short essay about queen elizabeth

Queen Elizabeth II

Queen Elizabeth II was the longest-reigning monarch in British history, sitting on the throne for 71 years. She was succeeded by King Charles III in 2022.

Who Was Queen Elizabeth II?

Quick facts, early life and family tree, ascension to the crown and coronation, husband prince philip, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, family scandals and losses, death and funeral, latest news: one year since her death.

On the first anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II’s death, King Charles shared an unreleased photo of the late queen. “In marking the first anniversary of Her late Majesty’s death and my Accession, we recall with great affection her long life, devoted service and all she meant to so many of us,” he said in a statement. Additionally, Prince William and Princess Kate attended a private church service in Wales to commemorate her life, and Prince Harry visited the chapel at Windsor Castle , where the queen is buried. Planning for a memorial to Elizabeth is underway. The targeted unveiling is 2026, the year she would have turned 100.

Queen Elizabeth II became queen of the United Kingdom on February 6, 1952, at age 25 and was crowned on June 2, 1953. She was the mother of Prince Charles , who ascended to the throne after her death, as well as the grandmother of Princes William and Harry . As the longest-serving monarch in British history, she tried to make her reign more modern and sensitive to a changing public while maintaining traditions associated with the crown. Elizabeth died on September 8, 2022, at age 96.

FULL NAME: Elizabeth Alexandra Mary BORN: April 21, 1926 DIED: September 8, 2022 BIRTHPLACE: London, England, United Kingdom PARENTS: King George VI and Queen Mother Elizabeth SPOUSE: Prince Philip CHILDREN: King Charles III , Princess Anne , Prince Andrew , and Prince Edward ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Taurus

Queen Elizabeth II was born Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary on April 21, 1926, in London. Her parents were then known as the Duke and Duchess of York. Prince Albert—later known as King George VI —was the second son of Queen Mary and King George V . Her mother was Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon .

Elizabeth had ties with most of the monarchs in Europe. Her British ancestors include Queen Victoria (ruled 1837 to 1901) and King George III (ruled 1760 to 1820).

At the time of her birth, most people didn’t realize Elizabeth would someday become the queen of the United Kingdom. Nicknamed Lilibet, she got to enjoy the first decade of her life with all the privileges of being a royal without the pressures of being the heir apparent.

Elizabeth’s father and mother divided their time between a home in London and Royal Lodge, the family’s home on the grounds of Windsor Great Park. Elizabeth and her younger sister, Margaret , were educated at home by tutors. Academic courses included French, mathematics, and history, along with dancing, singing, and art lessons.

With the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Elizabeth and her sister largely stayed out of London, having been relocated to Windsor Castle. From there she made the first of her famous radio broadcasts in 1940, with this particular speech reassuring the children of Britain who had been evacuated from their homes and families. The 14-year-old princess, showing her calm and firm personality, told them “that in the end, all will be well; for God will care for us and give us victory and peace.”

Elizabeth soon started taking on other public duties. Appointed colonel-in-chief of the Grenadier Guards by her father, Elizabeth made her first public appearance inspecting the troops in 1942. She also began to accompany her parents on official visits within Britain.

In 1945, Elizabeth joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service to help in the war effort. She trained side-by-side with other British women to be an expert driver and mechanic. While her volunteer work only lasted a few months, it offered Elizabeth a glimpse into a different, non-royal world. She had another vivid experience outside of the monarchy when she and Margaret were allowed to mingle anonymously among the citizenry on Victory in Europe Day .

When Elizabeth’s grandfather King George V died in 1936, his eldest son (Elizabeth’s uncle) became King Edward VIII . Edward, however, was in love with American divorcée Wallis Simpson and had to choose between the crown and his heart . In the end, Edward chose Simpson and abdicated the crown.

The event changed the course of Elizabeth’s life, making her the heir presumptive to the British crown. Her father was crowned King George VI in 1937, taking on the name George to emphasize continuity with his father. Her mother became Queen Elizabeth.

Fifteen years later, the monarchy changed hands again when King George died. The younger Elizabeth assumed the responsibilities of the ruling monarch on February 6, 1952. At that point, the 25-year-old became Queen Elizabeth II, and her mother became Queen Mother.

Elizabeth was crowned on June 2, 1953, in Westminster Abbey, at the age of 27. For the first time ever, the coronation ceremony was broadcast on television, allowing people from across the globe to witness the pomp and spectacle of the event.

Elizabeth married her distant cousin Philip Mountbatten (a surname adopted from his mother’s side) on November 20, 1947, at London’s Westminster Abbey.

Elizabeth first met Philip, son of Prince Andrew of Greece, when she was only 13. She was smitten with him from the start. The two kept in touch over the years and eventually fell in love.

They made an unusual pair. Elizabeth was quiet and reserved, while Philip was boisterous and outspoken. Her father, King George, was hesitant about the match because, while Mountbatten had ties to both the Danish and Greek royal families, he didn’t possess great wealth and was considered by some to have a rough personality.

At the time of their wedding, Great Britain was still recovering from the ravages of World War II, and Elizabeth collected clothing coupons to get fabric for her gown.

The family took on the name Windsor, a move pushed by her mother and Prime Minister Winston Churchill that caused tension with her husband. In 1960, she reversed course, issuing orders that her descendants who didn’t carry royal titles (or needed last names for legal purposes such as weddings) would use the surname Mountbatten-Windsor. Over the years, Philip inspired numerous public relations headaches with his off-the-cuff, controversial comments and rumors of possible infidelities.

Philip died on April 9, 2021, at age 99. Days later, Prince Andrew told the media Queen Elizabeth described his death “as having left a huge void in her life.” She had previously said he was her “strength and stay.”

Elizabeth and Philip wasted no time in producing an heir: Their son Charles was born in 1948, the year after their wedding, and their daughter, Anne , arrived in 1950. As queen, Elizabeth had two more children—sons Andrew and Edward —in 1960 and 1964, respectively.

King Charles III

In 1969, Elizabeth officially made Charles her successor by granting him the title of Prince of Wales. Hundreds of millions of people tuned in to see the ceremony on television.

In 1981, Charles, then 32, wed 19-year-old Diana Spencer, who became known as Princess Diana . The wedding drew enormous crowds in the streets of London, and millions watched the proceedings on television. Public opinion of the monarchy was especially strong at that time. Later, rumors surfaced that he was pressured into the marriage by his family.

Now King Charles III, he is married to Queen Camilla .

Princess Anne

Princess Anne began working as a member of the royal family when she was 18 in 1969 and continues today. She is also heavily involved in charity work. A noted equestrian, Anne competed in the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. Her mother opened the Games that year, and the rest of the royal family traveled to support Anne.

Previously married to Captain Mark Phillips, she and her current husband, Timothy Laurence, wed in 1992.

Prince Andrew

Andrew was the first child born to a reigning monarch in more than 100 years. In 1979, he joined the British Royal Navy, became a helicopter pilot, and served during the Falkland War in the early 1980s. He became the Duke of York after marrying Sarah Ferguson , though the couple later divorced. Following scandal, Andrew stepped back from public duties in his royal capacity in 2019, a decision that was made permanent in 2022.

Prince Edward

The queen’s youngest child, Edward, worked in theater and television production for many years, at one point through his own production company. Since 2002, he has worked full-time supporting his mother and now brother. Edward is married to Sophie Rhys-Jones. He became the Duke of Edinburgh—a title previously held by his father—in March 2023.

Queen Elizabeth had eight grandchildren and was great-grandmother to 12 in her lifetime.

Her most well-known grandchildren are Charles and Diana’s sons, Prince William , who became second-in-line to the throne at his birth in 1982, and Prince Harry , born in 1984. Elizabeth emerged as a devoted grandmother to her grandsons. Prince William has said that she offered invaluable support and guidance as he and Kate Middleton planned their 2011 wedding.

In addition to Princes William and Harry, the queen’s other grandchildren are: Peter Phillips and Zara Tindall, born to Princess Anne; Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie of York, born to Prince Andrew; and Lady Louise Windsor and James, Viscount Severn, born to Prince Edward. Peter is Elizabeth’s oldest grandchild; he was born in 1977, four years before his sister and five years before Prince William.

William and Kate have three children, who are Elizabeth’s great-grandchildren. The Prince and Princess of Wales welcomed Prince George Alexander Louis in July 2013, Princess Charlotte Elizabeth Diana in May 2015, and Prince Louis Arthur Charles in April 2018. All three are currently in the line of succession directly after their father.

Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, and his wife, Meghan Markle gave the queen two more great-grandchildren with the birth of their son, Prince Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor , and daughter, Princess Lilibet Diana Mountbatten-Windsor , in May 2019 and June 2021, respectively.

Elizabeth’s other great-grandchildren include Savannah Phillips, Isla Phillips, Mia Tindall, Lena Tindall, August Brooksbank, Lucas Tindall, and Sienna Mozzi.

Elizabeth’s long and mainly peaceful reign was marked by vast changes in her people’s lives, in her country’s power, how Britain is viewed abroad, and how the monarchy is regarded and portrayed. As a constitutional monarch, Elizabeth didn’t weigh in on political matters, nor did she reveal her political views. However, she conferred regularly with her prime ministers.

When Elizabeth became queen, post-war Britain still had a substantial empire, dominions, and dependencies. However, during the 1950s and 1960s, many of these countries achieved independence, and the British Empire evolved into the Commonwealth of Nations. Elizabeth II thus made visits to other countries as head of the Commonwealth and a representative of Britain, including a groundbreaking trip to Germany in 1965. She became the first British monarch to make a state visit there in more than five decades.

During the 1970s and 1980s, Elizabeth continued to travel extensively. In 1973, she attended the Commonwealth Conference in Ottawa, Canada and, in 1976, traveled to the United States for the 200 th anniversary celebration of America’s independence from Britain. More than a week later, she was in Montreal to open the Summer Olympics. In 1979, she traveled to Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman, which garnered international attention and widespread respect.

In 1982, Elizabeth worried about her second son, Prince Andrew , who served as a helicopter pilot in the British Royal Navy during the Falklands War. Britain went to war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands, a clash that lasted for several weeks. While more than 250 British soldiers died in the conflict, Prince Andrew returned home safe and well, much to his mother’s relief.

In 2011, Elizabeth showed that the crown still had symbolic and diplomatic power when she became the first British monarch to visit the Republic of Ireland since 1911 (when all of Ireland was still part of the United Kingdom).

As queen, Elizabeth modernized the monarchy, dropping some of its formalities and making certain sites and treasures more accessible to the public. As Britain and other nations struggled financially, Britain abolished the Civil List in 2012, which was a public funding system of the monarchy dating back roughly 250 years. The royal family continues to receive some government support, but the queen cut back on spending.

Also in 2012, Elizabeth celebrated her Diamond Jubilee, marking 60 years as queen. As part of the jubilee festivities, a special BBC concert was held on June 4 featuring the likes of Shirley Bassey , Paul McCartney , Tom Jones , Stevie Wonder , and Kylie Minogue. Elizabeth was surrounded by family at this historic event, including her husband Philip, son Charles, and grandsons Harry and William.

On September 9, 2015, she surpassed her great-great-grandmother Queen Victoria as Britain’s longest-ruling monarch, who reigned for 63 years.

Despite the occasional call to step aside for Charles, Elizabeth remained steadfast in her royal obligations as she passed her 90 th birthday in 2016. She continued making more than 400 engagements per year, maintaining her support of hundreds of charitable organizations and programs.

On February 6, 2017, the queen celebrated 65 years on the throne, the only British monarch to ever celebrate her Sapphire Jubilee. The date also marks the anniversary of the death of her father. The queen chose to spend the day quietly at Sandringham, her country estate north of London, where she attended a church service. In London, there were royal gun salutes at Green Park and at the Tower of London to mark the occasion. The Royal Mint also issued eight new commemorative coins in honor of the queen’s Sapphire Jubilee.

Later that year, the monarchy took what was considered a major step toward transitioning to the next generation: On November 12, Charles handled the traditional Remembrance Sunday duty of placing a wreath at the Cenotaph war memorial, as the queen watched from a nearby balcony.

In August 2019, Elizabeth made a rare intrusion into political matters when she agreed to a request by Prime Minister Boris Johnson to suspend Parliament until October 14, less than three weeks before Britain’s planned departure from the European Union.

In 2022, the nation celebrated Elizabeth’s platinum jubilee year. Another milestone for the monarchy, it marked her 70 years on the throne.

Relationship With Prime Ministers

Elizabeth had 15 prime ministers placed into power during her reign, with the queen and PM having a weekly, confidential meeting. (Elizabeth also met about a quarter of all the U.S. presidents in history, most recently receiving Joe Biden for a state visit in June 2021.)

She enjoyed a father-figure relationship with the iconic Winston Churchill and was later able to loosen up a bit and be somewhat informal with Labour leaders Harold Wilson and James Callaghan. In contrast, she and Margaret Thatcher had a very formal, distant relationship, with the PM tending to be a grating lecturer to the queen on a variety of issues.

Tony Blair saw certain concepts around the monarchy as somewhat outdated, though he did appreciate Elizabeth making a public statement after the death of Princess Diana .

Later, Conservative leader David Cameron, who was Elizabeth’s fifth cousin removed, enjoyed a warm rapport with the queen. He apologized in 2014 for revealing in a conversation that she was against the Scottish referendum to seek independence from Great Britain.

Theresa May was described as being tight-lipped about Brexit plans to leave the European Union, with a rumor circulating that Elizabeth was perturbed over not being informed about future exit strategies.

Two days before her death, Elizabeth welcomed her final prime minister, Liz Truss , at Balmoral Castle in Scotland. The September 6, 2022, meeting was her final act as monarch.

Threats to Queen Elizabeth and the Royal Family

Elizabeth worked tirelessly to protect the image of the monarchy and to prepare for its future. But she saw the monarchy come under attack during her lifetime. The once-revered institution weathered a number of storms, including death threats against the royal family.

In 1979, Elizabeth suffered a significant personal loss when Lord Mountbatten, her husband’s uncle, died in a terrorist bombing. Mountbatten and several members of his family were aboard his boat off the west coast of Ireland when the vessel exploded on August 27. He and three others, including one of his grandsons, were killed. The Irish Republican Army, which opposed British rule in Northern Ireland, took responsibility for the attack.

In June 1981, Elizabeth herself had a dangerous encounter. She was riding in the Trooping the Colour, a special military parade to celebrate her official birthday when a man in the crowd pointed a gun at her. He fired, but fortunately, the gun was loaded with blanks. Other than receiving a good scare, the queen wasn’t hurt.

Elizabeth had an even closer call the following year when an intruder broke into Buckingham Palace and confronted her in her bedroom. When the press got wind of the fact that Prince Philip was nowhere to be seen during this incident, they speculated about the state of the royal marriage.

The marriage of Elizabeth’s son Charles to Diana made headlines for years before the couple announced their separation in 1992, followed by their formal divorce in 1996. In the wake of Diana’s death in a Paris car crash on August 31, 1997, Elizabeth experienced intense media scrutiny. Her incredibly popular ex-daughter-in-law had been called the “People’s Princess.”

The queen was at her Balmoral estate in Scotland with Charles and his sons with Diana, Prince William and Prince Harry, at the time. For days, Elizabeth remained silent while the country mourned Diana’s passing, and she was sharply criticized for her lack of response.

Stories circulated that the queen didn’t want to give Diana a royal funeral, which only fueled public sentiment against the monarch. Nearly a week after Diana’s death, Elizabeth returned to London and issued a statement on the late princess.

