost her position as first in line as her brother would have been heir apparent and above her in the line of succession.



3.1. Second World Was
In September 1939, Britain entered the Second World War, which lasted until 1945. During the war, London was frequently subject toaerial bombardment, and many of London's children were evacuated. The suggestion by senior politician Lord Hailsham that the two princesses should be evacuated to Canada was rejected by Elizabeth's mother, who declared, "The children won't go without me. I won't leave without the King. And the King will never leave."

We are trying to do all we can to help our gallant sailors, soldiers and airmen, and we are trying, too, to bear our share of the danger and sadness of war. We know, every one of us, that in the end all will be well.

At the end of the war in Europe, on Victory in Europe Day, the princesses Elizabeth and Margaret mingled anonymously with the celebratory crowds in the streets of London

In 1947 Princess Elizabeth made her first overseas tour, accompanying her parents through southern Africa. During the tour, in a broadcast to the British Commonwealth on her 21st birthday, she made the following pledge:

"I declare 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."



3.2. Marriage
[|//Wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Philip Mountbatten, Duke of Edinburgh//]

Elizabeth met her future husband, Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark, in 1934 and 1937. They are second cousins once removedthrough King Christian IX of Denmark and third cousins through Queen Victoria.

Before the marriage, Philip renounced his Greek and Danish titles, converted from Greek Orthodoxy to Anglicanism, and adopted the style Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten, taking the surname of his mother's British family.

Elizabeth and Philip were married on 20 November 1947 at Westminster Abbey.

Elizabeth gave birth to her first child, Prince Charles, on 14 November 1948. A second child, Princess Anne, was born in 1950.

=** 4. REIGN **=

During 1951, George VI's health declined and Elizabeth frequently stood in for him at public events. When she toured Canada and visited President Truman in Washington, D.C. in October 1951, her private secretary, Martin Charteris, carried a draft accession declaration for use if the King died while she was on tour. In early 1952, Elizabeth and Philip set out for a tour of Australia and New Zealand by way of Kenya. On 6 February 1952, they had just returned to their Kenyan home, Sagana Lodge, after a night spent at Treetops Hotel, when word arrived of the death of the King. Philip broke the news to the new queen. Martin Charteris asked her to choose a regnal name; she chose to remain Elizabeth, "of course". She was proclaimed queen throughout her realms and the royal party hastily returned to the United Kingdom. She and the Duke of Edinburgh moved into Buckingham Palace.

With Elizabeth's accession, it seemed probable that the royal house would bear her husband's name, becoming the House of Mountbatten, in line with the custom of a wife taking her husband's surname on marriage. Elizabeth's grandmother, Queen Mary, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill favoured the retention of the House of Windsor, and so Windsor it remained. The Duke complained, "I am the only man in the country not allowed to give his name to his own children." In 1960, after the death of Queen Mary in 1953 and the resignation of Churchill in 1955, the surname Mountbatten-Windsor was adopted for Philip and Elizabeth's male-line descendants who do not carry royal titles.

Despite the death of Queen Mary on 24 March, the coronation went ahead, as Mary had asked before she died, taking place as planned on 2 June 1953. The ceremony in Westminster Abbey, with the exception of the anointing and communion, was televised for the first time. Elizabeth's coronation gown was commissioned from Norman Hartnell and embroidered on her instructions with the floral emblems of the Commonwealth countries: English Tudor rose; Scots thistle; Welsh leek; Irish shamrock; Australian wattle; Canadianmaple leaf; New Zealand silver fern; South African protea; lotus flowers for India and Ceylon; and Pakistan's wheat, cotton, and jute.



4.1. Silver Jubilee
In 1977, Elizabeth marked the Silver Jubilee of her accession. Parties and events took place throughout the Commonwealth, many coinciding with her associated national and Commonwealth tours. The celebrations re-affirmed the Queen's popularity.

4.2. 1980
During the 1981 Trooping the Colour ceremony and only six weeks before the wedding of Charles, Prince of Wales, and Lady Diana Spencer, six shots were fired at the Queen from close range as she rode down The Mall on her horse, Burmese. Police later discovered that the shots were blanks. The 17-year-old assailant, Marcus Sarjeant, was sentenced to five years in prison and released after three. The Queen's composure and skill in controlling her mount were widely praised. From April to September 1982, the Queen remained anxious but proud of her son, Prince Andrew, who was serving with British forces during the Falklands War. On 9 July, the Queen awoke in her bedroom at Buckingham Palace to find an intruder, Michael Fagan, in the room with her. Remaining calm and through two calls to the palace police switchboard, she spoke to Fagan while he sat at the foot of her bed until assistance arrived seven minutes later. Though she hosted US President Ronald Reagan at Windsor Castle in 1982 and visited his Californian ranch in 1983, she was angered when his administration ordered the invasion of Grenada, one of her Caribbean realms, without informing her.

