Queen Elizabeth II Dies: World Mourns Queen Elizabeth II, Britain’s Bastion of Stability

Buckingham Palace said the queen, who was 96, died peacefully at Balmoral Castle, her estate in the Scottish Highlands. Her son became Britain’s new monarch, King Charles III.

Follow today’s coverage on the death of Queen Elizabeth II.

Mark Landler

LONDON — Queen Elizabeth II, whose seven-decade reign made her the only sovereign that most Britons had ever known, died on Thursday at her summer estate in Scotland, thrusting a bereaved country into a momentous transition at a time of political and economic upheaval.

The queen’s death at Balmoral Castle, announced by Buckingham Palace at 6:30 p.m., elevated her eldest son and heir, Charles, to the throne. He is Britain’s first king since 1952, taking the name King Charles III.

At 96, visibly frail, and having survived multiple health scares, the queen had been in the twilight of her reign for some years. But news of her death still landed with a thunderclap across the British realm, where the queen was a revered figure and an anchor of stability.

In itself, the queen’s death is a watershed moment. But it also comes at a time of acute uncertainty in Britain. A new prime minister, Liz Truss, has been in office for only three days, following months of political turmoil in the British government. The country faces its gravest economic threats in a generation, besieged by inflation, soaring energy bills and the specter of a prolonged recession.

The death of Elizabeth sets in motion a royal transition more complicated than any change in prime ministers. It will be meticulously choreographed in its rituals, but what kind of monarchy it will produce is a mystery. At 73, Charles is the oldest person to become monarch in British history — a familiar figure, to be sure — but one who has made clear he wants to transform the nature of the royal family.

“The Queen died peacefully at Balmoral this afternoon,” the palace said in a stark, two-line statement affixed to the front gate of Buckingham Palace. “The King and Queen Consort will remain at Balmoral this evening and return to London tomorrow,” it said, referring to Charles and his wife, Camilla.

The announcement came after an anguished vigil of several hours, following a lunchtime statement by the palace that the queen had been placed under medical supervision. Family members rushed to her side at Balmoral Castle, suggesting this was no ordinary medical crisis but that the end was near.

News of the queen’s decline began circulating as Parliament was debating an emergency aid package to protect Britons from huge increases in gas and electricity bills. After a senior minister whispered in her ear, Ms. Truss rose to leave the chamber. Hours later, clad in black, she emerged from Downing Street to pay tribute.

“Queen Elizabeth II was the rock on which modern Britain was built,” Ms. Truss said. “She was the very spirit of Great Britain, and that spirit will endure.” Ms. Truss concluded by swearing fealty to the new monarch, disclosing for the first time that he would be known as King Charles, rather than by another name, as is a monarch’s prerogative.

“God save the king,” Ms. Truss declared.

The new king said in a statement, “We mourn profoundly the passing of a cherished sovereign and much-loved mother. I know her loss will be deeply felt throughout the country, the realms and Commonwealth, and by countless people around the world.”

Tributes also poured in from around the world. President Biden and his wife, Jill, said in a statement that the queen was “the first British monarch to whom people all around the world could feel a personal and immediate connection.” Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, said she had embodied the “continuity and unity” of the British nation for over 70 years.

As dusk fell on London, large crowds began to gather in front of Buckingham Palace, echoing the mass demonstrations of grief after the news that Princess Diana had been killed in a car accident in Paris in 1997.

Others lingered on street corners, staring at news updates on their phones. In South London, Tiana Krahn alluded to Britain’s mounting problems, saying the queen’s death came at the “worst possible moment in history.”

“We are going to see some crazy falling apart,” she added. “There was something solid about that, about knowing that she was in charge.”

Many of those who crowded pubs on Thursday evening described being at a loss as to how they should feel. “I don’t think people around the world realized just how brilliant she was,” said one customer, Jeff Nightingill. “It’s like losing your grandmother. My wife will be in tears when I get home tonight.”

The queen’s death had none of the awful suddenness of Diana’s. The stark language in the palace’s statement on Thursday was highly unusual and left little doubt of the gravity of the situation.

By midafternoon, the queen’s children and several of her grandchildren had converged on Balmoral, a sprawling 19th-century castle in the Scottish Highlands where the queen and her family have long spent their summers.

Charles and Camilla had been staying in a royal residence not far from Balmoral, and he was reportedly paying regular visits to his mother. Her daughter, Princess Anne, was also in Scotland already.