Elizabeth also initially objected to the relationship between her son Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles . Charles and Camilla had dated years before he met his family, but the relationship ended under family pressure, only to resume during Charles and Diana’s marriage. Known to be a stickler for ceremony and tradition, she eventually showed signs of softening her stance over the years. When Charles and Camilla wed in 2005, Elizabeth and Prince Philip didn’t attend the civil ceremony but attended a religious blessing and held a reception in their honor at Windsor Castle.

In 1992, another of Elizabeth’s children, Prince Andrew, ended up in the tabloids after photos emerged of his wife, Sarah Ferguson , and another man engaged in romantic activity. The couple divorced soon after. Along with the dissolution of Charles’ and Andrew’s marriages, Princess Anne divorced her husband Mark Phillips that year. More bad news came when a fire broke out at Windsor Castle in November. The 15-hour blaze destroyed 115 rooms, though it only consumed two pieces of art from the queen’s valuable private collection. The year became known as her “annus horribilis.”

After the start of the 21 st century, Elizabeth experienced two great losses. She said goodbye to both her sister, Margaret, and her mother in 2002, the same year she celebrated her Golden Jubilee that marked her 50 th year on the throne. Margaret, known for being more of an adventurous soul than other royals and who was barred from marrying an early love, died in February after suffering a stroke. Only a few weeks later, Elizabeth’s mother died at Royal Lodge on March 30 at the age of 101.

In November 2017, the media reported the queen had some $13 million invested in offshore accounts. The news came following the leak of the so-called “Paradise Papers” to a German newspaper, which shared the documents with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. The Duchy of Lancaster, which holds assets for the queen, confirmed that some of its investments were overseas accounts but insisted they were all legitimate.

Also in 2017, the former owner of the lingerie company Rigby & Peller, which had serviced Elizabeth for more than 50 years, wrote a tell-all autobiography that included some of her experiences with the royal family. Although the author insisted that “the book doesn’t contain anything naughty,” the queen responded in early 2018 by revoking Rigby & Peller’s royal warrant.

In 2019, Prince Andrew was forced to step down from public duties, following a media firestorm. Andrew had courted years of scandal surrounding his controversial business pursuits and friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein ,

Just weeks later, in January 2020, the family again found themselves in the spotlight, following the bombshell decision by Prince Harry and Meghan Markle , the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, to step away from their roles as senior royals.

For much of her life, the queen surrounded herself with dogs. She was especially known for her love of corgis, owning more than 30 descendants of the first corgi she received as a teenager, until the death of the final one, Willow, in 2018.

Elizabeth was also a horse enthusiast who bred thoroughbreds and attended racing events for many years.

Not one for the spotlight, Elizabeth liked quiet pastimes. She enjoyed reading mysteries, working on crossword puzzles, and reportedly, even watching wrestling on television.

Queen Elizabeth II died peacefully at her Balmoral estate in Scotland on September 8, 2022, at 3:10 p.m. local time. She was 96 years old. Her official cause of death was old age, according to her death certificate.

The public was first aware of the queen’s ill health earlier that day when Buckingham Palace issued at statement around 12:30 p.m. that said, “Following further evaluation this morning, the queen’s doctors are concerned for Her Majesty’s health and have recommended she remain under medical supervision.”

Soon, members of the royal family began traveling to see the queen. At the time of her death, Prince Charles and Camilla, as well as Princess Anne were at the castle. William, Harry, Andrew, Edward, and Sophie arrived later in the evening. Kate Middleton didn’t travel to say her final goodbyes, citing the recent start of the school year for her children. Meghan Markle was also absent.

Her death was publicly announced at 6:30 p.m. After, newly minted King Charles issued a statement that said:

The death of my beloved Mother, Her Majesty The Queen, is a moment of the greatest sadness for me and all members of my family. We mourn profoundly the passing of a cherished Sovereign and a much-loved Mother. I know her loss will be deeply felt throughout the country, the Realms and the Commonwealth, and by countless people around the world. During this period of mourning and change, my family and I will be comforted and sustained by our knowledge of the respect and deep affection in which The Queen was so widely held.

On September 14, Elizabeth’s coffin traveled from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Hall by horse-drawn carriage and lay in state for four days. The day of her state funeral, September 19, was declared a bank holiday. The funeral was held at Westminster Abbey and ended with two minutes of silence, observed there and throughout the United Kingdom.

President Joe Biden , First Lady Jill Biden , French President Emmanuel Macron , and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau were among the dozens of world leaders and 2,000 total people in attendance. Millions more watched or listened in; the funeral was broadcast on TV and radio and streamed on YouTube. Elizabeth’s pony and her corgis, Muick and Sandy, watched the procession, as did tens of thousands of people.

A private burial came later that day. Elizabeth was buried with Prince Philip at the King George VI Memorial Chapel.

• 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.
• 1992 is not a year I shall look back on with undiluted pleasure. In the words of one of my more sympathetic correspondents, it has turned out to be an “annus horribilis.”
• When life seems hard, the courageous do not lie down and accept defeat; instead, they are all the more determined to struggle for a better future.
• Discrimination still exists. Some people feel that their own beliefs are being threatened. Some are unhappy about unfamiliar cultures. They all need to be reassured that there is so much to be gained by reaching out to others; that diversity is indeed a strength and not a threat.
• Grief is the price we pay for love.
• I cannot lead you into battle, I do not give you laws or administer justice, but I can do something else, I can give you my heart and my devotion to these old islands and to all the peoples of our brotherhood of nations.
• In remembering the appalling suffering of war on both sides, we recognize how precious is the peace we have built in Europe since 1945.
• We lost the American colonies because we lacked the statesmanship to know the right time and the manner of yielding what is impossible to keep.

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Queen Elizabeth II

By: History.com Editors

Updated: April 25, 2023 | Original: May 23, 2018

Queen Elizabeth II served from 1952 to 2022 as reigning monarch of the United Kingdom (England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) and numerous other realms and territories, as well as head of the Commonwealth, the group of 53 sovereign nations that includes many former British territories. Extremely popular for nearly all of her long reign, the queen was known for taking a serious interest in government and political affairs, apart from her ceremonial duties, and was credited with modernizing many aspects of the monarchy.

Childhood and Education of a Princess

When Elizabeth Alexandra Mary, the elder daughter of Prince Albert, Duke of York, and his wife, Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, was born on April 21, 1926, she apparently had little chance of assuming the throne, as her father was a younger son of King George V.

But in late 1936, her uncle, King Edward VIII, abdicated to marry an American divorcée, Wallis Simpson. As a result, her father became King George VI, and 10-year-old “Lilibet” (as she was known within the family) became the heir presumptive to the throne.

Though she spent much of her childhood with nannies, Princess Elizabeth was influenced greatly by her mother, who instilled in her a devout Christian faith as well as a keen understanding of the demands of royal life. Her grandmother, Queen Mary, consort of King George V, also instructed Elizabeth and her younger sister Margaret in the finer points of royal etiquette.

Educated by private tutors, with an emphasis on British history and law, the princess also studied music and learned to speak fluent French. She trained as a Girl Guide (the British equivalent of the Girl Scouts) and developed a lifelong passion for horses.

As queen, she kept many thoroughbred racehorses and frequently attended racing and breeding events. Elizabeth’s famous attachment to Pembroke Welsh corgis also began in childhood, and she owned more than 30 corgis over the course of her reign.

Prince Philip and Queen Elizabeth

Elizabeth and Margaret spent much of World War II living apart from their parents in the Royal Lodge at Windsor Castle, a medieval fortress outside London. In 1942, the king made Elizabeth an honorary colonel in the 500 Grenadier Guards, a Royal Army regiment.

Two years later, he named her as a member of the Privy Council and the Council of State, enabling her to act on his behalf when he was out of the country.

In 1947, soon after the royal family returned from an official visit to South Africa and Rhodesia, they announced Elizabeth’s engagement to Prince Philip of Greece, her third cousin (both were great-great-grandchildren of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert) and a lieutenant in the Royal Navy. She had set her sights on him when she was only 13, and their relationship developed through visits and correspondence during the war.

Though many in the royal circle viewed Philip as an unwise match due to his lack of money and foreign (German) blood, Elizabeth was determined and very much in love. She and Philip wed on November 20, 1947 , at Westminster Abbey .

Their first son, Charles (Prince of Wales, then King Charles III ) was born in 1948; a daughter, Anne (Princess Royal) arrived two years later. Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip's third child and second son, Prince Andrew, was born in 1960 and the couple's youngest child, Prince Edward, was born in 1964.

Elizabeth and Phillip were married for an extraordinary 73 years, until the Prince died in April 2021 at the age of 99.

Queen Elizabeth's Coronation

With her father’s health declining in 1951, Elizabeth stepped in for him at various state functions. After spending that Christmas with the royal family, Elizabeth and Philip left on a tour of Australia and New Zealand, making a stopover in Kenya en route.

They were in Kenya on February 6, 1952, when King George VI succumbed to lung cancer at the age of 56, and his 25-year-old daughter became the sixth woman in history to ascend to the British throne. Her formal coronation as Queen Elizabeth II took place on June 2, 1953, in Westminster Abbey.

In the first decade of her reign, Elizabeth settled into her role as queen, developing a close bond with Prime Minister Winston Churchill (the first of 15 prime ministers she would work with during her reign), weathering a foreign affairs disaster in the Suez Crisis of 1956 and making numerous state trips abroad.

In response to pointed criticism in the press, the queen embraced steps to modernize her own image and that of the monarchy, including televising her annual Christmas broadcast for the first time in 1957.

Elizabeth and Philip had two more children, Andrew (born 1960) and Edward (born 1964). In 1968, Charles was formally invested as the Prince of Wales , marking his coming of age and the beginning of what would be a long period as king-in-waiting.

Queen Elizabeth’s Silver Jubilee in 1977, marking her 25 years on the throne, proved a bright spot in an era of economic struggles. Always a vigorous traveler, she kept a punishing schedule to mark the occasion, traveling some 56,000 miles around the Commonwealth, including the island nations Fiji and Tonga, New Zealand, Australia, Papua New Guinea, the British West Indies and Canada.

Royal Scandals

In 1981, all eyes were on the royal family once again as Prince Charles wed Lady Diana Spencer at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. Though the couple soon welcomed two sons, William and Harry , their marriage quickly imploded, causing considerable public embarrassment for the queen and the entire royal family.

In 1992, Elizabeth’s 40th year on the throne and her family’s “Annus Horribilis” (according to a speech she gave that November) both Charles and Diana and Prince Andrew and his wife, Sarah Ferguson, separated, while Princess Anne and her husband, Mark Phillips, divorced.

A fire also broke out at Windsor Castle that same year, and amid public outcry over the use of government funds to restore the royal residence, Queen Elizabeth agreed to pay taxes on her private income. This was not required by British law, though some earlier monarchs had done so as well.

At the time, her personal fortune was estimated at $11.7 billion. In another modernizing measure, she also agreed to open the state rooms at Buckingham Palace to the public for an admission fee when she was not in residence.

Response to Lady Diana's Death

After Charles and Diana divorced in 1996, Diana remained incredibly popular with the British (and international) public. Her tragic death the following year triggered a tremendous outpouring of shock and grief, as well as outrage at the royal family for what the public saw as its ill treatment of the “People’s Princess.”

Though Queen Elizabeth initially kept the family (including Princes William and Harry) out of the public eye at Balmoral, the unprecedented public response to Diana’s death convinced her to return to London, make a televised speech about Diana, greet mourners and allow the Union Jack to fly at half-mast above Buckingham Palace.

A Modern Monarchy

The queen’s popularity, and that of the entire royal family, rebounded during the first decade of the 21st century. Though 2002 marked Queen Elizabeth’s Golden Jubilee—50 years on the throne—the death of her mother (the beloved Queen Mum) and sister early that year cast a pall on the celebrations.

In 2005, the queen enjoyed public support when she gave her assent to Prince Charles’ once-unthinkable marriage to his longtime love Camilla Parker Bowles.

In her seventh decade on the throne, Queen Elizabeth presided over the pomp and circumstance of another royal wedding at Westminster Abbey, that of Prince William to Catherine Middleton in April 2011. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, who are in line to become Britain’s next king and queen, continued the line of succession with their children, Prince George (born 2013), Princess Charlotte (born 2015) and Prince Louis (born 2018).

In September 2015, Elizabeth surpassed the record of 63 years and 216 days on the throne set by Queen Victoria (her great-great-grandmother) to become the longest-reigning British monarch in history. A consistent presence by his wife’s side and one of Britain’s busiest royals for much of her reign, Prince Philip stepped down from his royal duties in 2017, at the age of 96. That same year, the royal couple celebrated 70 years of marriage, making theirs the longest union in the history of the British monarchy. Philip died in 2021, at the age of 99. 

In May 2018, Prince Harry wed the American actress Meghan Markle , a biracial divorcée. The couple had a son, Archie Mountbatten-Windsor, in 2019, and a daughter, Lilibet Diana Mountbatten-Windsor, in 2021. Harry and Meghan announced they would be stepping back from senior royal duties in January 2020 and subsequently relocated to Los Angeles.

Rumors swirled at various times that Queen Elizabeth would step aside and let Prince Charles take the throne. In 2017, she delegated some of her royal obligations, such as the official Remembrance Day ceremony, to him, fueling speculation that she was preparing to bequeath the throne to her eldest son. Instead, she remained a consistent, stable presence at the head of Britain’s reigning family until her peaceful death on September 8, 2022 at her beloved country residence, Balmoral Castle. 

In the final years of her reign, she continued many of her official duties, public appearances and spent plenty of time outside with her beloved dogs and horses. Two days before her death, she officially installed a new prime minister, Liz Truss.

HISTORY Vault: Profiles: Queen Elizabeth II

Chart the unexpected rise and record-breaking reign of Queen Elizabeth II, which unfolded in the turbulent modern history of the English monarchy.

Her Majesty the Queen, The Royal Household website . Sally Bedell Smith, Elizabeth the Queen ( Penguin Random House, 2012 ). Queen Elizabeth II – Fast Facts, CNN . “Will Queen Elizabeth Give Prince Charles the Throne in 2018?” Newsweek .

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Essay on Queen Elizabeth

Students are often asked to write an essay on Queen Elizabeth in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

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100 Words Essay on Queen Elizabeth

Introduction.

Queen Elizabeth II is the longest-reigning monarch in British history. She was born on April 21, 1926, and became queen in 1952.

Elizabeth was born in London. Her father was King George VI and her mother was Queen Elizabeth. She had one sister, Princess Margaret.

Queen Elizabeth II became queen after her father’s death. She is known for her dedication to duty and her steadfast leadership.

Queen Elizabeth II is respected worldwide. Her reign has seen significant changes in the UK and across the globe. Her legacy will be remembered for years to come.

250 Words Essay on Queen Elizabeth

Queen Elizabeth II, born on April 21, 1926, is the longest-reigning monarch in British history. Her reign has seen significant transformations in society, politics, and technology, making her a living testament to the evolution of the modern world.

Born as Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor, Queen Elizabeth II was not initially expected to become queen. However, her father’s ascension to the throne following the abdication of his elder brother, Edward VIII, changed her life trajectory.

Accession and Reign

Elizabeth became queen at the age of 25, following the death of her father, King George VI, in 1952. Her coronation, a year later, was the first to be televised, symbolizing a new era of mass communication. Her reign has been marked by significant events such as the decolonization of Africa, the acceleration of devolution in the UK, and changes in public attitudes towards the monarchy.

