Platinum Jubilee: When did baby Elizabeth realize she was going to be Queen?

It is often said that Queen Elizabeth II lived out the first decade of her life with limited expectations of her royal destiny. She was, apparently, a carefree child who spent her time playing with her horses and dogs, free from what lay ahead.

This Sunday marks the 70th anniversary of her accession to the throne. The situation of young Elizabeth, daughter of Prince Bertie, was similar to that of Princess Beatrice, daughter of Prince Andrew, Duke of York today, as she was far from any serious possibility of assuming the British throne, let alone ruling over the more than 500 million or so inhabitants of what was then known as the British Commonwealth and the British Empire .

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December 1936 was a dramatic turning point in this scenario when her uncle David, King Edward VIII, stunned the world and his family by abdicating to marry Wallis Simpson, his divorced American mistress, prompting 10-year-old Elizabeth to The direct line of succession to the throne as her father, Prince Albert, took the title of King George VI, and his eldest daughter became his direct heir.

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But was the little princess really unprepared? “Papa will be king,” Elizabeth said to her 6-year-old sister Margaret Rose that December day, explaining the sudden cheering from the crowds that had gathered outside their residence in Piccadilly.

Does this mean you will be queen, Margaret asked?

"Yes, I think so," Elizabeth replied calmly.

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Her younger sister jokingly replied, "You poor thing." But Margaret chose to omit the joke when, retelling the story two decades later by historian Ben Pimlott, it focused on how the new heir to the throne seemed unwilling to joke. "Never bring it up again," said Princess Margaret to Pimlot.

So what did the 10-year-old Princess Elizabeth know? And when was that?

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Queen Elizabeth II's first example when her fate became clear was the nickname she gave her beloved grandfather, the bearded prankster King George V (1865-1936) "Grandpa England", showing just how adept the young girl grasped the essence of royal duties.

John Gore, his official biographer, acknowledged that George V was distinguished by "a lack of exercise of social talents, a lack of personal charm, and a lack of intellectual capacity as he was neither intelligent nor a masterful storyteller", in other words, the old king was exactly like most of his subjects but He had an acute sense of survival as well as of symbolism.

It was George V who shrewdly discarded the royal family's German surname of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha in 1917. It is therefore not surprising that, more than a century later, the world is deeply impressed by the skills employed by the Queen during her long and distinguished reign uniquely. I learned those skills firsthand from the founder of the House of Windsor.

George V's love of the sea was the source of the famous nickname given to his granddaughter "Lilibet" by the family. In April 1929, on her third birthday, she appeared on the cover of Time magazine as Princess Lilibet.

In the spring of 1929, the old King insisted on bringing his beloved granddaughter, aged only 3, to see him at Bognor Regis on the Sussex coast as one of two elements crucial to his recovery from a near-fatal lung operation (the second element he demanded was permission him smoking a cigarette).

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It was in those early months of 1929 that George V for the first time expressed his hopes that his granddaughter would one day ascend the British throne.

He told Lilibet's father, who was visiting him during his convalescence, "You'll see, your brother will never be king."

The Queen Mother recalled in later years: "I remember we thought what a ridiculous comment it was as we looked at each other and thought it was nonsense."

But the old king was adamant, as he told one of those close to him that his son David would "abdicate the throne", he predicted with exceptional intelligence what would happen seven years before it happened.

Not only was George V worried that his eldest son, David, would ruin his reign when he ascended the throne, but that Bertie, next in line to the throne himself, would be in poor health and suffer from lung congestion.

It seems that the old king was worried that the bumbling Duke of York would collapse under the pressure of royal responsibility, so he began pushing little Lilibet to the throne while she was young.

In the event that this occurred, the logical regent would have been Henry, Duke of Gloucester, third solid son of George V, who lived from 1900 to 1974.

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The prospect of Elizabeth, who was still a minor, ascending to the throne under the regency of her uncle Henry, may have reflected the anxieties of the ailing king. But Winston Churchill, then Chancellor of the Exchequer (and later the Queen's first Prime Minister) seemed to endorse the idea that the child might become Queen in the future.

The little girl has apparently absorbed some royal cuteness from her grandfather, King George V, building sand castles with him while he slowly recovers.

At Windsor Castle in the late 1920s, the Royal Librarian, Owen Morshead, observed the young Princess Elizabeth, born on April 21, 1926, moving in a pram to watch the Changing of the Guard when the captain of the guard cleverly walked over to greet her.

The officer caressed her, saying, "So please get out, ma'am?"

Moorshid said that the princess, sitting in her chariot (the stroller), tilted her covered head and then waved her hand to give permission.

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So at that very young age, Elizabeth had already recognized the importance of her grandfather's patriotic role as "Grandfather of England," and was evidently developing some knowledge of her own as well.

What effect does that have on a 3-year-old's mind when you discover that you just have to wave and nod to the band to play and the whole faction marches on at your behest?

Shortly after her fourth birthday, in the summer of 1930, a wax figure of Princess Elizabeth appeared for the first time in Madame Tussauds, sitting on a pony.

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Two years later, the princess appeared on a 6-cent Newfoundland postage stamp. Near the South Pole, the British flag was raised and the name "Princess Elizabeth Land" was given to an area of ​​350,000 square miles, an area larger than the entire United Kingdom, and claimed by Australia.

The Belfast News Letter in the summer of 1932 said: "Every time little Princess Elizabeth goes for a drive in the park people recognize the 6-year-old, and hats and handkerchiefs are raised on all sides."

For her seventh birthday in April 1933, Princess Elizabeth sent tea party invitations on her own invitation cards—blue paper embossed with a large "A" beneath the royal crown.