A Royal Air Force jet carried several other members of the royal family to the nearby city of Aberdeen, where they boarded a motorcade to Balmoral. That included her two other sons, Andrew and Edward, and Prince William, the eldest son of Charles, who is now the heir to the throne.

Prince Harry, who with his American-born wife, Meghan, had a bitter rupture with the royal family, made his way to Scotland on his own, arriving well after the queen’s death was announced. The couple saw the queen at Windsor Castle recently to introduce her to her newest great-granddaughter, Lilibet, who bears the childhood nickname that Elizabeth’s parents gave her.

The cause of the queen’s death was not known; the palace has said in the past that she has problems with mobility. She recovered from a bout with Covid-19 in February, which she later said had left her exhausted.

With no further updates after the midday statement that her doctors were “concerned,” there was a mounting sense of portent as the day unfolded. The BBC suspended its regular programming to carry continuous news coverage, its cameras trained on the iron gates of Balmoral, which swung open periodically as vehicles arrived or left. Heavy rain showers added to the gloom.

The vigil came after a week that offered a powerful reminder of the queen’s role in Britain’s constitutional monarchy. On Tuesday, she met Ms. Truss and her outgoing predecessor, Boris Johnson, both of the Conservative Party. In a photograph, a smiling, if fragile-looking, queen greeted Ms. Truss before a roaring fireplace, a walking stick in her left hand.

Mr. Johnson, who spoke to the queen on an almost weekly basis for his three years in office, issued an emotional statement upon her death.

“As is so natural with human beings, it is only when we face the reality of our loss that we truly understand what has gone,” Mr. Johnson said. “It is only really now that we grasp how much she meant for us, how much she did for us, how much she loved us.”

By tradition, the monarch invites a new prime minister to form a government after the outgoing one submits his or her resignation. This time, the ceremony, known as kissing hands, was moved from Buckingham Palace to Balmoral on the advice of her doctors to spare the queen the need to travel to London.

Beyond such formal rituals, the queen was a symbol of continuity and constancy over eight decades. She served as a living link to the glories of World War II Britain, presided over its fitful adjustment to a post-colonial, post-imperial era, and saw it through its bitter divorce from the European Union.

There is no analogous British figure who will be mourned as deeply — Winston Churchill might come closest — or whose death will provoke a greater reckoning with the identity and future of the country. Her extraordinary longevity lent her a sense of permanence that makes her death, even at an advanced age, somehow shocking.

Her steadfastness also helped the House of Windsor weather its own upheavals. Dignified and dutiful, she managed to rise above the tabloid headlines, whether about her troubled sister, Princess Margaret; Charles and his failed marriage to Diana; her second son, Andrew, who settled a sex abuse case linked to his ties with the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein; or the soap opera of Harry and Meghan.

One well-documented misstep came after Diana’s death, when the queen declined for days to leave Balmoral to join in the nation’s grieving. She finally expressed her sorrow in a televised address, speaking, she said, as a “grandmother.”

The queen’s declining health had been a recurring cause of concern for the past few years, forcing her to cancel many public appearances, even much-loved events like her annual commemoration of Britain’s wartime dead.

She had largely retreated to Windsor Castle, her country residence outside London, though this year she kept to her summer habit of decamping for Balmoral, where she enjoyed walking on the estate’s craggy hills and sylvan dales.

During the Platinum Jubilee in June, marking her 70 years on the throne, a smiling monarch appeared on the balcony of Buckingham Palace to watch a parade and a Royal Air Force flyover in her honor. But she skipped most of the rest of the celebrations, including a gala concert held in Queen Victoria Square, in front of the palace. She stopped traveling outside Britain several years ago.

As the queen receded from public view, Charles took on many of her public duties, including the state opening of Parliament and the conferring of knighthoods.

In April 2021, the queen lost her husband of 73 years, Prince Philip, who died a few weeks before his 100th birthday. At Philip’s memorial service, she sat, masked and alone, in a choir stall at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle, a poignant symbol of the pandemic’s social distancing restrictions.

Even near the end, in her declining state, the queen was a constant, revered figure in the public life of her country. During the depths of the pandemic, she addressed a socially isolated nation, assuring Britons, in the words of Vera Lynn’s beloved World War II-era song, that “We will meet again.”

Megan Specia and Emma Bubola contributed reporting.

Yan Zhuang

Australia’s Parliament will be suspended for 15 days to mourn the queen’s death. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese defended the measures on Friday as criticism mounted about the length of the pause, saying the government would continue normal business during this period. In the state of Victoria, lawmakers will be required by the state constitution to swear a new oath of allegiance to King Charles before parliament can resume.