Legacy and Influence

Queen Elizabeth II’s reign has been characterized by her dedication to duty, her stoicism, and her commitment to public service. Despite facing numerous challenges, she has remained a figure of continuity and stability. Her influence has extended beyond the UK, shaping the Commonwealth and impacting global politics.

Queen Elizabeth II’s reign has been a period of profound change. Her ability to adapt and remain relevant in a rapidly changing world is a testament to her enduring legacy. Her reign, while marked by controversy and change, has been a defining feature of the 20th and 21st centuries.

500 Words Essay on Queen Elizabeth

Queen Elizabeth II, born on April 21, 1926, has been the reigning monarch of the United Kingdom since 1952, making her the longest-serving current head of state. Her reign has been marked by significant changes both within the monarchy and the world at large, and her influence extends far beyond her nation’s borders.

Early Life and Ascension to the Throne

Born as Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor to the Duke and Duchess of York, later known as King George VI and Queen Elizabeth (the Queen Mother), her life was destined to be extraordinary from the start. Initially, Elizabeth was not the direct heir to the throne, but her father’s unexpected ascension in 1936 after the abdication of his brother, Edward VIII, drastically changed her fate. She was only 25 when she became queen in 1952, following her father’s death.

Modernizing the Monarchy

Throughout her reign, Queen Elizabeth II has been a stabilizing force during times of change and uncertainty, modernizing the monarchy to keep it relevant in the rapidly evolving world. She has embraced technology and change, from allowing the first-ever televised coronation to launching the royal family’s website. She has also broken with tradition in numerous ways, such as paying taxes on her income, making the monarchy more transparent and accessible to the public.

Political Neutrality and Influence

As a constitutional monarch, Queen Elizabeth II’s role is largely ceremonial, and she is expected to remain politically neutral. However, her influence is undeniable. Through her weekly meetings with the prime minister, she has worked closely with 14 prime ministers, from Winston Churchill to Boris Johnson, subtly shaping the political landscape.

Queen Elizabeth and the Commonwealth

One of the queen’s most significant roles has been as the head of the Commonwealth, an intergovernmental organization of 54 member states, most of them former territories of the British Empire. She has used this role to promote unity, cultural understanding, and economic cooperation among member states.

Personal Life and Legacy

Married to Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, for over 73 years until his death in 2021, Queen Elizabeth II has four children, eight grandchildren, and twelve great-grandchildren. Her resilience, dedication to duty, and steadfast commitment to public service have earned her respect and admiration worldwide. She has also been a symbol of continuity and stability in a world of constant change, leaving an indelible mark on the 20th and 21st centuries.

Queen Elizabeth II’s reign has been a period of unprecedented change and challenges. Through it all, she has demonstrated remarkable adaptability, leading the monarchy into the modern era while maintaining its historical traditions. Her longevity, dedication, and service make her a unique figure in contemporary history, and her legacy will undoubtedly continue to shape the monarchy and the Commonwealth for years to come.

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From the Editor

September 13, 2022, how narratives defined a queen and a queen changed a narrative, the life and death of britain's queen elizabeth ii can be seen through disdain for monarchy or as an insightful view of history.

By Jacqui Banaszynski

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A photograph of young Queen Elizabeth II left at the gates of Buckingham Palace, Friday, Sept. 9, 2022. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

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Queen Elizabeth II Dies at 96; Was Britain’s Longest-Reigning Monarch

She ruled for seven decades, unshakably committed to the rituals of her role amid epic social and economic change and family scandal.

The Legacy of Elizabeth II: The Media Queen

Queen elizabeth ii, the longest-reigning monarch in british history, died at the age of 96, leaving behind a legacy that blended the ancient and the modern with the help of mass media..

“It’s inevitable that I should seem a rather remote figure to many of you. When I was 21, I pledged my life to the service of our people. I am glad to have had the chance to witness and to take part in many dramatic changes in life, in this country. And with the support of my family, rededicate myself to the service of our great country.” “Queen Elizabeth II ushered the monarchy into a new and radically different era. Her reign blended the ancient and the modern. When she became queen, the country was still reeling from the memory of the Second World War. Her coronation in 1953 was the first royal event of its kind to be broadcast live on television. And it offered the British hope that something better was in the offing.” [cheering] “By then, the royal family was accustomed to broadcasting its message. In 1940, as Princess Elizabeth, the queen gave her first radio address.” “Thousands of you in this country have had to leave your homes and be separated from your fathers and mothers.” “She was age 14, and Britain faced what Churchill called its finest hour in the war against Germany. Newsreel clips showed her parents inspecting the damage of bombing attacks on London.” “And the knowledge that their king and queen are among them, they were actually caught in a raid and had to take shelter during this particular visit, has greatly heartened the people.” “The royals understood the power of imagery, and television showed what the monarchy did best. The pageantry that celebrated its position, reinforcing its stature and the vital mystique that underpinned it.” “For the first time since her coronation, we saw the great state coach, ornate, gilded, richly painted. Perhaps the world’s most beautiful anachronism.” “This was technology that molded and massaged the information that reached the public about an ancient and distant institution. In the more than 60 years of the queen’s reign, the empire shrank back essentially to its island core, and she came to preside over a different nation, far less ready to acknowledge her, far less deferential, more assertive, more wealth-driven, greedier some people thought. It became increasingly important to use mass media and television where radio had sufficed in the past to control the royal narrative and uphold its importance. Above all, she created the impression of a royal household headed by a woman beyond all reproach, whose behavior was never, ever questioned. But upholding this image was not easy.” “We interrupt this film to tell you we are getting reports that Diana,” “Princess of Wales has died” “after a car crash in Paris.” “They were apparently being pursued by paparazzi on two motorcycles.” “After the death of Princess Diana in 1997, the Queen almost lost public sympathy irrevocably, seeming very, very distant, almost aloof. She appeared reluctant to respond to a yearning among the public for her to acknowledge the national mood of mourning. It was several days before she finally went on television and addressed the nation.” “Since last Sunday’s dreadful news, we have seen throughout Britain and around the world an overwhelming expression of sadness at Diana’s death.” “Then, most tellingly of all, she stood in front of the gates of Buckingham Palace as the funeral cortege went by and lowered her head in acknowledgment of Diana’s immense popularity. Royal heads of state do not generally bow to other people, other people bow to them. And here she was in public, her head bowed, and that helped the monarchy begin to restore its image. As information became more readily available on computer screens and smartphones, the royal family established its own website. It took an account on Twitter. It used YouTube to broadcast its bigger moments.” [cheering] “You would find scripted, cautiously laid-out material that was designed overwhelmingly to create and reinforce the impression that this was a family at the service of the nation itself.” “Hip, hip, hooray!” “They wanted to make sure that they didn’t say the wrong things, that they kept their mystique. But that became harder and harder to do, and the junior members of the royal family made that harder to achieve. Prince Harry, her grandson, and Meghan Markle had decided to leave the royal family and set up a separate life for themselves in California. They went on to make various accusations against the royal family during a television interview with Oprah Winfrey.” “Months when I was pregnant, we have in tandem the conversation of he won’t be given security. He’s not going to be given a title and also concerns and conversations about how dark his skin might be when he’s born.” “The impact of the new technology had been reversed. The monarchy now was the target from within its own ranks. This happened about the same time as Prince Philip was in hospital, and it seemed like a double challenge to the queen. But as much as she needed to communicate, she remains sparing in her public utterances. Less was always more.” “It is with deep sorrow that Her Majesty the Queen announces the death of her beloved husband, his Royal Highness the Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.” “The death of Prince Philip was portrayed as a national tragedy. The couple had been married for 73 years. It was a relationship that had fused with the image of the monarchy. There was always the queen leading the way, with Philip a step behind as protocol required. Emotionally, though, he was at her side. The loss of her husband produced a tremendous outpouring of public sympathy. She responded at first with seclusion, then with the resumption of royal duties.” [laughing] “By and large, the queen’s tenure modernized the royal family without shedding its extraordinary privilege. It changed the way the world perceived the ancient institution and the way the institution reacted to the world. But at its heart, the monarchy remained ambivalent, bereft of executive power, reigning only with the tacit assent of its subjects, yet central to Britain’s sense of itself. Looking back, one is tempted to think, What was it? When did the queen define how she saw her role? And you could probably say in one speech in 1957.” “I cannot lead you into battle. I do not give you laws or administer justice, but I can do something else. I can give you my heart.” “This would be her legacy as her reign came to an end, the longest rule of any British monarch.”

By Alan Cowell

Listen to This Article

To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android .

LONDON — Queen Elizabeth II, Britain’s longest-serving monarch, whose broadly popular seven-decade reign survived tectonic shifts in her country’s post-imperial society and weathered successive challenges posed by the romantic choices, missteps and imbroglios of her descendants, died on Thursday at Balmoral Castle in Scotland, her summer retreat. She was 96.

The royal family announced her death online, saying she had died peacefully. The announcement did not specify a cause.

Her death elevated her eldest son, Charles, to the throne as King Charles III. In a statement, he said:

“The death of my beloved Mother, Her Majesty the Queen, is a moment of the greatest sadness for me and all members of my family.

“We mourn profoundly the passing of a cherished Sovereign and a much-loved Mother. I know her loss will be deeply felt throughout the country, the Realms and the Commonwealth, and by countless people around the world.”

The New Royal Line of Succession

The death of Queen Elizabeth II has elevated her son Charles to the throne, with Prince William next in line.

Earlier Thursday, Buckingham Palace said that the queen had been placed under medical supervision and that her doctors were “concerned” about her health. She had remained at Balmoral for much of the summer. On Wednesday evening, she abruptly canceled a virtual meeting with members of her Privy Council after her doctors advised her to rest.

A day earlier, she met with the incoming Conservative prime minister , Liz Truss — the 15th prime minister the queen dealt with during her reign — though in doing so, because of infirmity, she broke with longstanding tradition by receiving her at Balmoral rather than at Buckingham Palace.

Elizabeth’s long years as sovereign were a time of enormous upheaval, in which she sought to project and protect the royal family as a rare bastion of permanence in a world of shifting values.

At her coronation on June 2, 1953 , a year after she acceded to the throne, she surveyed a realm emerging from an empire of such geographical reach that it was said the sun never set on it. But by the new century, as she navigated her advancing years with increasing frailty, the frontiers had shrunk back. As Britain prepared to leave the European Union in 2020, a clamor for independence in Scotland was rekindled, potentially threatening to narrow her horizons yet further.

Her coronation was the first royal event of its kind to be broadcast almost in full on television. But it was a token of the changes — and global fascination — that accompanied her time as queen that her reign became the subject of a Hollywood movie and a blockbuster series on Netflix , while her family’s travails offered voluminous grist to the busy mill of social media.

Just as telling in the chronicles of her rule, Britons’ unquestioning deference to the crown had been supplanted by a gamut of emotions ranging from loyal and often affectionate tolerance to unbridled hostility. The monarchy was forced, more than ever, to justify its existence in the face of often skeptical public attention and scrutiny.

Elizabeth, though, remained determinedly committed to the hallmark aloofness, formality and pageantry by which the monarchy has long sought to preserve the mystique that underpinned its existence and survival. Her courtly and reserved manner changed little.

As the coronavirus pandemic of 2020 spread to Britain, forcing people to suspend their normal lives and social ways, the queen left Buckingham Palace , in central London, for Windsor Castle, west of the capital, a move that recalled the decades she had spent inspiring genuine affection among many Britons.

It was to Windsor that she and her younger sister, Margaret, were sent to escape the threat of German bombing after the outbreak of World War II in 1939. It was from Windsor, too, that she made her first radio broadcast as a princess in 1940, age 14, ostensibly directed at British children who had been evacuated to North America, according to her biographer Ben Pimlott, but also intended to sway official thinking in Washington, which had not yet entered the war.

“My sister, Margaret Rose, and I feel so much for you, as we know from experience what it means to be away from those we love most of all,” Elizabeth said then.

In 2020, too, she sought to equate her plight with that of her subjects. “Many of us will need to find new ways of staying in touch with each other and making sure that loved ones are safe,” she said in a statement released after she and her husband, Prince Philip, arrived at Windsor. “I am certain that we are up to that challenge. You can be assured that my family and I stand ready to play our part.”

On April 5, 2020 , in a televised address that evoked her 1940 broadcast, she urged her subjects to fight the virus with the same bulldog tenacity that wartime Britons had shown. It was only the fourth special broadcast of her monarchy outside of her scheduled TV appearances at Christmas.

“I hope in the years to come everyone will be able to take pride in how they responded to this challenge,” she said. “And those who come after us will say that the Britons of this generation were as strong as any.”

She added, “We should take comfort that while we may have more still to endure, better days will return. We will be with our friends again; we will be with our families again; we will meet again,” the last line a direct reference to a wartime song by Vera Lynn , “We’ll Meet Again.”

In 2017, Elizabeth celebrated the 70th anniversary of her marriage to Philip , whom she first met when he was a teenager in the 1930s. Until his death last April , Philip had settled into an unusual role, usually two steps behind his wife , providing her with stoic support, even if his occasional tactless comments hurt his image.

Despite many reports of early peccadilloes on Philip’s part — hidden from public view with the help of cooperative newspaper barons — their bonds endured, a throwback to earlier decades of more durable relationships. And his death, their second son, Prince Andrew, said, “left a huge void in her life.”

Some predicted that Elizabeth would recede into the shadows after Philip’s death, much as Queen Victoria did after the death of her husband, Prince Albert. But she surprised many by re-emerging as a spry presence in public life, entertaining world leaders at a summit meeting in Cornwall in June 2021 and playing host to Bill Gates and other businesspeople at Windsor Castle after a climate-change investment conference.

Still, the hectic schedule took a toll. Elizabeth was photographed using a walking stick, a rare concession to her stiff knees. She was kept overnight in a London hospital in October 2021 after what aides said was an episode of exhaustion. Few doubted the effect of the loss of Philip, who had been a stabilizing force in the family.

Elizabeth’s own children seemed less immune to marital calamity.

In 1992, Prince Charles and his immensely popular wife, Diana, agreed to separate, as did Prince Andrew and his wife, Sarah Ferguson. Elizabeth’s second child, Princess Anne, divorced her husband, Mark Phillips, the same year. Coupled with a series of other upheavals, the queen labeled 1992 her “annus horribilis.”

But worse was to come.

In 1997, the death of Diana in a car crash in Paris wrote some of the darkest chapters of Elizabeth’s reign, and for a while the monarchy itself seemed threatened by a huge wave of public support for Diana that left the queen seeming cold and emotionally estranged from her subjects.

The monarchy survived, but well into the 21st century new challenges emerged.

In 2019, Elizabeth was dragged unceremoniously and against all previous rules of protocol into political machinations over Brexit , as Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union was known, a debate from which she would once have remained remote.

In the same year, Prince Andrew became embroiled in scandal after giving a disastrous television interview in which he seemed unaware of the toxic impact of a friendship with Jeffrey Epstein , the convicted American sexual predator. Accused of sexual impropriety with a teenage girl introduced to him by Mr. Epstein — an allegation he has denied — the prince, also known as the Duke of York, withdrew from public life that November. (In January this year, he was forced by Buckingham Palace to relinquish his military titles and royal charities, a stinging rebuke by the royal family a day after a federal judge in New York allowed a sexual abuse case against him to go ahead.)

In her annual Christmas address to the nation in 2019, the queen described the year as “bumpy.”

It was about to get bumpier.

