The crowning achievement of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth, who died on Thursday after 70 years on the throne, was to maintain the popularity of the monarchy across decades of seismic political, social and cultural change that threatened to make it an anachronism.

A dignified, dependable figure who reigned longer than any other British monarch, Elizabeth helped steer the institution into the modern world, stripping away court ritual and making it somewhat more open and accessible, all in the glare of an increasingly intrusive and often hostile media.

While the nation she reigned over sometimes struggled to find its place in a new world order and her own family often fell foul of public expectations, the queen herself remained a symbol of stability. She also tried to transcend class barriers and earned the grudging respect of even hardened republicans.

To much of the world she was the personification of Britain, yet she remained something of an enigma as an individual, never giving an interview and rarely expressing emotion or offering a personal opinion in public – a woman recognised by millions but known by hardly anyone.

“I think she’s brought life, energy and passion to the job, she’s managed to modernise and evolve the monarchy like no other,” her grandson Prince William, who is now the heir to the throne, said in a television documentary in 2012.

THE YOUNG QUEEN

Elizabeth Alexandra Mary was born on April 21, 1926 at 17 Bruton Street in central London.

The young princess never expected to ascend to the throne: it was only after her uncle King Edward VIII abdicated in 1936 because of his love for American divorcee Wallis Simpson that the crown passed to her father, George VI, when she was 10.

She was just 25 when her father died and she became Queen Elizabeth II on February 6, 1952, while on tour in Kenya with her husband Prince Philip. Winston Churchill was the first of 15 prime ministers who served during her reign.

“In a way I didn’t have an apprenticeship, my father died much too young and so it was all a very sudden kind of taking on, and making the best job you can,” she said in a 1992 documentary.

“It’s a question of maturing into something that one’s got used to doing and accepting the fact that here you are and it’s your fate. It is a job for life.”

During her 70 years on the throne Britain underwent dramatic change.

The austere postwar 1950s gave way to the swinging 60s, the divisive leadership of Margaret Thatcher in the 80s, Tony Blair’s three-term New Labour era, a return to economic austerity and then the COVID-19 pandemic.

Labour and Conservative governments came and went, feminism changed attitudes to women, and Britain became a much more cosmopolitan, multi-ethnic society.

Elizabeth was on the throne for most of the Cold War from the death of Soviet leader Josef Stalin. During her reign there were 14 U.S. presidents, from Harry S. Truman to Joe Biden, and she met all bar Lyndon Johnson.

Britain’s vote to leave the European Union in 2016 exposed deep divisions in British society, while nationalists continued their push for a new referendum on Scottish independence that had the potential to rip apart the United Kingdom.

“As we look for new answers in the modern age, I for one prefer the tried and tested recipes, like speaking well of each other and respecting different points of view; coming together to seek out the common ground; and never losing sight of the bigger picture,” the queen said ahead of a 2014 referendum on Scottish secession, in what appeared to be a message to politicians. Scots voted to remain in the United Kingdom.

MORE EGALITARIAN

Over time, Britain evolved into a more egalitarian society, where the ruling class had to make way for a burgeoning middle class, where aristocrats no longer dominated the top universities and the majority of hereditary peers lost their seats in parliament’s House of Lords.

At first, Elizabeth relied heavily on her father’s old circle of advisers but gradually she brought in more career diplomats and business executives to the royal court as she and her husband Philip sought to modernise the monarchy.

“She’s shrewd, she’s compassionate, she has a good deal of insight, and she has the typical and traditional virtues that you associate with the British,” former Prime Minister John Major said amid celebrations to mark her 90th birthday.

“If you were designing someone to be monarch here in Britain, I think you would design someone exactly like Elizabeth II.”

In 1992, the queen responded to criticism about royal wealth by offering to pay income tax and cutting the number of her family members on the state payroll.

But her years on the throne were often far from smooth sailing.

She spent much of the early part of her reign saying farewell to the British Empire amassed under her forebears, from Kenya to Hong Kong. Barbados was the most recent country to dispense with her as head of state in November 2021.

However, she remained the monarch of 15 countries and head of the Commonwealth.

Her marriage to Philip, a Greek prince she wed aged 21, stayed solid for 73 years until his death in April 2021, but her sister, daughter and two of her sons were – very publicly – not so lucky in love.

She famously described as an “annus horribilis” the 40th anniversary of her accession in 1992 after three of her four children’s marriages failed and there was a fire at her Windsor Castle residence.

PRINCESS DIANA’S DEATH

The death in 1997 of Princess Diana, the divorced wife of Elizabeth’s eldest son Charles, inflicted even more damage on the family’s public prestige as the queen and other relatives initially remained silent, while huge crowds gathered in London to mourn the hugely popular Diana.

It was the only occasion during her reign when there was any serious suggestion that the monarchy’s days might be numbered. The period was famously captured in the 2006 Oscar-winning film “The Queen”, when Elizabeth was portrayed as earnest but misunderstood.

But while her children and other royals at times blundered in and out of tabloid headlines with marital woes and public indiscretions, Elizabeth’s own behaviour remained above reproach.

“It’s not that she’s never put a foot wrong, it’s more positive than that – she understands the British people,” said Professor Vernon Bogdanor, an expert in British constitutional history.

The main criticism levelled against her was that she was too solemn, distant and aloof.

Critics said the only time she had shown real emotion in public was when the royals bid a tearful farewell to their magnificent yacht Britannia, months after her stoical response to Diana’s death.

But according to those who worked closely with her, in private she was not the detached public figure most saw, but perceptive, funny, and keenly aware of the nation’s mood.

A former protection officer, Richard Griffin, recounted earlier this year how two American tourists approached him and the queen on her estate in Scotland and failed to recognise her.

When the visitors learned the officer knew the monarch, she agreed to take a picture of one of them with him. Griffin then photographed the tourists with the queen for good measure.

According to Griffin, the queen later joked how she would love to be a fly on the wall when the tourists showed their pictures to their friends. read more

LESS FORMALITY

In the last 20 years, backed by a far more professional and sophisticated media operation, there was still pomp and pageantry, but less formality around the queen and her family.

Millions turned out for celebrations to mark her 50th, 60th and 70th years on the throne, while her starring role in a spoof James Bond film became the highlight of the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympic Games.

In the short sequence she greeted Bond actor Daniel Craig at Buckingham Palace, uttering just four words before visual effects showed her apparently joining him on a helicopter and parachuting into the stadium.

A decade later at the start of a Platinum Jubilee pop concert, she again won huge plaudits for a pre-recorded comic sketch with Paddington Bear, in which she told the famous fictional character that she always kept his favourite snack – a marmalade sandwich – in her ever-present handbag.

The queen was said by her aides to crack jokes with world leaders, enjoy an easy familiarity with long-serving Commonwealth heads of government, and relish a wager on race horses. Racing was an enduring passion.

She was also accompanied for most of her reign by her corgi dogs, which earned a reputation for snapping at the heels of royal retainers and were descended from the dog called Susan she received as an 18th birthday gift from her parents.

“What we actually know about the queen is remarkably little,” said Matthew Dennison, a biographer of Elizabeth.