Anna Schaverien

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When Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation in 1953 became the first to be broadcast live, many viewers had bought a television specifically for the event.

Further technological revolutions would roll along, and the British monarchy, despite its renowned reverence for tradition, would embrace the accelerating changes — though not always immediately.

In an interview for a 2018 BBC documentary about her coronation, the queen recounted having been initially reluctant to have the event televised. But during Elizabeth’s reign, the monarchy adopted — slowly, but never too far behind the curve — new ways to connect with a public that readily devoured any glimpse of royal life.

During the queen’s seven-decade reign, the Christmas message, first broadcast by radio in 1932 by her grandfather, became, in 1957, televised. Another half-century later, it was modernized again, going out via a livestream on the royal family’s newly created YouTube channel.

The monarchy had its own website as early as 1997. It joined Twitter in 2009 and started a royal family Instagram account a decade later. Younger royals followed suit.

Each foray revealed a little more of life behind the palace gates to a voracious public, with one highlight being the queen’s participation at the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games in London.

With the help of digital technology, viewers watched agog as a video showed the queen at Buckingham Palace greeting the actor Daniel Craig in his guise as James Bond and appearing to embark with him on a helicopter journey across London. Then, in a hint at her humor and with thanks to more than a sprinkling of movie magic, the pair seemed to parachute into the stadium.

Moments later, as the actual monarch made her entrance on foot to a roaring crowd, one of the show’s commentators noted, “Never can Her Majesty have been introduced to her public in a manner like that.”

The New York Times

Queen Elizabeth II, already Britain’s longest-serving monarch, passed another milestone in 2017 when she and Prince Philip became the longest-married couple of the country’s royal family.

Where and when they first met remains unclear. He was invited to dine on the royal yacht when Elizabeth was 13 or 14. He was also invited to stay at Windsor Castle around that time while on leave from the navy, and there were reports that he visited the royal family at Balmoral, its country estate in Scotland.

After that weekend, Elizabeth told her father, King George VI, that the naval officer was “the only man I could ever love.” Her father at first cautioned her to be patient.

Whisked off on a royal tour to South Africa, Elizabeth was said to have written to Philip three times a week. By the time she returned to England, Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark had renounced his foreign titles and become Lt. Philip Mountbatten, a British subject.

The engagement was announced on July 10, 1947. That year, on the eve of the wedding, Lieutenant Mountbatten was made the Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Merioneth and Baron Greenwich, and was given the title His Royal Highness.

The crown princess, 21, married the prince, who was 26, on Nov. 20, 1947, in a ceremony complete with horse-drawn coaches and crowds lining the route between Buckingham Palace and Westminster Abbey.

The birth of their first child, Prince Charles, on Nov. 14, 1948, at Buckingham Palace, was followed by Princess Anne’s, in 1950; Prince Andrew’s, in 1960, after Elizabeth had become queen; and Prince Edward’s, in 1964.

After the marriage, Prince Philip took command of the frigate Magpie in Malta. But King George VI had lung cancer, and when his condition worsened, it was announced that Philip would take no more naval appointments. In 1952, the young couple were in Kenya, their first stop on an overseas tour, when word arrived on Feb. 6 that the king was dead. Philip broke the news to his wife.

The same year, the new queen ordained that Philip should be “first gentleman in the land,” giving him “a place of pre-eminence and precedence next to Her Majesty.”

By royal warrant, the queen gave Philip the title Prince of the United Kingdom, bringing her husband’s name into the royal line. Yet Philip occupied a peculiar place on the world stage as the husband of a queen whose powers were largely ceremonial. He was essentially a second-fiddle figurehead, accompanying her on royal visits and sometimes standing in for her.

Yonette Joseph

From Saudi Arabia, King Salman and the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman sent condolences on Friday, according to the state news agency SPA. “Her majesty was a role model for leadership that will be immortalized in history,” the king said. The prince noted, “Her majesty was an example of wisdom, love and peace, and the world remembers today the great impact and the great deeds she did throughout her career.”

Mark Landler

Over the course of seven decades, the queen met every American president since Harry S. Truman, save Lyndon B. Johnson, and was exposed to a range of presidential gestures, quirks and the odd faux pas.

As a princess and the heir to Britain’s throne, she visited President Harry S. Truman in Washington and gave him a gift from her ailing father, King George VI. Later, as Queen Elizabeth II, she danced with President Gerald R. Ford and rode on horseback alongside President Ronald Reagan.