Her parents commissioned the artist Philippe de Laszlo to paint a picture in the form of a box of chocolates for their daughter, whom the painter described as "the most intelligent and beautiful little girl, she is very popular, and nowadays she is seen as the future Queen of Great Britain."

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This striking news was echoed by an American newspaper report in May 1934 that the future King Edward VIII was known to be “lackluster for the job he was born for.” Those close to the prince whispered that he did not look forward to to be king.” As a result, the child princess was to receive "a rigorous education where she is seen as in direct line of succession to the crown of England".

The probable source of that information, which was reported by the American press, and which was ignored by the British press, was Marion Crawford, the young governess of the princess, who was described as "very pretty", "very tough" and "very Scottish".

The nanny, nicknamed "Cruffie", became infamous for her best-selling book Little Princesses about raising Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret, revealing, for example, how she conspired with Grandmother Queen Mary to sabotage the princesses' mother's wish for her daughters to die Less time inside the classroom.

The nanny and grandmother worked together to inject more rigor into the sisters' education. The cruel Queen Mother felt that Princess Elizabeth should only read "the best kind of children's books" and often chose them herself, as well as "useful pastimes" for the future queen such as visits to the Tower of London.

It was impossible for anyone as loyal to the monarchy as Queen Mary to have failed to see the future queen in this favored granddaughter, her friend, the Countess of Airlie, recalled.

Meanwhile, Grandfather England set simpler goals. "For God's sake," said the Grandfather King to the Nanny, "teach Margaret and Lilibet to write well. That's all I ask of you. None of my children can write well. They all do it in exactly the same way. I like each hand to have its own character."

Foreign press reports at the time indicated that the young princess's chances of becoming "queen" were better than those of Queen Victoria when she was eight years old a century ago, as she was the daughter of the fourth son and Oman preceded her in line to the throne. No wonder Elizabeth knew such lofty expectations.

Elizabeth had told Crawfi: "If I ever become queen, I will make a law forbidding horse riding on Sundays, when horses must also rest."

Grandmother Queen Mary was alarmed when she noticed her granddaughter was writhing impatiently at prom, and asked her if she would like to go home.

Oh no, grandma, Elizabeth replied, we can't leave before the end, think of all the people who will be waiting to see us outside." The grandmother immediately asked an attendant to take the child out from a back road and take her home in a taxi.

Queen Mary did not want her eldest granddaughter to become addicted to flattery. The Queen and her husband realized how humility and a sense of service were the price royals had to pay for their royal status in a democratic age. Duty was their motto, and they both passed this crucial lesson on to their granddaughter, who is less important than order. They made sure that Lilibet grew up as a team player.

From all this evidence, it seems likely that the future Queen Elizabeth II would have gained a realistic idea of ​​what awaits her at the age of seven, at least three years before her uncle abdicated the throne.

Interestingly, Prince William revealed the same difficult truth to his son George at the reported age of seven, at the last moment before the boy faced the truth on his school playground in London.

Like his father, Charles, William expressed mixed feelings about being weighed down by the knowledge of his royal destiny from an early age. He wanted George to have only a few years of relative normality. Elizabeth may have enjoyed a natural life instinct through her early years before entering the line of succession to the throne. She may have been elevated to the role of captain, but she never forgot that she started out as a team player.

After her accession to the throne in 1952, Elizabeth II's reign split into two halves, the first relatively monotonous. Nearly three decades before Charles' tumultuous marriage in the 1980s to Diana, news of that marriage was the gift that continued to fuel the voracious media of the late 20th century. the past. It was when the childhood lessons that young Elizabeth learned from her grandparents began.

The Queen needed all the enduring humility she could muster to weather crises that felt like an avalanche of abdication: Charles, Diana, Camilla, the Windsor fire, Andrew with Fergie, Andrew without Fergie and then the passing of grandson Harry in 2020.

It was one crisis after another, and in the midst of it all, the monarchy was in safe hands.

Her dry sense of humor helped her. In 1992, the Queen disarmed the disaster of the Windsor fire and the collapse of three of her children's marriages by resorting to a Latin expression, as she was described smiling in 1992 as "once horrible", which is Latin for "ugly".

And when the embarrassed Labor Secretary Claire Short had to switch off her mobile phone because it stopped ringing during a meeting of the Privy Council, Queen Elizabeth jokingly said, "My dear, I hope it's not someone important?"

It seems that Elizabeth II, sharp-eyed and penetrating, absorbed from an early age the comedy of the royal show in which she was to play a major role.

In her Christmas address in 1991, she declared: "Let us not take ourselves too seriously, none of us have a monopoly on wisdom."

In 1933, according to the royal account, Lilibet confidently told her sister Margaret, born in 1930: "I am the third, and you are the fourth."

No, you are not. I am 3 years old, and you are 7 years old," replied the small and confused Margaret.

And it took a while for Margaret to realize that her older sister wasn't talking about age. Elizabeth was referring to the position of each of them in the order of succession to the throne after their grandfather, the first being Uncle David, Baba the second, and Lilibet the third. The seven-year-old was right in what the world was beginning to think.

Following the abdication of her uncle David, and two steps ahead of the challenge of becoming number one in line to the throne, her grandmother Lady Strathmore described the 10-year-old princess as having been "praying fervently for a brother".

But there was no little brother coming to save her. The young girl who grew up among horses and dogs now had to prepare herself for the challenge of eventually becoming the "Grandmother of England" and the "Grandmother" of Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland too.

Robert Lacey is a British historian and biographer who has made a special study of Britain's modern constitutional monarchy. His autobiography Her Majesty: Elizabeth II and the House of Windsor was published in 1977. Since 2015 he has been the historical consultant for the Netflix series The Crown.