The outpouring of tributes in the week since Queen Elizabeth II’s death has underlined her status as a figure of constancy, straddling two centuries of seismic social, political and technological change.
From world leaders to ordinary people, they recognise the central part Britain’s longest-serving monarch has played in national life — and as a global figure — for 70 years.
And in the many tributes, what the queen came to represent — old-fashioned values of dutiful, selfless public service — seem to be mourned too as much as her loss.
“Queen Elizabeth’s was a life well lived; a promise with destiny kept and she is mourned most deeply in her passing,” her eldest son — now King Charles III — said, the day after she died on September 8, aged 96.
“Alongside the personal grief that all my family are feeling, we also share with so many of you… a deep sense of gratitude for the more than 70 years in which my mother, as queen, served the people of so many nations.”
Princess Anne, who accompanied the queen’s coffin from her Scottish Highland home at Balmoral to Edinburgh and back to London, also acknowledged her mother’s pivotal place in the national psyche.
“Witnessing the love and respect shown by so many on these journeys has been both humbling and uplifting,” she said.
“We may have been reminded how much of her presence and contribution to our national identity we took for granted.”
Hundreds of thousands of people — most of whom never met Queen Elizabeth — have lined the streets to pay their last respects.
More still are expected to file past her coffin as it lies in state before her state funeral at London’s Westminster Abbey on Monday.
– Memories and farewells –
Queen Elizabeth enjoyed going out to meet the public and felt she had to be seen to be believed — something her tall hats and bright outfits aided, given her short stature.
Since her death, people who met the queen have recounted fleeting handshakes and passing smiles, to chance encounters and lengthy interactions.
Soldiers who served in her uniform have queued to give a final salute to their former commander-in-chief.
On Wednesday, applause rang out before her coffin passed the statue of Britain’s wartime leader Winston Churchill, the first of her 15 prime ministers.
Floral tributes and messages have sprung up at royal palaces around Britain, and mourners have arranged the flowers themselves in London’s Green Park, creating heart shapes and spelling out “Thank You”.
Many messages have been written by children, for whom the post-World War II privations when Queen Elizabeth succeeded her father in 1952 will be the childhood memories of their own grand or great-grandparents.
One image that has circulated widely online has been of the queen walking away hand in hand with Paddington Bear, accompanied by one of her beloved Corgi dogs.
“I’ve done my duties, Paddington,” it reads. “Please take me to my husband.”
Prince Philip, whom she…