She shared a scone recipe with Dwight D. Eisenhower, went to a baseball game with George Bush and ribbed his son, George W. Bush, for a slip of the tongue in which he suggested that she had been around for America’s independence in 1776.

Yet few encounters compared with her meeting with Donald J. Trump in 2018. The president appeared to step directly in front of the monarch while the two were inspecting the honor guard at Windsor Castle, forcing her to step around him. The image set off a social-media storm, with royal commentators one-upping each other about the gravity of the breach in diplomatic protocol.

In June 2021, she welcomed President Biden to Windsor Castle during his first overseas trip as the U.S. leader. “We had a long talk,” Mr. Biden told reporters after the meeting. “She was very generous.”

“I don’t think she’d be insulted, but she reminded me of my mother,” he added. “In terms of the look of her and just the generosity.”

Javier C. Hernández

A concert by the Philadelphia Orchestra that had been scheduled for Thursday evening at the Royal Albert Hall in London as part of the Proms, the BBC’s popular classical music festival, was abruptly canceled after the queen’s death.

“It is with great sadness that we have learnt of the death of Her Majesty the Queen, and as a mark of respect, this evening’s Prom with the Philadelphia Orchestra will not be going ahead,” the Proms said in a statement Thursday.

The ensemble, which had planned to play Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony under the direction of its music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, instead paid tribute to the queen when ticket holders entered the hall. The musicians and Mr. Nézet-Séguin gathered onstage for a moment of silence, and then played “God Save the Queen” and Elgar’s “Nimrod” from the “Enigma” Variations.

“It was a somber but tender occasion,” Matías Tarnopolsky, the president and chief executive of the orchestra and the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia, said in a telephone interview from London.

The Royal Opera House canceled its performance of “Don Giovanni” on Thursday in honor of the queen, a patron of the company, but the Society of London Theaters said that performances would continue through the official period of mourning.

It was not immediately clear when the Proms would proceed with its scheduled programming.

Liam Stack

Christians celebrated Thursday as the birthday of the Virgin Mary. At St. Thomas Episcopal Church on 5th Avenue in Manhattan, the priest celebrating evening Mass compared Queen Elizabeth to the mother of God. He said she “lived a life, like Mary, of devoted service to her vocation.”

Michael D. Shear

President Biden spoke about Queen Elizabeth briefly at the beginning of a speech to the Democratic National Committee Thursday evening: “I just stopped by the British Embassy to sign the condolence book in her honor. I had the opportunity to meet her before she passed and she was an incredibly gracious and decent woman. The thoughts and prayers of the American people or with the people in the United Kingdom in the Commonwealth and their grief.”

Nicholas Fandos and Liam Stack

The mourners began pouring in to Myers of Keswick, a small British grocery store in Manhattan, on Thursday morning even before Elizabeth II’s death, on the hunt for tea towels, royal memorabilia, Cornish pasties and other small tokens of Britishness to mark a moment in history.

But when the news that she had died finally arrived via telephone, Irene Donnolly, a shopkeeper, knew just what to do: After listening to “God Save the Queen” in the shop’s tiny kitchen, she pulled a framed portrait of the queen off the wall and placed it carefully in the window, nestled in Union Jack bunting.

“It’s the end of an era,” said Ms. Donnolly, who has worked at the shop since she moved to New York from Ireland two decades ago. “I can’t even speak.”

England’s longest-reigning monarch was mourned across the world on Thursday as an unrivaled source of constancy, whose reign helped shape the modern world order and Britain’s colonial legacy. But in few places outside the United Kingdom was the outpouring so striking as in the United States, a faraway former British colony she never ruled and only occasionally visited but still managed to transfix, in one way or another, for generations.

From Independence Hall in Philadelphia to the seaside California home of Prince Harry, the queen’s grandson, Americans crowed about the “special relationship” between the two nations (a favorite term of American and British politicians), gawked at the rarefied world of wealth and celebrity that surrounded her (tens of millions of Americans tuned in for Harry’s wedding to the American actor Meghan Markle) and marveled at her sheer longevity.

Though the queen was never actually a part of it, few people were firmer fixtures in American life for longer. In 70 years on the job, Elizabeth served alongside 14 American presidents going back to Harry Truman, sitting on the throne across the Atlantic for almost a third of the history of the United States as an independent nation.

“Americans have a craving for celebrity, an admiration for wealth and an interest, I think, in figures who step out of politics,” said Maya Jasanoff, a Harvard historian who studies the British Empire, noting that the queen largely remained above the passing political fray. “The royal family has managed to fill that yearning for Americans through decades.”