In 2020, in a move that was perhaps as humiliating as any family convulsion the queen had confronted, her grandson Prince Harry, the sixth in line to the throne, caught her and the rest of the family off guard when he and his American wife, Meghan Markle, announced plans to “step back” from royal duties — a move that some commentators compared to the decision in 1936 by the queen’s uncle, King Edward VIII, to abdicate so that he could proceed with plans to marry the American Wallis Simpson.

Yet far from carving out a “progressive new role within this institution,” as they had hopefully declared, the young couple were forced into a hard exit, agreeing in a severance deal with Buckingham Palace to give up their loftiest royal titles, forgo state funding and repay at least $3 million in taxpayer money that had been used to refurbish their official residence on the grounds of Windsor Castle.

As the new decade unfolded and the end of Elizabeth’s reign approached, it seemed as if the House of Windsor was under assault from within as never before, a process compounded with spectacular global fanfare by a two-hour television encounter between Meghan and Harry and Oprah Winfrey .

During the show, broadcast from California first in the United States, then a day later in Britain, the couple assailed an unidentified member of the royal household as racist. Ms. Winfrey said later that Prince Harry had assured her that he and his wife had not been referring to the queen or Prince Philip. In the interview , Ms Markle said that she had felt so isolated in her unaccustomed royal role that she had actively contemplated suicide.

Buckingham Palace was taken aback, and it responded with a terse, 61-word statement that sought to contain the drama within the familiar royal palisade of privacy. The royal family was “stunned to learn the full extent of how challenging the last few years have been for Harry and Meghan,” the statement said.

“The issues raised, particularly that of race, are concerning,” it said. “While some recollections may vary, they are taken very seriously and will be addressed by the family privately.”

Despite the challenges, the queen pressed ahead with her Platinum Jubilee celebration in June this year to commemorate her seven decades as sovereign with a four-day public holiday, complete with a star-studded televised concert outside the gates of Buckingham Palace. But in the run-up to the occasion, the twin themes of failing health and family frictions seemed to blur together.

In February, she tested positive for the coronavirus, and in May she was forced by what Buckingham Palace called “episodic mobility issues” to cancel an appearance in Parliament to deliver a speech setting out the government’s legislative agenda — one of her most important public ceremonies.

It was the first time in almost 60 years that she had missed the event. She had been absent from it only twice before during her reign because of pregnancies with princes Andrew and Edward, her youngest child.

Significantly, Prince Charles, the heir to the throne, read the speech on her behalf, with the queen’s bejeweled ceremonial crown — the Imperial State Crown — placed next to him, as if to assert her symbolic presence.

Just days earlier, her office had announced that when the royal family appeared on the balcony of Buckingham Palace during the proposed Platinum Jubilee — regarded as the most potent of royal photo opportunities — Prince Andrew, Prince Harry and his wife Meghan would not be present.

Ostensibly, their exclusions were because the monarch wished to limit attendance to “those members of the royal family who are currently undertaking official public duties on behalf of the Queen,” in the words of a palace spokesman. But many Britons interpreted the move as a snub to family members who had brought unwelcome comment and unflattering headlines to the closing years of the queen’s reign.

Prince Harry is one of eight grandchildren who, along with Elizabeth’s four children, survive the queen, as do 12 great-grandchildren.

A Dazzling Parade

On Sept. 9, 2015, Elizabeth surpassed Queen Victoria as her country’s longest-serving monarch, and after the death of Thailand’s king on Oct. 13, 2016, she became the modern world’s longest reigning. Even in her older years, her subjects saw her as unusually robust and at ease with the pageantry of her office, as she was during a four-day celebration in June 2012 commemorating the 60th anniversary of her attaining the crown.

The only other British monarch to celebrate a diamond jubilee was Queen Victoria, Elizabeth’s great-great-grandmother, whose reign lasted 63 years and seven months before her death in 1901.

Elizabeth’s diamond jubilee, which included a dazzling pageant of 1,000 vessels on the River Thames through London, coaxed forth an outpouring of public enthusiasm that seemed likely to cement the royal family’s place in British society, despite questions about the monarchy’s future. Although Prince Charles, Elizabeth’s eldest son, was her direct heir, many Britons seemed more drawn to Charles’s own son Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge, who married a commoner , Kate Middleton, in April 2011, to much public acclaim.

The only departure from the tight choreography of the jubilee events was the illness of Prince Philip, who was 90 at the time. He was taken to a hospital with a bladder infection during the celebrations after spending hours in the biting cold atop the royal barge.

There had been concerns about the queen’s health ever since she missed church services on Christmas Day in 2016 and on New Year’s Day in 2017 because of what Buckingham Palace described as a “heavy cold.” Those absences were the first time in about 30 years that she had missed a holiday service.

The queen made her first public appearance of 2017 on Jan. 8, after a month’s absence. The next month, she celebrated her sapphire jubilee, becoming the first British monarch to reign for 65 years.

Elizabeth’s courtly and reserved manner changed little as Britain shed its empire abroad and was transformed at home, from a deferential and self-doubting nation, impoverished by World War II, into a brash, wealth-driven, less respectful and more self-centered place.

In the years after the death of her father, King George VI , in 1952, she witnessed — and exploited — the rise of television as it became the overwhelming vehicle of national communication for a generation obsessed with celebrity. Her coronation in 1953 was the first in Britain to be broadcast in almost its entirety on television. (The BBC had televised the royal procession through the streets of London in 1937 for the coronation of King George VI.) In 1997, the monarchy started its own website .

In a further leap into realms once undreamed of, in 2007 her traditional Christmastime message was broadcast on a royal channel on YouTube — 75 years after Elizabeth’s grandfather became the first British monarch to broadcast a similar holiday message by radio. And in 2018, TV viewers were treated to a relaxed, unscripted monarch when she appeared in her first on-camera interview for a documentary about her coronation. (In deference to palace sensitivities, the interview was described as a “conversation.”)

In 2009, the royal family opened a Twitter account , which currently has about 4.7 million followers.

The Nation’s Anchor

So enduring was Elizabeth’s grip on the nation’s supreme office that her reign overlapped the tenures of 15 British prime ministers — from Winston Churchill to Liz Truss — and 14 American presidents , from Harry S. Truman to Joseph R. Biden Jr. (She met with all except Lyndon B. Johnson.)

Although her role was largely ceremonial as a constitutional monarch without executive power, her supporters maintained that she played an important, less tangible role as the nation’s anchor, held in place by an unspoken consensus between queen and subjects.

And while she wielded no formal political power, her weekly audiences with prime ministers gave her insight into the nation’s business, and her appearances at international gatherings were seen as enhancing British prestige.

There were occasions when her presence even strengthened official policy. In June 2012, in what generations had been raised to see as the most improbable of encounters, the queen shook hands with Martin McGuinness , a onetime commander of the Irish Republican Army, a very public symbol of commitment to peace in Northern Ireland.

The setting alone, in Belfast, Northern Ireland, evoked three decades of sectarian strife that drew the British forces, of which the queen was the nominal commander in chief, into a fight with I.R.A. guerrillas seeking a united Ireland, before the Good Friday peace agreement of 1998 ended the so-called Troubles.

Critics nonetheless called the monarchy a costly and unloved anachronism, drawing its wealth from a nation that never formally assented to the royals’ luxurious lifestyle in palaces and castles. The queen alone maintained residences at Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle and the Sandringham estate in Norfolk as well as at Balmoral.

For the paparazzi and the tabloid news media, some of the royal family’s more flamboyant members offered fertile ground. In 1992, photographs appeared in British newspapers showing Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, who had separated from Prince Andrew months earlier, topless and entwined with a wealthy American businessman.

In 2012, Charles’s son Prince Harry, then third in line to the throne, was photographed cavorting naked at a party in Las Vegas. He had earlier been seen wearing Nazi dress at a costume party . Later, a French magazine published photographs of the former Ms. Middleton, now the Duchess of Cambridge, sunbathing topless. The episodes raised questions about the limits of royal privacy and threatened to revive old strains with the news media that had reached their nadir during the doomed marriage of Charles and Diana.

Married in 1981, the couple fell into adulterous liaisons that led to divorce in 1996. But in that time, Diana, Princess of Wales — trailed by paparazzi — became a glamorous royal idol with a human touch. Tony Blair, who was prime minister when she died, called her the “people’s princess.”

The death of the princess, chased by paparazzi, in a car crash in Paris on Aug. 31, 1997, convulsed Britain in a bout of public grief that left the queen isolated at Balmoral.

For days the monarch refused to acknowledge publicly the mourning and the mountainous floral tributes in the streets and parks of London in honor of the woman whose image and behavior had left the queen looking remote and old-fashioned.

Diana’s relationship with Elizabeth had been cold. Her zest for contact with the public had seemed only to highlight the royal family’s contrasting reputation as emotionally distant and dysfunctional. The moments after Diana’s death became grist for a 2006 movie, “The Queen,” starring Helen Mirren, that portrayed Elizabeth as detached and slow to accept the crisis breaking around her.

Clinging to regal protocols, the queen at first refused to allow the Union Jack to fly at half-staff over Buckingham Palace, insisting that her role as a grandmother was to comfort the princess’ sons, William and Harry, in private.

But her initial refusal to address the nation or even leave her Scottish redoubt left the monarchy balanced on a knife edge as newspapers led Diana’s myriad mourners in a chorus of unparalleled disapproval, threatening to rupture the public consent vital to the monarchy’s survival. Finally — too late, some said — the queen relented.

She traveled from Balmoral to London, moving among crowds of mourners, and, in an address broadcast to the nation from Buckingham Palace on Sept. 5, 1997 — five days after the car crash in Paris — the queen spoke in remarkably personal terms for a British monarch, praising Diana as “an exceptional and gifted human being.”

“I for one believe that there are lessons to be drawn from her life and from the extraordinary and moving reaction to her death,” the queen said.

Unusually, the broadcast was live, showing the queen’s advisers’ awareness of the 24-hour rolling news era. Diana, the queen said, “never lost her capacity to smile and laugh, nor to inspire others with her warmth and kindness.” For the first time in Elizabeth’s reign, Britons saw their monarch come close to an apology.

“We have all been trying in our different ways to cope,” she said. “It is not easy to express a sense of loss, since the initial shock is often succeeded by a mixture of other feelings: disbelief, incomprehension, anger and concern for those who remain.”

And, in what was perhaps the most difficult and heavily symbolic gesture, the queen, flanked by members of the royal family, emerged on foot from the black wrought-iron gates of Buckingham Palace on Sept. 6, as the gun carriage bearing Diana’s coffin passed by on its way to Westminster Abbey. At that moment, the queen bowed her head in tacit acknowledgment of a woman who had stolen Britain’s heart, and thus had threatened its queen.

A Monarchy Restored

The funeral was a turning point. Elizabeth had weathered the ferocious storm of public disapproval and quietly went out of her way to ensure that in the future the British people would be drawn at least symbolically into her life. She held huge parties in 2002, 2006 and 2012 to celebrate her golden jubilee, her 80th birthday and her diamond jubilee. The closely choreographed celebrations spoke to the balance she sought to strike between a cautious opening to the public and the aloofness of her role and personality.

Even when confronted with unscripted departures, as on a state visit to the United States in 2007, when President George W. Bush almost misspoke in her presence to imply that she might be two centuries older than she was, she maintained her composure with just a regal glance.

“She gave me a look that only a mother could give a child,” Mr. Bush said after the queen peered quizzically at him on a shared podium.

Her personal behavior, unlike that of most of her family, was beyond reproach, never tainted by even the remotest hint of scandal. Elizabeth offered her subjects a mirror of the high moral standards that many might aspire to but most generally fail to attain.

Throughout Elizabeth’s reign, social upheaval forced changes in the monarchy. But she never rushed to adopt them, strengthening the sense of a regal continuum that existed in a world apart, functioning according to an opaque code to which most Britons were not privy. Her reluctance to rush into new ways reinforced her critics’ depiction of the monarchy as irrelevant and out of touch — an expensive throwback to a distant history of bejeweled royals disporting themselves in palaces and castles at the public’s expense.

Yet her public image was managed and massaged as adroitly as that of any movie star or corporate executive.

In a way, the mystique of the monarchy was no surprise: The queen was born into a world apart. She never attended school or classes; she was brought up and educated at home by nannies, governesses and private tutors.

From the beginning, her encounters with the public were scripted and limited. From the moment her uncle King Edward VIII abdicated in a scandal over his relationship with the American divorcée Wallis Simpson in 1936 — when the future queen was 10 — she entered a line of succession that set her far apart from Britons as a figurehead-in-waiting.

When her father, King George VI, died, she was 25, a young woman whose known interests were limited to horseback riding and tending to her entourage of corgis .

But it was that upbringing, steeped in the values of a monarchy that had faced none of the pressures of the television era and postwar Britain, that made her often seem grudgingly slow to adapt to a world much different from the one she had been born into.

The Young Princess

Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary, daughter of the Duchess and Duke of York, was born on Bruton Street in central London in the early hours of April 21, 1926. At her birth she was third in line to the throne after her uncle and father, but the prospect of her attaining the crown seemed remote.

She was born into the House of Windsor, a member of a dynasty that had been known as the Saxe-Coburg and Gotha until the name was changed in 1917, during World War I, to avoid its connotations of Britain’s German enemies.

The family soon moved to an aristocratic townhouse on a thoroughfare called Piccadilly, and the young princess lived in a top-floor suite of rooms while the family was in London. As a toddler, she spent much time at Scottish castles in Glamis and Balmoral. But she soon became used to the family ways (which would later extend to her own style of motherhood) when her parents left for a six-month official tour to Panama, Fiji, New Zealand and Australia.

From age 7 until just before her marriage in 1947, Princess Elizabeth, and Princess Margaret Rose, were looked after by a governess, Marion Crawford, known as Crawfie, who came to be seen as a traitor to the royals when she published her memoirs in 1950 against the family’s wishes.

The young Princess Elizabeth was a keen pony rider. Little more was known of her by the public. And her young life, already isolated, changed significantly after King George V, her grandfather, died in early 1936, and when her uncle abdicated later that year, elevating her father to the throne. From then on, her life was that of the first person in line to the throne.

Much later, Princess Margaret recalled asking her whether their father’s coronation in 1937 — when Elizabeth was 11 — meant that the older sister would one day be queen. “Yes, I suppose it does,” the young Elizabeth replied.

But the world was about to change in a much bigger way. With the outbreak of war in 1939, the princesses moved to Windsor Castle to avoid German bombing raids at a time when many other children were evacuated from the cities to safer places. Indeed, Elizabeth made her first recorded broadcast in 1940, at age 14, beamed to British children evacuated to North America and elsewhere.

According to Mr. Pimlott, her biographer, Elizabeth shot her first stag in the Scottish hills near Balmoral at 16 and hunted with dogs in Gloucestershire a year later. But she did not attend a college or university, where she might have met other teenagers. Rather, she led a royal life, inspecting the soldiers of the Grenadier Guards as their honorary colonel in 1942, her first public engagement. By 18 she was performing constitutional duties on behalf of her father, when he traveled to Italy in 1944.

The only time she is known to have experienced communal education was in early 1945 — shortly before the end of World War II — when she was enrolled briefly in the Auxiliary Territorial Service as an honorary subaltern, training in the skills of driving and maintaining military vehicles. Photographs of her in her drab military uniform became part of the royal propaganda effort to raise wartime morale — and to show the upper crust doing its part.

For the public and for her family, the main issue that arose with the end of hostilities and the beginning of a new era in postwar Britain was the question of whom she would marry — not a matter to be settled by common trial and error.