4.3. 1990
In 1991, in the wake of victory in the Gulf War, the Queen became the first British monarch to address a joint session of the United States Congress.

In a speech on 24 November 1992, to mark the 40th anniversary of her accession, the Queen called 1992 her annus horribilis, meaninghorrible year.[124] In March, her second son Prince Andrew, Duke of York, and his wife Sarah, Duchess of York, separated; in April, her daughter Anne, Princess Royal, divorced her husband Captain Mark Phillips; during a state visit to Germany in October, angry demonstrators in Dresden threw eggs at her, and, in November, Windsor Castle suffered severe fire damage. The monarchy received increased criticism and public scrutiny. In an unusually personal speech, the Queen said that any institution must expect criticism, but suggested it be done with "a touch of humour, gentleness and understanding". Two days later, Prime Minister John Majorannounced reforms of the royal finances that had been planned since the previous year, including the Queen paying income tax for the first time from 1993 and a reduction in the civil list. In December, Charles, Prince of Wales, and his wife, Diana, Princess of Wales, formally separated.[ The year ended with a lawsuit as the Queen sued The Sun newspaper for breach of copyright when it published the text of her annual Christmas message two days before its broadcast. The newspaper was forced to pay her legal fees and donated £200,000 to charity.

In the ensuing years, public revelations on the state of Charles and Diana's marriage continued. A year after the divorce, which took place in 1996, Diana was killed in a car crash in Paris on 31 August 1997. The Queen was on holiday with her son and grandchildren at Balmoral. Diana's two sons wanted to attend church and so the Queen and Prince Philip took them that morning. After that single public appearance, for five days the Queen and the Duke shielded their grandsons from the intense press interest by keeping them at Balmoral where they could grieve in private, but the royal family's seclusion and a failure to fly a flag at half-mast over Buckingham Palace caused public dismay. Pressured by the hostile reaction, the Queen agreed to a live broadcast to the world and returned to London to deliver it on 5 September, the day before Diana's funeral. In the broadcast, she expressed admiration for Diana and her feelings "as a grandmother" for Princes William and Harry. As a result, much of the public hostility evaporated.



4.4. Golden Jubilee
In 2002, Elizabeth marked her Golden Jubilee as queen. Her sister and mother died in February and March, respectively, and the media speculated as to whether the Jubilee would be a success or a failure. She again undertook an extensive tour of her realms, which began in Jamaica in February, where she called the farewell banquet "memorable" after a power cut plunged the King's House, the official residence of the governor-general, into darkness. As in 1977, there were street parties and commemorative events and monuments were named to honour the occasion. A million people attended each day of the three-day main Jubilee celebration in London, and the enthusiasm shown by the public for the Queen was greater than many journalists had predicted.

Though generally healthy throughout her life, in 2003 she had keyhole surgery on both knees. In October 2006, she missed the opening of the new Emirates Stadium because of a strained back muscle that had been troubling her since the summer. Two months later, she was seen in public with a bandage on her right hand, which led to press speculation of ill health. She had been bitten by one of her corgis while she was separating two that were fighting.

In May 2007, The Daily Telegraph newspaper reported claims from unnamed sources that the Queen was "exasperated and frustrated" by the policies of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, that she had shown concern that the British Armed Forces were overstretched in Iraqand Afghanistan, and that she had raised concerns over rural and countryside issues with Blair repeatedly.[ She was, however, said to admire Blair's efforts to achieve peace in Northern Ireland. On 20 March 2008, at the Church of Ireland St Patrick's Cathedral, Armagh, the Queen attended the first Maundy service held outside England and Wales. At the invitation of Irish President Mary McAleese, the Queen in May 2011 made the first state visit to the Republic of Ireland by a British monarch.