“Let it not be forgotten that early in the history of the American republic, there were some conversations about whether George Washington ought to be a monarch,” she added in an interview.

In modern Washington, where partisan forces are once again testing the foundations of the American republican experiment, Republicans and Democrats briefly set aside white-hot domestic disputes to share their admiration. One of them, President Biden, who first met the queen in 1982, called her “a stateswoman of unmatched dignity and constancy.” Another, former President Donald J. Trump, took a more personal view: “What a grand and beautiful lady she was,” he said.

Both parties promised friendship and support for her son and successor, King Charles III, whose government has been working with the Biden administration to orchestrate an international response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

At the marble Capitol, which still bears scars from British ransacking during the War of 1812, the House of Representatives lowered flags to half-staff and planned to pass a bereavement resolution next Tuesday, then adjourn to honor the queen’s memory, as it did after the death of her father, George VI, in 1952. Elizabeth was the first and only British monarch to address a joint meeting of Congress in 1991.

Miles away, outside the British embassy, tributes were left in words and flowers Thursday afternoon.

Meg Massey, 36, a nonfiction writer who stopped by, said the monarchy’s “colonialist history” was fair game for criticism. But as an American long fascinated by the royal family, she said, “we get to watch the drama without having to pay for it.”

She said that Elizabeth had promised as a young woman to serve her country for the rest of her life, and she did. “You can also honor and celebrate that,” she added.

That service did not inspire solely admiration. Though she ruled through the gradual shrinking of the British Empire and the independence of former colonies, for some Americans, Elizabeth remained the symbol of British imperialism. Many other Americans see the monarchy as an anachronistic and costly institution.

“I have no reason to cast aspersions on the queen herself as a person, but the institution was increasingly one that was bound up in the 19th and into the 20th centuries with consolidation of empire,” Ms. Jasanoff said.

Tributes poured forth from unexpected corners of the country — some that felt worlds away from the stately confines of Balmoral Castle in Scotland, where the queen spent her final days.

The University of Maryland Terrapins shared an image of a commemorative program from October 1957, when Elizabeth attended an American football game in College Park on her first state visit to the United States.

At Madame Tussauds, the wax museum in Times Square modeled after the London original, the ninth-floor display where visitors can usually “sip tea” with the queen was replaced with a wooden table and guest book for condolences.

A British-themed pub in downtown Philadelphia planned to serve the queen’s favorite chocolate dessert. Nearby, at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, David Lubin, a guide escorting tourists from Israel, pointed to her endurance and adherence to the rules.

“She was a strong woman,” said Mr. Lubin, 64. “She kept the tradition, and she didn’t bend, but she respected the democracy.”

Across the country, in Montecito, Calif., the sun-drenched coastal enclave where Prince Harry and Ms. Markle relocated two years ago, Elena Hancock, 26, said the couple were often the source of “hot gossip.” But not the queen.

An avid viewer of “The Crown,” an award-winning Netflix series about Elizabeth’s life, Ms. Hancock said she had viewed the queen as timeless.

“She’s kind of one of those people you think is always going to be there,” she said.

As for the newest occupant of the throne, Elizabeth’s son, King Charles III, some Americans were less than effusive.

Jennifer Myers-Pulidore, the owner of Myers of Keswick in Manhattan who was born in America to British parents, laughed out loud when asked about Charles, shifting the conversation to his beloved late ex-wife.

“I loved Princess Diana, and that is all I will say,” she smiled. “I’ll leave it at that.”

Reporting was contributed by Jon Hurdle in Philadelphia, Sarah Maslin Nir in New York, Ariel Sabar in Washington, Jill Cowan in Santa Monica, Calif., and Jackie Sedley in Montecito, Calif.

Ben Shpigel

Praising the queen for “her example of devotion to duty,” Pope Francis said in a telegram that he was “deeply saddened” by her death. The Vatican’s news channel also released a video of the queen’s meetings with four different popes.

Vladimir V. Putin, the president of Russia, sent a telegram to Britain’s new monarch, King Charles III, wishing him “courage and perseverance” after the loss of his mother.

“The most important events of the recent history of the United Kingdom are inextricably linked with the name of Her Majesty,” Mr. Putin said in the telegram published by the Kremlin. “For many decades, Elizabeth II rightfully enjoyed the love and respect of her subjects, as well as authority on the world stage.”

Olaf Scholz, the chancellor of Germany, said he will forever remember the queen’s commitment to German-British reconciliation after World War II and her “wonderful humor.”