The most suitable candidate was deemed by the princess and her courtiers to be Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark, the son of Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark and Princess Alice of Battenberg. The royal genealogy traces both Elizabeth’s and Philip’s families to Queen Victoria, just one of several ways in which the prince and princess were related within a narrow coterie of European royalty.

The two had met in the 1930s. Prince Philip, five years her senior, was building a reputation — which he maintained for many years to come — as something of a playboy . But he also had what military people called a “good war” with the British fleet in the Mediterranean and the Pacific.

In 1947, Princess Elizabeth turned 21 during a royal tour of South Africa, then part of the British Commonwealth, and, in a radio broadcast to Britain’s empire and former colonies, she declared to her listeners that “my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and to the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong.”

She continued, “But I shall not have strength to carry out this resolution alone unless you join in it with me, as I now invite you to do.”

It was a theme that would recur, as in her Christmas address in 1957, five years after she became queen: “I cannot lead you into battle, I do not give you laws or administer justice, but I can do something else,” she said. “I can give you my heart.”

On both occasions, Elizabeth seemed to acknowledge the frail limits of a constitutional monarch: a ceremonial head of state with no real political power, the scion of a dynasty rooted in 19th-century Germany whose vast wealth and palatial privileges survived, ultimately, only with the public’s consent.

Part of that consent is derived from pageantry, and few people are more skilled in pageantry than the British royals. On Nov. 20, 1947, Princess Elizabeth married Prince Philip, and despite the parlous state of the postwar British economy, the wedding offered a panoply of crowned heads and a statement of continuity.

A Queen at 25

Elizabeth was 22 when Prince Charles was born a year later. In his early years, he was treated much the same way his mother had been as an infant. When his father was stationed on naval duties in Malta, his mother flew out to join him. After five weeks in Malta, she returned to London and spent several days attending to other business (including a day at the horse races, an abiding passion) before being reunited with Charles at Sandringham, in Norfolk, where her parents were also staying.

In 1950, Princess Elizabeth had her second child, Princess Anne, but the pace of her life as a representative of the royal family was quickening. In the fall of 1951, Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip toured Canada and the United States before embarking on what was supposed to be a lengthy trip to Australia and New Zealand, starting with a stop in what was still at the time the British colony of Kenya.

And it was there, far from her own land, that she became queen. Back home, her father, King George VI, had cancer, and in September 1951 his left lung was removed. He died in his sleep and was found dead in his bed on Feb. 6, 1952, but Elizabeth, heir to the throne, was at a remote Kenyan game-viewing camp called Treetops.

Princess Elizabeth — now Queen Elizabeth II, under the rule of automatic succession — returned from the camp to a lodge , unaware for four hours because of communications difficulties that her father had died and that she was Britain’s new sovereign. She was 25.

The coronation came later, on June 2, 1953, a moment described by Princess Margaret as like a phoenix rising from the ashes — the emblem of postwar recovery. As if to mark the occasion, news broke that two climbers from a British-led expedition had been the first to conquer Mount Everest .

The coronation was an extraordinary mixture of ancient ritual and contemporary technology. Across the land, Britons huddled in front of early-model black-and-white television sets in veneered cabinets or celebrated with street parties.

With more than 8,000 guests at Westminster Abbey, the ceremony culminated in the secret anointing of the new monarch under a canopy that kept her beyond the view of the congregation and the cameras. Then, the newly crowned queen returned to her palace, carrying scepter and orb, with almost 30,000 troops, 29 bands and 27 carriages to accompany her. Three million people lined the route as her golden horse-drawn state coach rolled by.

Within months of the coronation, the queen and her husband were again on tour, resuming and expanding the itinerary abandoned after the death of the king.

The marathon tour, from Bermuda to Australia, was a turning point, as much in the adulation that greeted the new queen as in the history of the empire her forebears had ruled. In 1957, as that empire unraveled, Ghana became independent, as India had 10 years earlier.

The royal family came under more scrutiny, too: Princess Margaret for her romantic interests, Prince Philip for an increasingly public knack for diplomatic gaffes.

Television was advancing: In 1957, for the first time, the queen agreed to televise her annual Christmas Day message, previously broadcast by radio.

The country was changing, too, as its empire shrank. Across the Channel, the European Union began to germinate in the late 1950s, offering a new set of alliances and rivalries to challenge the declining empire. In 1965, the white minority regime in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) defied the queen and her country by unilaterally declaring independence.

At home, the queen’s subjects were looking for new icons and idols.

A Brewing Storm

The 1960s heralded “Swinging London,” with a new permissiveness and culture built around bands like the Beatles ( honored by the queen in 1965 ) and the Rolling Stones. Satirical television shows broke long-held taboos to lampoon the monarchy, leading the queen’s image managers to cooperate with the makers of a long BBC documentary that portrayed the royals in a more favorable light.

In the 1970s, the pendulum swung back to economic malaise, with the winter of discontent and the three-day workweek.

The queen had two more sons: Prince Andrew in 1960 and Prince Edward in 1964. Her children were introduced to a different world from the one their mother had known when she was growing up. Prince Charles attended the physically rigorous Gordonstoun boarding school in Scotland and went on to Trinity College, Cambridge.

But something in the public perception of the monarchy was shifting. The tone of royal reporting was becoming more aggressive, just as the royal family showed itself as vulnerable to the strains and stresses consuming ordinary people in a land where traditional moral values had been battered by the permissiveness of the 1960s.

Princess Margaret and her husband, Lord Snowdon, divorced in 1978 — the first royal marriage in the queen’s immediate entourage to founder. In 1979, the royal family was rocked by the death of Lord Louis Mountbatten , who was murdered by an I.R.A. bomb aboard his fishing boat, an attack that left three others dead. Known to the royals as “Uncle Dickie,” Lord Mountbatten was the queen’s second cousin, Prince Philip’s uncle and a mentor to Prince Charles, who later described him as “the grandfather I never had.”

And perhaps the biggest storm to buffet the queen began to brew on the sparkling day in July 1981 when the family took into its ranks, possibly with some reluctance, a newcomer who was to bring turmoil to the royal hearth: Lady Diana Spencer.

As R.W. Apple Jr. reported in The New York Times : “The 2,500 guests inside Christopher Wren’s Baroque masterpiece, St. Paul’s Cathedral, the hundreds of thousands who watched the wedding party ride in magnificent horse-drawn carriages from Buckingham Palace to the cathedral and back, and the 700 million television viewers around the world witnessed a fairy tale come to life: the handsome Prince Charles in naval uniform marrying the lovely 20-year-old Diana Spencer, daughter of an earl, amid the sort of splendor the modern world has all but forgotten.”

The fairy-tale moment did not endure, and by the time the couple’s emotional complexities had spilled over into lurid tabloid coverage of their estrangement and dalliances, the queen confronted a remarkable challenge. The center of gravity of public sympathy had shifted away. The nation was increasingly divided between supporters of her son and those of her daughter-in-law — a contest the unhappy couple played out through leaks and innuendo that appeared in the print and broadcast news media.

“The royal family, it came to be said, was not a model of domestic virtue and private happiness,” Mr. Pimlott wrote, “but, in the modern jargon, dysfunctional.” No longer was royalty shielded from what he called “public prurience” and “a press which now had almost no incentive to give the royal family the loyal protection it had enjoyed since the 19th century.”

The challenges did not stop there. In November 1992, a fire broke out at the queen’s beloved Windsor Castle, causing millions of dollars’ worth of damage. She faced criticism for her exemption from paying the same income tax as her subjects. And royal marriages were breaking. As the catalog of problems expanded, the queen noted famously that “1992 is not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure.”

“In the words of one of my more sympathetic correspondents,” she said, “it has turned out to be an ‘annus horribilis.’”

The queen responded with a familiar blend of aloofness and belated acknowledgment that the public demanded changes from her.

On With the Show

The “annus horribilis” drew to an appropriately messy end when, on Dec. 9, 1992, Charles and Diana announced their separation after 11 years of increasingly unhappy marriage. The course had been set for much greater division and tragedy with Diana’s death in 1997, the event that shook the monarchy to the core.

It was a measure of the queen’s determination to protect and promote her rule that she not only endured the public challenge but did so in a way that cemented rather than diminished public acceptance of her position and her manner.

Despite the aftershocks of Diana’s death — including Charles’s subsequent public relationship with his longtime mistress, Camilla Parker-Bowles, whom he married in 2005 and who now bears the title the Queen Consort — Elizabeth continued with unshakable commitment to the rituals of her rule.

Huge summer garden parties filled the grounds of Buckingham Palace with hundreds of invited guests. At such gatherings, the queen would be escorted by aides and introduced to selected guests she had never met before, many of whom marveled at her diminutive stature and gracious manner. The queen and her family continued to honor citizens with awards, medals and titles.

Foreign dignitaries were received and treated to state dinners and regal rides in gilded carriages along the Mall stretching from Buckingham Palace to Trafalgar Square. But other lessons seemed to have been learned. If this was to be an era of a more public monarchy, then the queen would control the pace of change, permitting a smidgen more access in a more modern manner, without abandoning the aloofness that underpinned the monarchy.

The extent of her success was clear by 2002 when, at 76, Elizabeth celebrated 50 years as queen with a four-day national holiday. She closed out the occasion with what Warren Hoge of The Times called “ the traditional wave from the balcony of Buckingham Palace as choirs sang ‘Land of Hope and Glory.’”

“There was no doubt that the emotional and institutional hold on the nation that her presence represents had been emphatically revalidated,” Mr. Hoge wrote.

The shift from the closed early days of the monarchy was clear as one million people thronged the parks outside the gates of Buckingham Palace to watch a rock and pop concert on the palace grounds that was projected on giant screens. Brian May, the lead guitarist of the band Queen, played the national anthem, “God Save the Queen,” in a live solo performance from the roof of the palace.

“The black-and-white newsreels from 1952 show a country very different from the one in which we live today,” Tony Blair, then the prime minister, said in toasting the queen in 2002 at a formal lunch in the 17th-century Guildhall. “You have adapted the monarchy successfully to the modern world, and that has been a challenge because it is a world that can pay scant regard to tradition and often values passing fashions above enduring faith.”

The queen replied, “It has been a pretty remarkable 50 years by any standards.”

Part of the public sympathy for the queen in 2002 may have derived from her personal losses: Her mother and her sister , Margaret, both died that year. And, although her role precluded direct political intervention, she used her position deftly to offer comfort to those facing loss.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, she sent a message to New Yorkers, telling them, “Grief is the price we pay for love.” And after the attacks in her own capital on July 7, 2005, in which four suicide bombers killed 52 people, she told Londoners, “Atrocities such as these simply reinforce our sense of community, our humanity and our trust in the rule of law.”

Mark Landler and Mark A. Walsh contributed reporting.

An earlier version of this obituary referred incorrectly at one point to Princess Anne. As correctly stated elsewhere, she was Queen Elizabeth’s second child, not her third. The earlier version misstated at one point the length of Queen Elizabeth’s reign. It was seven decades, not “almost seven decades.” (As noted elsewhere, there had been a celebration in June “to commemorate her seven decades as sovereign.”)

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this obituary misstated the number of United States presidents with whose tenure Queen Elizabeth’s reign overlapped. It was 14, not 13.

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AP Lang Rhetorical Analysis Essay Practice

35 min read • february 2, 2021

Rhetorical Analysis practice is one of the most important ways to prepare for the exam! Review student writing practice samples and corresponding feedback from TA Brandon Wu! While you don't need to memorize every rhetorical device for the exam, you should take some time to familiarize yourself with them. To help out, we created this list of 40 rhetorical devices for AP Lang!

The Rhetorical Analysis Practice Prompt

Use the image below to answer the following questions:

In your response, make sure to include:

• A thesis statement or claim that addresses the prompt
• 1-2 body paragraphs  with specific evidence & commentary (how many devices or sentences of commentary is up to you)
• Elements of sophistication - Significance/relevance of rhetorical choices (“SOC”) and/or Purpose of complexities or tensions (“POC”)

Writing Samples & Feedback

Short essay practice submission 1.

As a sole female ruler of a growing and powerful nation during the fourteenth century, Queen Elizabeth I faced the hesitance of rulers and a people who doubted in her ability to overcome the weakness of her femininity and rule her nation to prosperity. In order to establish her power and the prove her worth as successful leader, Elizabeth I creates a tone of loyalty and confidence that serves to persuade her subjects that she is the ruler they deserve and need. In order to maintain her position as queen, Elizabeth uses comparisons and assertive diction throughout her “Speech to the Troops at Tilbury.”

As a ruler, Elizabeth I must establish a sense of loyalty between herself and her people. In order to achieve this common ground of trust, Elizabeth “assures” her people that she knows she has the characteristics of a leader she needs to "be [the people’s] general. and protect them. Through her use of assertive diction, Elizabeth is guaranteeing her people that this victory was not a fluke and she is the ruler they need. If they decide to remove her from her throne, they will suffer because they will not longer have her vigorous loyal devotion to protect them. She compares herself to a general in order to prove to her people that her loyalty is sincere. Although a “feeble woman”, she has the strength of a general to overcome the weakness of her feminine side to be the king that the people deserve.

While proving herself to be a loyal leader is important, Elizabeth also takes into account that she must be a confident leader who believes in her people’s and own ability to be victorious. In her speech, she claims herself to “know” the strengths of her soul and weaknesses of her body. She recognizes that she may not be the strongest, allowing for a sincerity to shine that establishes trust, but she believes so strongly in the cause of Britain, has so much confidence in their inevitable success, that she is willing to take up arms herself and fight. She creates a sense of courage and valor that is not common in a women and further convinces her subjects that she has the soul of a confident king who can lead them well. Without asserting her knowledge of weakness and confidence in her abilities to overcome those weaknesses, Elizabeth could not reasonably convince her subjects that she was a good leader. Without addressing the aspects of her nature that could make her feeble, her confidence could not shine in the persuasive way it did in this speech.

TA Feedback

Thesis - 1 point. I think you definitely include a defensible thesis and answer the prompt adequately by talking about Queen Elizabeth’s purpose. Great job with context in the intro paragraph!

Evidence & Commentary - 3 points. Great embedding of evidence throughout this first body paragraph. I really like your analysis about Elizabeth’s loyal devotion; it shows that you aren’t summarizing! What’s keeping you from the fourth point here in my opinion is that to get four points in E&C, College Board says that you should “Explain how multiple rhetorical choices in the passage contribute to the writer’s argument, purpose, or message” and while it does provide a caveat that “the response may observe multiple instances of the same rhetorical choice if each instance further contributes to the argument, purpose, or message of the passage.” However, I think your representation of diction and tone in the last paragraph does not quite meet that threshold of “further contributing” to the argument, purpose, or message, given the similar commentary. For instance, you say that Elizabeth has the strength of a general to “overcome the weakness of her feminine side” and sort of repeat that later on when you say she creates a “sense of courage and valor that is not common in a woman”. I feel like both of your body paragraphs sort of link to the same argument you make that she is strong, confident, and will fight for Britain. While this is typically something that is good (linking back to a central thesis), unfortunately, your two body paragraphs reference the  same literary device  (diction) and thus you earn only three points. My advice is to look for other literary devices, such as perhaps an appeal to emotion (live and die amongst you all) or an appeal to authority (under God/references to religious authority). Having multiple devices compared to multiple instances of the same device with accompanying analysis that links the appeals to emotion/religious authority to your thesis (loyalty/confidence) would have likely earned you the fourth point.

