British Senior Citizen Takes a New Job

 

by Pa Rock

Retiree

Queen Elizabeth II died yesterday and with her passing the press has been saturated with personal accounts, anecdotes, and little known stories about her life.  As the longest-serving British monarch the history that she personally generated, participated in, and oversaw will be voluminous, filling entire libraries, but it is the anecdotal tales and personal tidbits coming out now that are doing so much to personalize the woman who has been the face of the United Kingdom and the British Commonwealth for generations.

Here is one bit of royal trivia that I have yet to see reported in the press, but unless there is an error in my math - something highly possible - Queen Elizabeth surpassed her g-g-grandmother, Queen Victoria, in time spent on the throne by exactly seven years.  Victoria served as Queen for 63 years, 7 months, and 2 days - and Elizabeth was Queen for 70 years, 7 months, and 2 days.  Elizabeth II, in fact, was the second-longest-serving monarch in world history, only being out distanced by Louis XIV of France who became King at the age of four and served for more that 72 years.

(I do not know if that claim about Elizabeth being the second-longest-serving monarch in world history includes members of the Japanese royal family whose lineage extends back more than 2,000 years - or members of the various Chinese, Korean, and other oriental dynasties, African dynasties and tribes, American tribes and civilizations, and all manner of other inherited leadership among various racial and ethnic groups who have inhabited our planet.  "World" history still tends to be largely Eurocentric.)

Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor was only thirteen-years-old when Great Britain and France declared war on Germany in September of 1939, but World War II was still going on when the 18-year-old princess joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) in February of 1945 - against the wishes of her father, King George VI - and became the first female member of the British royal family to ever serve in the military.   Elizabeth drove and ambulance and was a vehicle mechanic for the Allied forces.

Elizabeth and her younger sister, Margaret, left the palace on the evening of VE Day and joined in the public street dancing to celebrate the Allied victory over Germany.  She was a people's princess, and she would become the people's queen.

But now Queen Elizabeth II is gone and the crown has quietly passed to Charles, her senior son, who at the age of seventy-three becomes the oldest person to ever assume the throne of United Kingdom and the British Commonwealth.    Charles, who will likely take the name and title of King Charles III, (but could select another name under which to rule), is destined to have a much shorter reign than his mother, but, even so, he could be on the throne for a couple of decades.  His father, after all, was just two months shy of his one-hundredth birthday when he passed away in 2021, and his maternal grandmother, the Queen Mother, was one-hundred-and-one when she died in 2002.

Charles and I were born the same year, though I am over seven months older than him - and I know from my own aches and pains, that this would be a very difficult time in life to be heading into a new job!

God Save the King!