President Ursula von der Leyen of the European Commission said on Twitter that the queen’s reign “defined the history of your nation and our continent.” King Philippe and Queen Mathilde of Belgium said on Twitter that the queen was an “extraordinary personality.” The former chairman of the African Union, President Felix-Antoine Tshisekedi of the Democratic Republic of Congo, expressed “his sadness” on Twitter about the queen’s death, calling it “an immense loss for the United Kingdom and for the world.”

President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt said on Twitter that the queen led her country for decades with “great wisdom,” and he expressed “full confidence” in the ability of the new king to lead Britain forward. President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela also expressed his condolences.

Farnaz Fassihi at the United Nations, Yonette Josephin Mexico City, Abdi Latif Dahirin Nairobi, Kenya,Ivan Nechepurenko in Tbilisi, Georgia,Gaia Pianigianiin Florence, Italy, and Matina Stevis-Gridneff in Brussels contributed reporting.

Alex Marshall

If you had to pick a single image by which to remember Queen Elizabeth II, you’d be overwhelmed by choice.

She was one of the most familiar figures in modern history: the subject of countless photographs and hundreds of official and unofficial portraits. During her seven-decade reign, her face appeared on postage stamps, British currency and even record sleeves.

To select the most iconic image would be “almost impossible,” said Paul Moorhouse, an art curator who in 2012 organized “The Queen: Art and Image,” a giant survey of portraits of the monarch, held at the National Portrait Gallery in London.

But when pushed, Mr. Moorhouse said that one image did stand out for him: Queen Elizabeth II’s official coronation photograph, taken by Cecil Beaton in 1953.

The image shows the queen wearing the glittering — and weighty — regalia of a monarch for the first time, including the imperial state crown, a replica of one made for Queen Victoria’s coronation. Elizabeth holds an orb and scepter, while on her right hand is the coronation ring, a symbol of her being wedded to the nation.

“It has to be the most extraordinary image of her,” Mr. Moorhouse said, adding that it captured her at the moment of transformation from princess to ruler.

“It is, however, strangely unreal and even deceptive,” he said. The image looks as if it were taken in Westminster Abbey at the official ceremony, but it was actually shot at Buckingham Palace afterward, with the queen posing before an artificial backdrop.

“Beaton’s wonderful portrait is a masterpiece of artifice,” Mr. Moorhouse said, “but it set the standard. From this point onward, the creation of beguiling appearances would inform images of the queen who, even now, remains an enigma.”

Tess Felder

The woman who would go on to become Britain’s longest-reigning monarch wasn’t even likely to be queen when she was born. But the possibility that she would accede to the throne increased greatly with the abdication of her uncle, who had been King Edward VIII, in December 1936. Elizabeth was 10.

Nor is it likely that Princess Elizabeth envisioned assuming the crown in her mid-20s. But the death of her father, King George VI, in February 1952 propelled her to the position of sovereign at just 25.

She learned the news while in Kenya on a tour of Commonwealth countries, and it was her husband, Prince Philip, who delivered the message to her.

As the BBC World Service described it: “The royal visitors stepped out into the hot sunshine of Nairobi. No one knew then that the girl who would arrive here as Princess Elizabeth would leave again five days later as queen.”

In some respects, though, she had already taken up the mind-set of monarch.

In a message recorded for her 21st birthday from Cape Town in April 1947, she told fellow young people across the Commonwealth, “Now that we are coming to manhood and womanhood, it is surely a great joy to us all to think that we should be able to take some of the burden off the shoulders of our elders who have fought and worked and suffered to protect our childhood.”

Urging them to “go forward together with an unwavering faith, a high courage and a quiet heart,” she beseeched them to help transform the Commonwealth into “an even grander thing — more free, more prosperous, more happy and a more powerful influence for good in the world than it has been in the greatest days of our forefathers.”

“To accomplish that,” she said, “we must give nothing less than the whole of ourselves. There is a motto which has been borne by many of my ancestors, a noble motto: ‘I serve.’”

Concluding what was a sort of rite of passage, the princess then offered what she described as a solemn act of dedication: “I declare before you all 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.”

Mark Landler

Even before the death of Queen Elizabeth II, her son and heir, Charles, had been reshaping the family to continue on after her.

With the queen’s reign in its twilight, Charles had moved to streamline the royal family and reallocate its duties — a downsizing forced by the loss of stalwart figures like his father, Prince Philip; by the rancorous departure of Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan; and by the messy internal exile of Prince Andrew.