Sophistication - 0 points. I think there isn’t enough consistency here to grant you sophistication. While you do mention the hesitance of rulers and people who doubted in the ability of her femininity as context, your references the two other times (although a “feeble woman” & "creates a sense of courage and valor that is not common in a woman) don’t really demonstrate how you are  explaining the significance or relevance of the writer’s rhetorical choices given the rhetorical situation . They also seem kind of contradictory to me (is she feeble or is she courageous?) Think of the Madeline Albright student sample where it brings up the thematic idea of how women could do things in the broader context (seek out problems and fix them); I feel like your references to context seem to just be in the realm of Elizabeth’s leadership when they should have been more of a reference to women’s role in society as a whole.

Overall Score : 4/6 - Great job!

Short Essay Practice Submission 2

Queen Elizabeth showed herself as a strong leader during the threat of the Spanish Armada, taking over England, a major country, in 1588. As she addresses the land forces at TIlbury she reminds them that they need to trust her, and they shouldn’t fear. She enforces the trust by saying that she will place her life in danger, by being a general, if the Spanish Armada succeeds in attacking England. While saying this she is conveying that even though England is being threatened and a very significant event in world history could happen, the land forces should not fear because even though she is a woman she still has,”the heart and stomach of a king”.

At the beginning of Queen Elizabeth’s speech she recognizes the call from some people that she and other individuals holding a high office should be very careful of their safety. She disagrees with this thought because she is one with the people. By specifically telling the land forces, in Tilbury, she is empowering them by not giving up and retreating to a safer place, just because she is a queen. This gives the forces lots of strength because they know that their queen has their back and will not lose hope in the country or them. This trust alongside military power is what allowed the forces to defeat the biggest world power, of the time.

These empowering speeches are given all the time by world leaders in times of crisis. While the Covid pandemic may not be a battle like the land forces had with the Spanish Armada, it is a battle because people are fearing that the way of life they know will be taken away from them. To quell the fear of all battles or pandemics leaders will give speeches, or press conferences in modern day, it also helps their re-election if they showed strength during crisis. Another way Queen Elizabeth specifically empowers the land forces during their crisis is by saying that she will be their general if the Spanish Armada do gain control of English land. When she does this she immediately makes the country feel much more comfortable in that their queen will not leave them, even if her own city is invaded. This gives not just hope to the land forces they may have to directly battle the Spanish Armada but also the common citizens whose homes could be destroyed and families killed by warfare. This is very important because, as we saw with the Vietnam War in 1970, if the citizens don’t back the war it is very unlikely that you will win because it is the citizens who have to fight and produce warfare materials.

In conclusion, even though Queen Elizabeth was a woman she had the grit and determination of a man. This significantly helped the land forces respond to the strongest world power of the time. As she addresses the land forces at Tilbury she reminds them that they need to trust her, and they shouldn’t fear. She enforces the trust by saying that she will place her life in danger, by being a general, if the Spanish Armada succeeds in attacking England. While saying this she is conveying that even though England is being threatened and a very significant event in world history could happen, the land forces should not fear because even though she is a woman she still has, ”the heart and stomach of a king”.

Thesis - 1 point - I couldn’t find your thesis in the intro, so I ended up going to the conclusion. I honestly think it is much better to have your thesis as the  last sentence of your intro paragraph . Your introduction paragraph feels much more like a summary of what happened in the speech as opposed to a  rhetorical analysis  of how she used devices to help achieve her purpose. This does get answered though in the conclusion, but I would advise you to have an explicit thesis in the introduction.

Evidence & Commentary - 2 points - Your evidence is pretty general, but at times it is specific which connects to your thesis of how Queen Elizabeth was helping support the land forces and demonstrating her grit and determination. To increase your evidence & commentary score, I would highly recommend you quote (use embedded quotes) rather than paraphrase to help create a line of reasoning (which is how your argument flows / the structure of your thesis & body paragraphs). Moreover, I think you need to be answering why the author used the specific rhetorical device & how it specifically contributes to the author’s purpose. Using words to guide the AP reader like “this supports the author’s purpose…” will help you here.

Sophistication - 0 Points - While I think you do a great job bringing in outside context and talking about pandemics/re-elections, I think you need to be very careful here with how you incorporate sophistication. Remember, SOC = significance (or relevance) of the writer’s rhetorical choices in the  context of the rhetorical situation , and it seems that you are moreso talking about  other rhetorical situations  (Vietnam War, COVID, etc.). Also, I’m not very clear as to which rhetorical devices/techniques you’re talking about (details? diction? imagery? what kind of diction?) so I don’t think I can give you sophistication here.

Overall Score - 3 Points. I think this is an instance where it is definitely more important to work on evidence & commentary and find specific evidence of  rhetorical techniques and devices  to support your overarching thesis statement; then you can work on sophistication and talking about the significance/relevance of such rhetorical devices.

Short Essay Practice Submission 3

Ruler of England, Queen Elizabeth I, in her speech to the troops of tilbury, addresses the land forces during a threat of invasion by the Spanish Armada. Queen Elizabeth I purpose is to convince the Troops of Tilbury to stand by her side during the threat of invasion by the Spanish Armada and fight with her. Queen Elizabeth I, establishes her purpose through the application of diction, and the repetition of the word I. Queen Elizabeth I begins her speech by stating, “My loving people.” Starting the speech off like this, Queen Elizabeth I is creating a bond with the audience, she is implying that she cares for her people and stands by them. Queen Elizabeth I emphasizes the fight for her England as she applies strong diction to engender patriotism from the soldiers. She states “Your valor in the field, we shall shortly have a famous victory over those enemies of God, of my kingdom, and of my people.” Here Queen Elizabeth is utilizing the soldier’s sense of patriotism for their country to convince them to fight. “Valor” and “Victory” inspire the soldier to fight for their country and gives them a sense of purpose to fight for what is right. Queen Elizabeth establishes her reasoning through the repetition of the word “I.” Queen Elizabeth begins by stating, “I know that I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman,” by calling her self “weak” and “feeble” Queen Elizabeth is setting up a counterargument to defend herself because she knows that this is how many of the following troops see her. She is stating the thoughts of many and then counteracts it by stating, “I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a King of England.” Queen Elizabeth is establishing her status to the troops, as well as establishing her credibility. When Elizabeth states, “I Myself will take up arms, I myself will be your general…” She is implying that she is no different from her. She is emphasizing that if she is willing to fight for her country, then they should stand by herself and fight with her. In her speech, Queen Elizabeth is inspiring a sense of patriotism and hope to influence the Troops to protect England from Spain. Queen Elizabeth doesn’t speak to the Soldiers as if she was a queen, but she speaks to them like a friend. She tugs on their sense of patriotism to achieve her purpose of convincing the troops of Tilbury to fight against the Spanish Armada. She applies the rhetorical devices of diction and repetition to imply her purpose to the people around her.

Thesis - 1 Point - I love your explicit mention of Queen Elizabeth’s purpose and the rhetorical devices you emphasize. Make sure though that you specify what the diction is - every author has an application of diction, but include an adjective before to describe  what the diction is (emotional? nostalgic? uplifting? etc) . Evidence & Commentary - 4 Points - I think you do a very good job at analyzing the strong diction and anaphora (repetition of beginning words) and linking this to your thesis. Thus, I would give you four points for your  consistent commentary  in addition to your specific evidence.

Sophistication - 0 Points - There isn’t necessarily discussion here of the significance/relevance of the rhetorical choices Queen Elizabeth made nor is there a discussion of complexities/tensions. I don’t think I am a fair judge of ‘excellent prose style’, so thus I can’t really reward points on that metric.

Great job overall with a 5/6 on this rhetorical analysis essay!

Short Essay Practice Submission 4

Queen Elizabeth I faced many challenges throughout her reign, but by far the largest was her ongoing battle with the Spanish Armada. In 1588, Queen Elizabeth was awaiting an impending attack from the Armada and needed to rally her citizens to fight against something much bigger and much stronger than themselves. By abating her audience’s concerns about her gender and raising the spirits of the soldiers, Queen Elizabeth I unites the British people under a common goal of defeating the Spanish Armada.

In her speech, Queen Elizabeth tackles the stigma of her womanliness to display herself as a powerful leader that will fight hand-in-hand with the country’s front lines. She begins by saying “I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and a king of England too,…”. Here, Queen Elizabeth is being open with her audience and acknowledging her physical weaknesses while displaying her determination and passion for her country. Her direct reference to herself as having qualities of a king of England puts the listener’s worries at bay, as the kings in the past have been strong and capable of creating the large British empire that ruled during that time. Queen Elizabeth elaborates even further on her obligation to her country, saying that “[any country] should dare to invade the borders of my realm… I myself will take up arms, I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field.” Though she is a woman, Queen Elizabeth’s determination and passion shines through and erases the worries of her gender. By not ignoring her gender and weaknesses, she is building credibility with the listeners and making herself more trustworthy. Britain could be facing a dark time ahead, and her words calm the listener and give them confidence and pride in their country, something that is necessary when fighting an army that is much more powerful than theirs.

Queen Elizabeth also raises the spirits of the soldiers and citizens in several ways. Near the beginning of her speech, Queen Elizabeth assures her people that she has “placed [her] chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good-will of [her] subjects”. This is important, as committing to fight a much mightier army without complete support from a noble leader would be demoralizing to the members fighting. Another way that Queen Elizabeth lifts the morale of her citizens is by promising pay: “We do assure you in the word of a prince, [rewards and crowns] should be duly paid you.” If Queen Elizabeth had not done this, she would be left with many unmotivated soldiers who needed this money from the Crown to support their families. To conclude her speech, she with the most confident line yet: “we shall shortly have a famous victory over those enemies of my God, of my kingdom, and of my people.” With this line, Queen Elizabeth evokes the listeners’ emotions because of her references to personal ideas such as religion and patriotism, thus showing the reasons why she is willing to fight the battle as the underdog.

For many soldiers that had been fighting without pay and were scared by the sheer power of the Spanish Armada, Queen Elizabeth put their concerns aside and allowed soldiers to fight without other worries. She also gives other British citizens (non-soldiers) a reason to support a fight that seemed impossible to be won by the British if analyzed by the size of the armed forces. However, Queen Elizabeth was right: this fight is not about quantity of forces, but about heart. And by making her subjects sympathize with this belief, Queen Elizabeth successfully rallied her people and defeated the Spanish Armada.

Great job with the thesis point here - very explicit at the end of the introduction paragraph that tells me what the author’s purpose is and Queen Elizabeth’s rhetorical choices. In your evidence & commentary paragraphs, you did a great job of mentioning Queen Elizabeth’s gender and how she built credibility. I really enjoy your line of reasoning here in the second body paragraph while you mention her lifting morale and how she was able to motivate people. For sophistication, I think you do mention context “kings in the past have been strong and capable of creating the large British empire” and your analysis of how soldiers and non-soldiers alike were impacted (tied to your rhetorical devices) gives you credence to earn the sophistication point under the “significance or relevance of rhetorical choices” category. Great job on the 6/6 essay!

Short Essay Practice Submission 5

In 1588, Queen Elizabeth faced one of the most imminent threats of her career: the invasion by the Spanish Armada. Elizabeth had the task of not only rallying up her forces but also ensuring that they place trust in her and her plans to come out of the threat victorious. In order to increase confidence in her troops and cast aside their doubts of having a woman leader during this time of male domination, Elizabeth emphasizes that she will be making sacrifices alongside her troops to make and acknowledges and rebuttals her downsides that were associated with having a female leader at the time.

In the first two sentences, Elizabeth expresses her trust in her troops, saying “I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good-will of my subjects”. These words of encouragement aid in pulling together the army as one; the leader has faith in them, so they should have faith in themselves. She continues on to say that she comes as a leader ready “to live and die amongst you all”, and lay down her body for her “God”, “kingdom”, and “people”. This is exactly what she is encouraging her troops to do: give everything they have to ensure the safety of their country and the victory during her war. As a fighter, you want to hear that your leader is in the fight with you, and that you are not alone. It holds even more weight as a woman leader, as women did not fight during that time period. If a woman, dainty and proper, is willing and pledging to lay down her life, the army is left with the thought that they are expected and must be capable of doing the same. This also serves as a warning sign for anyone who should “dare to invade the borders of [her] realm”; she is increasing the esteem of her army, making them a stronger threat, and is warning them that while she may be a woman, she is adept and strong enough to lead a country and mobilize a strong response.

In the next sentence, Elizabeth takes the argument that she is a “feeble woman” who is not expected to nor capable of leading an army of men head-on. She responds saying, “I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too”. By equating herself to the previous successful English kings, she is emphasizing the fact that while she may be a woman, she is just as mentally strong as any other successful ruler that preceded her. She wants the army to trust her, just as they had placed trust in King Henry and King Edward years prior. Not only is she increasing her troop’s trust in herself by underscoring her mental toughness, but she is also being open with her troops by acknowledging her perceived downsides as a woman ruler. Despite her being a woman, she will do the best she can to have “a famous victory over those enemies”. And, this statement serves as a “heads-up” for foreign invaders as well–She is strong, she is capable, and she is ready to fight, regardless of her gender.

Good job here with the the thesis - I would include something along the lines of “Elizabeth uses rhetorical devices and techniques to emphasize…” in order to help your essay flow later. Still, you aren’t restating the prompt and answering with something that can be proven by evidence, so you earn the thesis point. For evidence & commentary, I think you have great analysis about women during that time period and how she is “increasing the esteem of her army”. Moreover, I appreciate your analysis of King Henry and King Edward adding some useful context. Ultimately though, I feel as if you are really only talking about diction in these two paragraphs and College Board says that you need to mention  more than one rhetorical device  (with the caveat that I mentioned in Perla’s post). Thus, I think you earn 3 points here in evidence & commentary.

In terms of sophistication, I’m a bit borderline on this, but I’ll award it to you because I think you do mention multiple times (and incorporate it into your argument) that women during that time period didn’t really have leading positions and she demonstrated her committed leadership both in your second and third paragraph. So in total, you earned five out of six points!

There is something that every country needs to be successful: a great leader. A great leader is not just someone who makes the decisions, a great leader respects their people. A great leader loves their people. A great leader inspires their people. Queen Elizabeth I proves that she is a great leader during her speech to her land forces in 1588. There was a threat of invasion by the Spanish Armada and Queen Elizabeths duty as a leader was to make sure that this invasion does not happen. By establishing a sense of trust with her people and appealing to her audiences patriotism, Elizabeth successfully inspires her people which provokes them to fight for their country with their whole heart.

Queen Elizabeth opens up her speech with an compassionate tone, which helps her establish a sense of loyalty with her people. Her first words were “My loving people” which provokes emotion from her audience. She continues to express that she “does not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people.” This continues to establish a sense of trust between her and her audience. She also goes on to say that she will “live and die amongst you all; to lay down for my God, and for my kingdom, my honor and my blood, even the dust.” By sharing that she will stand by her people no matter what, her audience can clearly see how loyal Queen Elizabeth was and how much she loved her people. Queen Elizabeth’s tone and her affectionate word choice towards her people, gave her audience someone to trust during this scary and unknown time, which proves that she was a great leader overall.

After establishing a sense of trust, Queen Elizabeth now focuses on her power and shifts into a more urgent and patriotic tone in order to inspire her people and army to protect England with all they have. She acknowledges that she has “the body but of a weak and feeble woman” but she also highlights that she has the “heart and stomach of a king.” This imagery provokes her audience to see outside of her gender and more into how much she loves her people and how far she will go to protect them. She continues with a forceful tone, claiming that if any prince “should dare invade the borders of my realm”, she herself “will take up arms”. By revealing that she is one with them in this battle, Queen Elizabeth inspires her army to do the same. She ends her speech by claiming that “we shall shortly have a famous victory,” which identifies how confident she is that they will win. Queen Elizabeths powerful use of imagery and tone at the end of her speech, arouses the audience and gives them a sense of duty to England. She proves that she is a exemplary leader again when she successfully conveys that she is not just the queen of England, she is also a soldier for her country.

