The Platinum Queen

 

by Pa Rock

Old Fart

Seventy years ago today  Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor, a British princess, was visiting a game reserve in Kenya and staying at the famed Treetops Hotel.  The young royal had climbed the steps to her bedroom in the treehouse the night before as a mere princess, but when she came down those same steps the next morning she was the new Queen of Great Britain, the fortieth British monarch since the invader, William the Conqueror, had seized the throne and the title of King in 1066.

On that day seventy years ago Winston Churchill was still the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Joe Stalin was still running the Soviet Union, Harry Truman was still the President of the United States, and I was a mere pup of less than four years!

Elizabeth II, as she is officially known, became the Queen of Great Britain when her father, George VI, passed away on this day in 1952.   At the time Elizabeth became Queen, she was a 25-year-old war veteran with a husband and two small children.  Today she is a 95-year-old widow with four graying children, each of whom has been somewhat problematic, eight grandchildren, and twelve great-grandchildren, the oldest of whom is eleven.  Her oldest son, Charles, the heir apparent, is seventy-three.

But even with her advanced age, Queen Elizabeth could conceivably remain on the throne for several more years.  Her own mother passed away in 2002 at the age of one-hundred-and-one.

At seventy years as Queen,  Elizabeth II has already out-distanced all of her predecessors on the throne and is the longest serving monarch in British history.  Today is her day, and it is Britain's, and it is platinum!  

Enjoy your day, Bess.