Charles, as Prince of Wales, had taken over some of his mother’s duties, including overseas trips and investiture ceremonies, in which people are granted knighthoods. He accompanied her to the state opening of Parliament. And he spoke up after the furor over his brother Andrew’s ties to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, pressing to have him banished from public duties.

The biggest challenge for Charles has been reconciling the family’s workload with its reduced ranks. He has long favored a slimmed-down monarchy, built around him and his wife, Camilla; Prince William and his wife, Kate; and Harry and his wife, Meghan. Princess Anne, Charles’s younger sister, also remains a full-time royal. But the decision of Harry and Meghan to withdraw from their duties and move to California blew a hole in those plans.

Charles found his stature enhanced by his father’s funeral in April 2021, according to royal watchers. Some pointed to the dignified way he carried himself as he headed the procession behind Philip’s coffin. Others noted his un-self-conscious display of grief.

Then 72, Charles seemed to have finally emerged from the long shadow of his father, with whom he had a complicated relationship, to be the family’s patriarch.

“He’s looking like a much more confident character, happier in his own skin,” Penny Junor, a royal historian, said at the time. “He is now the paterfamilias of the family, which means he has new roles and responsibilities.”

In May, he filled in for her at the opening of Parliament, one of the monarch’s most solemn constitutional duties, as she missed the ceremony for only the third time in 70 years.

Yet Charles must also reckon with his eldest son, William, who is in line to be king after him. Royal watchers have said that William has strong opinions about the structure of the family and how its duties should be reallocated.

Andrew Testa

The crowd outside Buckingham Palace has continued to grow through the evening. The gates of the palace, which was the queen’s primary residence, remained closed, but people congregated around it and on the Queen Victoria Memorial directly adjacent to the grounds.

Emma Bubola

At the Rajmahal sweet shop in East London, when an Indian customer said British monarchs caused some evil in her country, a debate started. “She benefitted from historical privileges like the empire,” said Julie Begum, a British customer of Bangladeshi heritage. “But there won’t be another monarch who has the same respect,” she added. “They should just stop it now, we should be a republic.”

Nadav Gavrielov

The lights on the Eiffel Tower will be turned off tonight at midnight in Paris to honor the queen. The Empire State Building in New York will be illuminated in purple and silver.

Liam Stack

Irene Donnolly, a shopkeeper at a small British grocery store in Manhattan, stood behind a display case of steak and kidney pies and sausage rolls with the phone pressed to her ear and a grave look on her face. She cleared her throat and delivered the news to her co-workers.

“She’s passed away,” Ms. Donnolly said. “It’s official. They’ve just announced it.”

Like the other workers, Ms. Donnolly had spent the morning monitoring the news about Queen Elizabeth. Within moments of the announcement of her death, the cooks huddled in the tiny kitchen of the shop, Myers of Keswick, and turned the radio to a recording of “God Save the Queen.” Then Ms. Donnolly and her co-worker, Elena Saldana, climbed onto a chair to pull a framed portrait of the queen off the wall and placed it carefully in the shop window, surrounded by Union Jack bunting.

“I feel a bit shocked — I didn’t think it would happen that fast,” said Ms. Donnolly, who has worked at Myers, which is in the West Village, since she moved to New York from Ireland two decades ago. “It’s the end of an era. I can’t even speak.”

For 37 years, Myers of Keswick has supplied British New Yorkers and admirers of the United Kingdom with food items like Cornish pasties, British cleaning supplies, and all manner of candies and snacks.

On Thursday, Myers and other British businesses in the West Village also became a busy gathering place for admirers of the queen — and for journalists who wanted to interview them.

A nearby restaurant, Tea and Sympathy, was surrounded by camera crews at one point during the afternoon, with diners outnumbered by loitering reporters. “This not a normal day at the office,” scoffed a waitress, who declined to tell any in the media her name.

All morning, Ms. Donnolly said, Myers had been getting calls from people eager to buy up any Queen Elizabeth memorabilia they had in stock, like the tea towels folded neatly near the cash register, or the plates and cups on a high shelf in the back.

Others came to buy small tokens of Britishness — a can of soda, a bag of chips — on a day when they wanted to feel connected to each other and to the historical moment.

“Today just seemed like the time to step in here,” said Shauna Niequist, 46, an essayist who lives in Chelsea.

She stopped into Myers on a whim while on her way to pick up her children from the first day of school. She had studied in Britain and Ireland as an undergraduate, and her time overseas as a young woman affected her greatly, she said. The queen’s death had left her feeling shaken.