Queen Elizabeths passionate speech for her country demonstrated she was a great leader. During her time, it was men who dominated society, but she was the one who bought England into its Golden Age, not a man. She had to convince her country, that even as a woman, she was going to bring victory to England. She crafted her speech with passion and inspiration in order to convey that she loved her people and that she was ready to do anything to prevent the threat of the Europe Prince as well as provoke a sense of patriotism and trust. During this threat, Queen Elizabeth proved that she was a great leader, and because of that, England was able to rise.

Good thesis! I would maybe briefly mention rhetorical devices “Elizabeth successfully inspires her people using rhetorical devices…” to tie in to the prompt more specifically and “respond to it” persay. If your teacher told you to write it as you have written it here, then just keep writing as you have been  I think your reference of a tone shift and imagery coupled with strong analysis of Queen Elizabeth’s loyalty and inspiration of army contributes to a strong line of reasoning and therefore I think you earn four points on evidence & commentary. Make sure Queen Elizabeth's has an apostrophe 

Good job with the conclusion that brings in relevance of her rhetorical choices, something that I think you also tie in throughout the essay (“proves that she is a[n] exemplary leader again”). Fantastic 6 / 6 essay!

Short Essay Practice Submission 6

As a female ruler of the time, Queen Elizabeth I broke established societal rules for women and was able to successfully rule and protect England during difficult times. She united the nation through her speech and assured them they would be protected by their country. Through the use of anaphora and juxtaposition, Queen Elizabeth I was able to unite and grant confidence in England under her subjects.

The possessive pronoun “my”, takes responsibility for the actions and the influence of the speaker. Here, Queen Elizabeth I uses “my” repetitively in the same sentence as a form of anaphora. She says, “to lay down for my God, my kingdom, and my people, my honour and my blood.” As a ruler, these would be Queen Elizabeth I’s, yet the use of anaphora also emphasizes each of these things. Putting her kingdom and her people after God but before her honor and blood show that their safety is almost more important to God in her eyes and their harm would, therefore, affect her honor. She also may be implying that she is instilling the power and influence of God himself, as Queen Elizabeth I was Protestant. Through this, she can provide deeper confidence toward her subjects, showing she will protect them through God and her power no matter what, or else it will deeply transform her. Queen Elizabeth I was emphasizing personal responsibility as if her belongings and identities themselves had a responsibility in the protection of her subjects whom she needed to establish trust with. Queen Elizabeth I also uses anaphora with “my” when she concludes her speech, saying “of my God, of my kingdom, and of my people.” Queen Elizabeth I is ensuring to her subjects that through the influence of her identities and possessions, England and its subjects will be successful in the Spanish Armada as they eventually were. Again, repeating “my” emphasizes that she will put all she can towards defeating Spain and protecting her people and their religion. As Spain was trying to bring Catholicism, Queen Elizabeth I wanted to protect the Protestant church in England. This is also why she emphasizes God being hers, not the Catholic God, and the beliefs of the Catholic church. With many subjects also being Protestant, this would have been a strong appeal of support, which was Queen Elizabeth I’s ultimate goal of the speech. The use of “my” also separates herself from the “majestic plural” of “our” which would have also been used to refer to herself. This again places a deeper sense of personal responsibility onto Queen Elizabeth I. While “we” may seem simple, it ultimately can possess a significant load of power in its use.

A powerful statement made by Queen Elizabeth I was when she used juxtaposition when she compared herself to a king. She said, “I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king.” This quote is ironic yet true, as Queen Elizabeth I was able to successfully rule and protect England for 45 years. Here, Queen Elizabeth I compares women to kings in drastically different ways, yet can justify how they can work together towards success, like a ying-yang. Being a feeble woman allows her to have a peaceful, soft way about her while being king-like allows her to be a firm ruler and make potent decisions. This blend of the two extremes in one ruler allows her to be able to appeal to more subjects who will instill their trust in her. She also uses this to put down any unnecessary doubts established by society about her in charge as a woman to again gain their support and unite them to protect England. Queen Elizabeth I was able to be a just yet firm leader, allowing her to defeat Spain and protect the subjects of England, even as a woman.

Queen Elizabeth I had a strong influence over England, even as a female ruler over 400 years ago. Her power and control over her kingdom were met with her soft, feminine side, allowing her to take personal responsibility for her subjects and further unite them with support. Without Queen Elizabeth I, England may not have entered the Golden Age or had the influence in history it has.

Great job mentioning author’s purpose and rhetorical devices in the thesis. You earn the thesis point. Good job with noting anaphora and tying in relevance to religion! I think you do a great job of juxtaposition to show Queen Elizabeth’s complexities. Great job with historical context at the end. You have a great line of reasoning and an argument that flows very nicely with specific evidence and great commentary to supplement. Four points here in evidence & commentary.

You do a great job at tackling sophistication! You mention the significance/relevance of certain rhetorical choices such as the reference towards God and the complexities of that seemingly contradictory quote. Great 6/6 essay!

Short Essay Practice Submission 7

Before England’s Golden Age, it had successfully defeated the Spanish Armada under Queen Elizabeth I. Although she lived in a male-dominated society, she was able to prepare her countrymen for the attack of the Spanish Armada so that they were able to stop it before it reached the shore. In order to achieve this purpose of preparing the citizens of England for the possible invasion by the Spanish Armada, she wrote a speech to the land forces at Tilbury in which she creates a loving and optimistic tone as well as explains that she is as mentally and emotionally strong as a king even though she is a woman.

Elizabeth begins her speech by using friendly diction to create a loving tone. She addresses her audience with the phrase “my loving people.” This creates the feeling that they are all in one family that is supporting and taking care of each other. It also implies that Elizabeth wants everyone to unite and feel connected so that they can work together to defeat Spain. Her audience feels a sense of security which decreases any anxiety or fear that they might have regarding the threat of the attack. They realize that she is not a kind of a ruler that applies force to get people to obey her orders, but instead loves her countrymen dearly and speaks to them softly. By hearing this at the very beginning of her speech, her audience will feel more inclined to listen to her and follow her suggestions during the rest of the speech.

Elizabeth goes on to juxtaposing her feminine body and a “heart and stomach of a king.” This means that even though she is a woman, she has a manly personality and has the same feelings and thoughts as a king would. Through this contrast, she succeeds in alleviating her audience’s fears that she will not be a capable ruler due to the fact that she is a woman. This was extremely important for her audience to understand since they were living in a society where women were viewed as inferior and simple-minded compared to men. During the second half of the 16th century, many people thought that women were meant to do only domestic jobs like cooking and cleaning, and only men were capable of governing society. Women were discouraged from expressing their opinions about their husband’s responsibilities like politics and getting a solid education. By admitting that she has a body “of a weak and feeble woman,” she acknowledges this view of women shared by her audience. However, she tries to indicate that she is a special instance and should not be considered the same as other women. Therefore, her land forces her to trust and follow her orders as if they had come from a king.

In 1558, Queen Elizabeth I wrote a letter to her land forces at Tilbury regarding the threat of the Spanish Armada. She proceeded to explain that it is her honorable duty to serve everyone in England. She does this by creating a loving tone right from the beginning of her speech and emphasizing that she is as capable as a king of England. She reminds us that love and support for each other triumphs above the weaknesses of a woman.

Good job mentioning the purpose and mentioning tone as a literary device - I think you aren’t restating the prompt here so as a result you get the thesis point 

In terms of evidence & commentary, I think your reference to diction and tone here is great analysis - it’s very specific and also ties in to your commentary about decreasing anxiety. Moreover, your contextual application of the 16th century and women here is useful and definitely brings in a more in-depth area of analysis. I think your argument about trust is valid. Four points for evidence & commentary.

You did great with SOC!! I think you would earn sophistication in this instance, although it wouldn’t hurt to also maybe tie in her role as a woman in the first body paragraph although that’s not required. Great 6/6 essay.

Short Essay Practice Submission 8

Queen Elizabeth I was a strong female leader, the first of her kind in England. When her country went to war, many citizens were hesitant that a woman could bring the, then all-powerful, country the victory and guide them just as well as a male counterpart. In her speech to the commonfolk, Queen Elizabeth I uses impactful diction/syntax and metaphors throughout in an effort to convince her audience of her dedication to her people and to convince them of her own qualifications.

Queen Elizabeth I first opens by laying out the situation to her pupils. By using intense word choices and impactful images, she “assure[s]” them that “in the midst and heat of the battle,” she will “live and die amongst you all.” She uses this intense moment of climax, perhaps full of fear, to steer the citizen’s attention toward her own devotion to the war effort. By using such intense word usage, she is able to better hit home her point that despite a dreadful sitaution, she will not waver in the time of fear. The people will best respond to such a confident leader, and Elizabeth hopes that these tactics will instill confidence in themselves as well. She closes with another impactful statement that “by your obedience to my general, by your concord in the camp, and your valor in the field, we shall shortly have a famous victory.” The Queen uses the repetitive sentence structure and parallelism exemplified here throughout her speech to best grasp the attention of her audience and builds their attention to the final point of her statement, in this case, a most famous victory. This directs her people away from the opening remarks of “treachery” and towards the ultimate win, all along the way attempting to boost the troops’ confidence.

Often in the wild, to make themselves appear more intimidating, animals will create an image or make themselves appear larger. Queen Elizabeth I uses this exact tactic in her own speech. By using metaphors for herself, she conveys herself to the people as a most powerful jack of all trades, creating a sense of security in her own image. First, she addresses that despite having “the body but of a weak and feeble woman”, she has “the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too.” She reassures the people that even though she may be a female, she knows what is expected of her and she insists she is able to withstand the pressures and responsibilities the title holds. She even uses this sentiment to uplift her mother country, implying that the King of England is not like that of any common King. Elizabeth places herself atop of her throne and creates an air of royalty to her people in this metaphor allowing the people to place trust in her words and actions, and encouraging them towards victory. She further promotes herself when she states that “I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field.” This shows the people that the Queen understands that her role is beyond that of a title, a figurehead. She will rise to the occasion and bring to them a required responsibility of all of these well-respected titles. By using this metaphor, Queen Elizabeth I instills a sense of purpose in herself and will to fight in those listening to her. Without her insistence of everyone’s role and her own ability to fulfill all these she lists, the people are discouraged and frankly, unconvinced of her and their own all-encompassing power.

To hit home her dedication to her country and her belief in her people, Queen Elizabeth goes as far as to join her people in their square. To initially create her sense of power, dressed in armor, Queen Elizabeth delivers a most awe-inspiring speech filled with impactful diction, climactic parallelism, and metaphors creating qualifying images of herself and the troops in an effort to inspire them and instill a level of confidence in all for themselves and England. Without such a historical speech, the people of England may not have been motivated to fight for a “feeble” Queen and may not have had confidence in their own recently endangered country. With her wise words, the troops go forth with a sense of importance and newfound appreciation for thier ruler.

Love the thesis with references to rhetorical devices and a purpose. You earn the thesis point. I love the specific evidence that is incorporated in your evidence & commentary. You bring in a great argument about how Queen Elizabeth instills a sense of purpose in herself and rises to the occasion. You earn all four points in evidence & commentary in my opinion. In terms of sophistication, this is a bit harder line to draw. I don’t necessarily think that you talk about the  relevance or significance  of rhetorical choices. You reference to complexities is not really pursued (comparing the body of a week/feeble woman + heart/stomach of king). Thus, you end with a 5/6! Great job.

Short Essay Practice Submission 9

During times of predicaments, the leaders’ abilities are truly tested. And their failure or success could be the difference between the countries’ triumph and annihilation. In 1588, England’s fate lay in peril as the threat of Spanish Armada’s invasion seemed inevitable. And the leader of this male dominated nation in crisis was a woman: Queen Elizabeth I. In her address to Tilbury land forces, Queen Elizabeth proved to be an effective leader that could not only lead the nation but also transcend any gender barriers that existed at the time. By appealing to national identity and by refuting the notion that her sex will hinder her ability to lead, Queen Elizabeth implores the land forces at Tilbury to unite under her leadership to defeat the Spanish. Doing so encourages the Tilbury land forces, who are all men, to follow Queen Elizabeth’s leadership, even if she is a woman, for the good of England.

Queen Elizabeth commences her address about the need to unite in the time of crisis by appealing to the national identity, specifically noting her reliance on her subjects, as she placed her “chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts” of her subjects. Given that Queen Elizabeth, a noble, is addressing soldiers, who are common men, at Tilbury, her appeal to national identity remains particularly poignant as it reveals that that despite her title, Queen Elizabeth needs the help of her subjects in order to persevere through this national crisis. And by doing so, Queen Elizabeth makes herself more relatable to the soldiers as they begin to view the queen as just another concerned individual who is fighting for England. Having thoroughly established her argument that she needs the help of her subjects, Queen Elizabeth furthers her appeal to national identity by emphasizing her readiness to “live and die amongst” the soldiers and fight for her “God”, her “kingdom”, and her “people”. And by doing so, Elizabeth further breaks down the notion that she will sit idly by and let the commons do the dirty work. Which in turn, enhances her credibility to the soldiers, who are common men, who now recognizes Queen Elizabeth is a leader who is willing to lead from the frontlines. Therefore, it is imperative for each member of the Tilbury land forces to do their part and unite under Queen Elizabeth to fight for their homeland.

Queen Elizabeth continues to convey her ability to lead England during this time of crisis by refuting the notion that her sex will hinder her ability to lead, particularly emphasizing that she may have a body of “a weak and feeble women”, but she has the “heart and stomach of a king”. Given that Queen Elizabeth is a woman addressing a group of men during a time of patriarchy, this dichotomy proves potent in challenging any unspoken reservations about her ability to lead due to her gender. Queen Elizabeth furthers breaks down the notion of her sex being a hinderance in her leadership by saying “I myself will take up arms, I myself will be your general, judge…” And by repeating the phrase “I myself” in front of actions and positions that are synonymous with masculinity and matriarchy, Queen Elizabeth skillfully demonstrates that she will take it upon herself to move past gender stereotypes and crown herself to assume positions that are held by men for the good of England. Which in turn, will force the land forces at Tilbury, who are all men, to view Queen Elizabeth not as a “weak and feeble women”, but as a “king” who will protect her “God”, her “kingdom”, and her “people”.

Great thesis statement and introduction paragraph that brought in context. I think your evidence and commentary is strong, as you talk about how Queen Elizabeth has made herself “more relatable” and how it convined the Tilbury land forces to unite. Your commentary and line of reasoning is strong throughout the two body paragraphs, and thus I give you four points on evidence & commentary. Moreover, your analysis of the masculine vs feminine conflict is very in-depth and earns you the sophistication point here in my opinion. Great 6/6 essay!

Short Essay Practice Submission 10

Queen Elizabeth I, under imminent threat of invasion by the Spanish Armada, makes a speech to her army and through the use of rhetorical strategies aims to inspire faith in her as their leader in order to rally her forces to fight against the Spanish.

Throughout her speech Queen Elizabeth emphasizes her god given right to be queen. She states “I have always so behaved myself that, under God,” she has made her decision. That she enters this battle to “lay down for my God,” and assures that their army will have victory “over those enemies of my God.” Her repeated allusions to God serve as a reminder to the soldiers that as a British monarch she has a god given right to rule and lead her people. She utilizes these reminder of her divinity in order to build the army’s trust in her and their faith in her decisions.