4.5. Diamond Jubilee and beyond
Elizabeth's Diamond Jubilee in 2012 marked 60 years as queen, with celebrations throughout her realms, the wider Commonwealth, and beyond. She and her husband undertook an extensive tour of the United Kingdom, while her children and grandchildren embarked on royal tours of other Commonwealth states on her behalf.[156][157][158] On 4 June, jubilee beacons were lit around the world.

The Queen opened the 2012 Summer Olympics on 27 July and the Paralympics on 29 August 2012 in London, making her the first head of state to open two Olympic Games in two different countries.

On 3 March 2013, she was admitted to hospital for assessment as a precaution after developing symptoms of gastroenteritis. She returned to Buckingham Palace the following day.

She is the longest-lived and second-longest-reigning monarch of the United Kingdom and the second-longest-serving current head of state (after King Bhumibol Adulyadej ofThailand). She does not intend to abdicate, though the proportion of public duties performed by Prince Charles may increase as Elizabeth reduces her commitments.

= 5. PUBLIC PERCEPTION AND CHARACTER =

[|//Personality and image of Queen Elizabeth II//]

Since Elizabeth rarely gives interviews, little is known of her personal feelings. As a constitutional monarch, she has not expressed her own political opinions in a public forum. She does have a deep sense of religious and civic duty and takes her coronation oath seriously. Aside from her official religious role as Supreme Governor of the established Church of England, she personally worships with that church and with the national Church of Scotland. She has demonstrated support for inter-faith relations and has met with leaders of other churches and religions, including three popes: John XXIII, John Paul II and Benedict XVI. A personal note about her faith often features in her annual Royal Christmas Message broadcast to the Commonwealth.

She is the patron of over 600 organisations and charities. Her main leisure interests include equestrianism and dogs, especially herPembroke Welsh Corgis. Her lifelong love of corgis began in 1933 with Dookie, the first corgi owned by her family. Scenes of a relaxed, informal home life have occasionally been witnessed; she and her family, from time to time, prepare a meal together and do the washing up afterwards.

In the 1950s, as a young woman at the start of her reign, Elizabeth was depicted as a glamorous "fairytale Queen". After the trauma of the war, it was a time of hope, a period of progress and achievement heralding a "new Elizabethan age".

At her Silver Jubilee in 1977, the crowds and celebrations were genuinely enthusiastic,[ but in the 1980s public criticism of the royal family increased, as the personal and working lives of Elizabeth's children came under media scrutiny. Elizabeth's popularity sank to a low point in the 1990s. Under pressure from public opinion, she began to pay income tax for the first time and Buckingham Palace was opened to the public. Discontent with the monarchy reached its peak on thedeath of Diana, Princess of Wales, though Elizabeth's personal popularity and support for the monarchy rebounded after her live broadcast to the world five days after Diana's death.

In November 1999, a referendum in Australia on the future of the Australian monarchy favoured its retention in preference to an indirectly elected head of state. Polls in Britain in 2006 and 2007 revealed strong support for Elizabeth, and referenda in Tuvalu in 2008 and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines in 2009 both rejected proposals to become republics.



5.1. Finances
Elizabeth's personal fortune has been the subject of speculation for many years. Forbes magazine estimated her net worth at around US$450 million in 2010, but official Buckingham Palace statements in 1993 called estimates of £100 million "grossly overstated". Jock Colville, who was her former private secretary and a director of her bank, Coutts, estimated her wealth in 1971 at £2 million (the equivalent of about £21 million today). The Royal Collection (which includes artworks and the Crown Jewels) is not owned by the Queen personally and is held in trust, as are the occupied palaces, such as Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle, and the Duchy of Lancaster, a property portfolio valued in 2011 at £383 million. Sandringham House and Balmoral Castleare privately owned by the Queen. The British Crown Estate—with holdings of £7.3 billion in 2011—is held in trust for the nation and cannot be sold or owned by Elizabeth in a private capacity.



= 6. FLAG = [|//List of titles and honours of Queen Elizabeth II//]



= 7. ARMS = [|//Flags of Elizabeth II//]

[|//Coats of arms of Elizabeth II//]

From 21 April 1944 until her accession, Elizabeth's arms consisted of a lozenge bearing the royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom, differenced with a label of three points argent, the centre point bearing a Tudor rose and the first and third a cross of St George. Upon her accession, she inherited the various arms her father held as sovereign. The Queen also possesses royal standards and personal flags for use in the United Kingdom, Canada,Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, and elsewhere.



= 8. PREZI = media type="custom" key="23146288"

= = = 9. PICTURES =



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