Queen Elizabeth moves to connect herself with her soldiers and emphasizes that she is on the field fighting with them. She appeals to the camaraderie of her forces by explaining that she has “come amongst you all” to “live and die amongst you all,” and that she “will take up arms, I myself will be your general.” She emphasizes her involvement in the battle in order to appeal to ethos and allow her soldiers to trust her by going far enough to join them in their fight. This works to inspire the soldier’s faith in her as their leader as they understand she believes in their cause so much as to join them in the fight. She continues this appeal to camaraderie through the use of the first person. She begins almost every clause with the word “I”, she says “I have always behaved myself”, “I know already,” “I have the heart ad stomach of a king” and many more instances of using the word “I”. She is emphasizing that all her decisions are her own and she truly believes in their cause, she is combating the image of an aloof monarch with no stake in her people. Her display in faith to her military works to build on the soldier’s trust in her.

As a female queen in the 16th century, Queen Elizabeth faced a lot of doubt in her ability to be a strong leader and make good decisions for the prosperity of her people due to the misogynistic and patriarchal ideals in society at the time. On this day in 1588 on the fields of Tilbury, it was vital that the queen convince her soldiers of her strength as their leader and that the her decisions that brought them to this battle were for the the good of England, so that her soldier might fight valiantly and they will defeat the Spanish.

Good job with the thesis point - very straightforward with mention of rhetorical devices and author’s purpose; this is how I wrote my thesis  In terms of evidence & commentary, your reference/argument about God is very intriguing and the god-given right argument is great context that demonstrates significance. Moreover, I think your argument about seeming relatable is very strong with the mention of I. Thus, you earn all four evidence & commentary points. In terms of sophistication, I think you do earn it because you expound about the relevance of God and mention the significance of the time period. Great 6/6 essay!

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Queen Elizabeth I as the Greatest Monarch in England Essay

Queen Elizabeth, I was born to Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII in 1533. She became the queen of England in the year 1558 and ruled up to 1603. She was an influential leader and her reign put England on the road to becoming a global political and economic power. Her decision not to marry was due to political reasons and she influenced arts and religion.

The queen never got married albeit the many marriage proposals that she received. Among her suitors were Archduke Charles, Philip II of Spain, Adolphus the Duke of Holstein, and Robert Dudley of Earl. She used her prospect of marriage to her advantage to keep off potential enemies of England. During her reign, Spain and France were powerful countries and a big threat to England. Her courting of foreign Princes ensured that England was not attacked and this tact worked on various occasions as she managed to balance the two powerful countries to avert a possible attack on her country. She used her hand as a diplomatic weapon; however, she never married any of her suitors. Queen Elizabeth, I was a pragmatic leader and she knew that if she married a foreigner she would put England’s future in jeopardy by relinquishing her power to her husband. She was expected to marry and the parliament petitioned her about marriage. Her reply was “this shall be for me sufficient, that a marble stone shall declare that a Queen, having reigned such a time died a virgin” (Hibbert 250). According to her, she was already married to her Kingdom. In her address to parliament, she raised her coronation ring and said “The pledge of this my wedlock and marriage with my kingdom” (Greenblatt 23). She put the kingdom before herself” yet when the welfare of my state was concerned, I dared not indulge my own inclinations” (Thomas 174).

When Elizabeth I descended to power there was a strong division between the Protestants and the Catholics. Her predecessor Queen Mary I was a catholic and during her reign, she prosecuted Protestants thus raising a sharp division between Catholics and Protestants. Elizabeth leaned more on Protestantism but choose a conciliatory ground because she knew how divisive religion could become. Elizabeth had to settle the church position in England finally. Retaining Catholicism was not politically viable. She established the Church of England but the religious conflicts continued as Catholics and Puritans attacked it (Crane 1). The Catholic Church was still powerful and some of Mary’s loyalists posed a threat to the crown. Thus, Elizabeth looked for a religious compromise that would mitigate the threat and at the same time retain the loyalty of the catholic sympathizers. Therefore, using the Church of England she created a middle ground and in 1585 in a speech to parliament, she retaliated this position by saying that “if I were not persuaded that mine were the true way of God’s will, God forbid I should live to prescribe it to you” (Halsall 1). To date the identity of the Church of England is alive.

Queen Elizabeth, I had a lot of influence in arts. Her reign was known as the Elizabethan Age due to her influence in the arts. Her writings were powerful and shaped people’s opinions about her. Elizabeth influenced authors like William Shakespeare, Edmund Spencer, and Christopher Marlowe among others. After she became the queen, women began to gain a voice in the arts. Moreover, she was a poet herself and an intelligent woman (Crane 1). Among her greatest works was the speech she gave to the army during the Spanish Armada war. In this speech, she proved she was a leader who was not afraid to defend her country even if it meant putting her life at risk. ” I have come amongst you at this time… to live or die amongst you all, to lay down for God and for my kingdom and for my people my honor and my blood even in the dust”(“Queen Elizabeth” 1). She encouraged the English army to fight on and win the war because she would be with them in the war “I myself will take up arms; I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field” (“Queen Elizabeth” 1). Elizabeth displayed her leadership qualities in this speech by admitting her faults, “I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a King of England too” (“Queen Elizabeth” 1). She was not a leader shy of admitting her weaknesses.

The Queen used her works to retaliate her love for her subjects and thus gained their loyalty. For instance, in a speech, she told the people that “There is no jewel, be it of never so rich a price, which I set before this jewel: I mean your love. For I do esteem it more than any treasure of riches… I count the glory of my crown that I have reigned with your love” (Halsall 1). On the other hand, she expressed her feelings for instance, in the poem On Monsieur’s Departure she writes “I grieve and dare not show my discontent… I am and not, I freeze and yet am burned,” concluding: “or let me live with some more sweet content, / Or die and so forget what love ere meant” (Crane 1). This shows her sorrow because of disappointment in love. More importantly through her works, Queen Elizabeth communicated with her subjects and gained popularity.

Queen Elizabeth I remains one of the greatest monarchs in England’s history. During her rule, there was peace at home and abroad. She managed to maintain England’s stability. Her leadership was incredible and her decision to remain single influenced her reign greatly. The Church of England today is proof of her influence in religion. Moreover, the artists document her influence on arts and she came across as a passionate queen who cared about the welfare of her subjects above all else just, as a good leader should.

Works Cited

Crane, Thomas Mary. Queen Elizabeth 1 (1533-1603). 2010. Web.

Greenblatt, Miriam. Rulers and Their Times: Elizabeth I and Tudor England. New York: Benchmark Books, 2002. Print.

Halsall, Paul. Modern History Sourcebook: Queen Elizabeth I of England (b. 1533, r. 1558-1603) Selected Writing and Speeches. Fordham. Ed. 1998. Web.

Hibbert, Christopher. The Virgin Queen: Elizabeth I, Genius of the Golden Age. New York: Addison-Wesley, 1991. Print.

Thomas, Jane Resh. Behind the Mask: The Life of Queen Elizabeth I . New York: Clarion, 1998. Print.

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ELIZABETHAN HISTORY

Essays / articles, a study on the reputation of queen elizabeth i through the centuries..

Elizabeth Tudor is undoubtedly one of the most famous English monarchs. Her life and reign have inspired many biographies, histories, novels, and dramatic works. If Lacey Baldwin Smith asserts that in this respect Elizabeth is a "Queen of Addiction" (1), she is also a "Queen of contention". She may have gone down in the annals of history as "Good Queen Bess", but this epithet belies the fact that her character and reign have been exposed to profound debate over the centuries. There is virtually no aspect of the Queen's life and reign that has not received comment and counter-comment. Her personal character has been debated, her physical appearance and physiological composition, her attitude towards marriage and children, and her relationship with her courtiers. On a more macroscopic level, her ability as a ruler, as a politician, and her religious policy, have been disputed. It can perhaps be said that the real Elizabeth has become so embroiled in myth and legend, that it is now impossible to recover her. Yet, by treading cautiously through this melange, tracing as far as possible the origin and development of various trains of thought, in the process extricating both prevarications and truths, it is perhaps possible to get closer to what Elizabeth was really like as a person and a monarch. But the history of Elizabeth's reputation is a subject of interest in itself. It is not only the history of one woman, the way she was perceived by her people and subsequent generations, but the history of literature, of art, of politics, of religion, and culture, for each generation writes its own history, and they write it according to their understandings of the world, their experiences and expectations. To begin with, the Queen's reputation in her own life time, can perhaps give an interesting insight into sixteenth century life - their values and beliefs, attitudes towards monarchy, religion, sex and marriage, and the role of women in society. In order to study the factors exerting an influence on the perception of Elizabeth by her contemporaries, it is necessary to look at the development and changes in her reputation from the moment of her birth to her death. Elizabeth's early reputation is far from clear, and it has not been sufficiently examined in relation to the reputation of her mother, Anne Boleyn. Anne Boleyn's reputation in the last years of her life, is itself ambiguous. Certainly she was detested in Catholic Europe, but it is unclear how she was perceived in England. This perception is of paramount significance in understanding the nature of Elizabeth's early reputation. In Catholic Europe, Elizabeth, simply by being Anne's daughter, was abhorred as "the concubine's little bastard", which became "incestuous bastard" (2) following the accusations of adultery that were hailed against her mother - a legacy that haunted Elizabeth's reputation in Catholic Europe for the rest of her life. However, it is uncertain to what degree the crimes of the mother were held against the daughter in England. If Elizabeth had an infamous mother, then she had a famous father, and her paternity may have been sufficient to prevent such a vehement hatred of her in England. If both Anne and Elizabeth were abhorred by the people in these years, then this means that the sheer acceptance of Elizabeth as sovereign some two decades later, needs some consideration. The hypothesis that immediately arises, is that somewhere between her birth and accession to the throne, her reputation suffered a transformation from unpopular to popular. The question that follows is "how" and "why"? Elizabeth's reputation from her accession to her death is no less perplexing to understand because of its many facets. On the one hand there is the "cult of Elizabeth", which presents Elizabeth very much as the capable monarch, the virtuous virgin who renounced worldly happiness for the sake of her country, and on the other hand, the scandalous rumours which asserted that Elizabeth was a nymphomaniac who presided over a court of corruption and lasciviousness. It was asserted, amongst other things, that the Queen used malevolent powers to seduce the men, even women, around her; would have those who refused her advances beheaded; and had secretly mothered many children. Arthur Southern, who preferred to be known as Arthur Dudley, even claimed to be an illegitimate son of the Queen and the Earl of Leicester. Those who clearly saw that Elizabeth did not have any illegitimate children, put forward other theories to explain why, after all this sexual activity, the Queen was still childless. It was whispered that she was infertile, that she had some physical deformity, that she was half woman, half man, or even completely male. The difficulty for the historian lies in determining how much significance to attach to these rumours, and determining their timing, and social, regional and cultural origin. It is unclear to what degree these rumours were confined to Catholics alone, or were influenced by the rumours circulating about the Queen in Catholic Europe. It is equally obscure whether the rumours were primarily a plebian tendency, or also popular amongst the elite. The elite were certainly familiar enough with them - the Queen, who although admitted being perplexed by the rumours considering that her ever move was monitored, jested with the Scottish Ambassador about them, and Christopher Hatton was sufficiently familiar with his reputation as one of the Queen's lovers, to fervently deny that his relationship with her was a sexual one. However, there certainly appears to be a correlation between the intensity of the rumours and regional distance from London. It seems that slanders against Elizabeth were more pronounced in areas away from the capital. This is perhaps suggestive about regional variation in the perception of Elizabeth, and the remoteness of her monarchy in those areas that she never visited. The belief that the Queen was really a man, is interesting in what it suggests about attitudes towards women and government in this period. The origins and prevalence of this belief are as yet obscure, but there is the suggestion that this belief was especially pronounced in the south west of England. According to Constance Pratt, an entire legend emerged asserting that the real Princess Elizabeth was supplanted by a male or hermaphrodite imposter when she unexpectedly died of a childhood illness. It is unclear whether this belief was present during Elizabeth's own lifetime, or was a posthumous development. If the belief that Elizabeth was secretly a man was sufficiently widespread, then it lends new interpretation to such statements as "Now I see the Queen is a woman" (3)and "Oh lord, the Queen is a woman" (4), perhaps otherwise rather strange remarks to have been made, as "Queen" by definition implies a person of female gender. Such a belief seems to emphasise just how unnatural a woman's rule, moreover an unmarried woman's rule was, and that it should have been successful. Perhaps it was even a source of comfort to believe that their Queen was "secretly a man" who was by divine law meant to be the leader of a nation. Determining the frequency, and the cultural, social and regional origins of these rumours is of some significance in understanding further the nature and reality of the cult of the Queen. Christopher Haigh argues that the rumours died away once the cult began to take root in the 1570's, but even if this is the case, the reasons for this transformation, and it's manifestation, have not been adequately explained. Also it seems, as Christopher Haigh himself paradoxically states, that the rumours resurfaced during the hardships of the 1590's, precisely when the Cult of the Queen was allegedly at it's height. In Europe (perhaps as would be expected), stories of the Queen's sexual immorality were still rife, and Henry IV of France in a moment of joviality, maintained that it was one of the three wonders of the world, "whether the Queen Elizabeth was a maid or no".(5) In 1944, Milton Waldman argued that even if the Queen's subjects did believe that she was a still a virgin, it was not because they believed she was nun-like chaste.(6)Either they attributed her single state to political difficulties in securing a marriage for a female sovereign, or to psychological or physiological problems on her part, which made it impossible for her to have sexual intercourse. John Harington, the Queen's godson, wrote; "In mind she hath ever had an aversion (to matrimony) and (as many think) in body some indisposition to the act of marriage."(7) If it was widely believed that Elizabeth was a virgin because she was incapable of sexual relations with a man, not because she had risen above her human lusts and appetites and renounced marriage for the sake of her kingdom, then this seriously undermines the influence of the cult. If Richard Carey is to be believed, there appear to have been "many false lies reported" in England about the "the end and death" (8) of the Queen, which moved him to write for posterity her death as he witnessed it.(9) His statement is as interesting as it perplexing. It is perplexing in the sense that it once again gives rise to the question of which social, regional and cultural groups were prone to report these "false lies", and interesting in the sense that it again gives an insight into the reality of the artistic and literary cult. In theory, it could be argued that the cult was merely a response by Elizabeth's government to the endless slanders against her, by trying to redirect their focus on aspects of her sexuality from the negative to the positive, urging them to perceive her as the virgin, not the whore. To what degree the cult was genuinely believed by the people is perhaps impossible to discover, but the words of Edward Dyer to Christopher Hatton do shed an intriguing light on the whole mechanics of the cult; "...commend such things as should be in her, as though they were in her indeed." From this perspective, there may be considerable truth in Christopher Haigh's assertion that the cult was illusionary, and Lacey Baldwin Smith's belief that it was a way of manipulating the Queen - by declaring her to be something, whether she was or not, it was actually urging her to be so. It is perhaps also possible to ask to what extent the cult of the Queen influenced perceptions of Elizabeth in Europe. It certainly appears that over her lifetime her reputation in Europe changed. At the beginning of her reign she was little regarded, and it was felt that she would be fortunate to keep her throne six months, but by the time of the Spanish Armada, there is the indication that the Catholic powers respected the English Queen for her accomplishments, even though they were openly opposing her.

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