She hoped buying snacks for her children might help her set the stage for a conversation with them about the import of the day.

“My kids are 10 and 15 years old, and they probably don’t know anything about her, but to me this is a major loss,” said Ms. Niequiest, a packet of gingernuts cookies and a bag of winegum candies in her hands. “I’m a big food person, and I thought connecting memories and stories to food and flavors might help.”

The New York Times

The New York Times

A look back at Queen Elizabeth II’s 70-year reign, from her wedding to Prince Philip in 1947 to her Platinum Jubilee earlier this year.

Isabella Kwai

For Britons with conflicted views of the monarchy, only some were criticizing the institution in the wake of the queen’s death, often drawing accusations of being disrespectful. “I don’t think you can have a family paid for by the state be free of scrutiny,” said Mo Varley, a teacher in Sheffield.

Kaly Soto

The news of the queen’s death reverberated throughout Britain, bringing a tidal wave of condolences from the country’s leaders.

The new prime minister, Liz Truss, who met the queen in Scotland on Tuesday, described the British monarch as “the rock on which modern Britain was built. Our country has grown and flourished under her reign. Britain is the great country it is today because of her.”

Ms. Truss’s predecessor, Boris Johnson, who saw the queen on Tuesday when he left the prime minister’s post, said on Twitter that, “In the hearts of every one of us, there is an ache at the passing of our Queen, a deep and personal sense of loss — far more intense, perhaps, than we expected.”

Mr. Johnson commented on her permanence in British life. “She seemed so timeless and so wonderful that I am afraid that we had come to believe, like children, that she would just go on and on.”

Former Prime Minister John Major, who served as prime minister from 1990 to 1997, urged Britain to stand with the royal family during “this moment of deep sadness.” He remembered the queen as the “heart and soul of our nation.”

“In her public duties she was selfless and wise, with a wonderful generosity of spirit,” he said. “That is how she lived — and how she led.”

Tony Blair, who followed Mr. Major as prime minister, mourned in a statement the loss of the “matriarch of our nation, the figure who more than any other brought our country together, kept us in touch with our better nature, personified everything which makes us proud to be British.”

Former Prime Minister David Cameron, who served as Britain’s leader from 2010 to 2016, remembered his weekly meetings with the queen, saying he was grateful to “call on her sage advice and wise counsel.”

Many leaders referred to the queen as a source of stability, especially through difficult times. The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said she exemplified what it meant to be British and inspired “hope during the most testing of times.”

The global leader of the Anglican Church, Justin Welby, said the nation was grieving “the person whose steadfast loyalty, service and humility helped us make sense of who we are through the decades of extraordinary change in our world, nation and society.”

Yonette Joseph

The former chairman of the African Union, President Felix-Antoine Tshisekedi of the Democratic Republic of Congo, expressed “his sadness” on Twitter about the queen’s death, calling it “an immense loss for the United Kingdom and for the world.”

Jill Cowan

At Ye Olde King’s Head, a hub for British expats steps from the beach in Santa Monica, Calif., televisions were tuned to the BBC and a shrine featuring a portrait of the queen and red roses had been set up outside. Lisa Powers, the manager, was bracing for a sad, busy day. “We try and do what we can to bring people together for these big events,” she said.

Enjoli Liston

Britain’s prime minister, Liz Truss, was informed about Queen Elizabeth II’s death at 4.30 p.m. B.S.T. (11:30 a.m. E.T.), a spokesperson for the leader said. Ms. Truss spoke with King Charles III shortly after she addressed the nation outside 10 Downing Street. The prime minister is expected to chair an operational meeting with ministers shortly.

Michael D. Shear

WASHINGTON — President Biden hailed Queen Elizabeth II as “more than a monarch,” saying in a statement after her death on Thursday that the queen, who was 96, had borne witness to seven decades of “unprecedented human advancement and the forward march of human dignity.”

The queen, Mr. Biden said, “defined an era.”

White House officials said that the president had been briefed on Thursday morning about the queen’s sudden health concerns, and that he expressed his thoughts to Prime Minister Liz Truss of Britain during a previously scheduled video meeting with allied leaders.

The queen’s death was formally announced shortly after the meeting ended, White House officials said. Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, was in the middle of her daily briefing with reporters when the official royal Twitter account reported her death.

In his statement, Mr. Biden noted the queen’s impact on British citizens and her global influence beyond her country.

“She was the first British monarch to whom people all around the world could feel a personal and immediate connection,” he said, “whether they heard her on the radio as a young princess speaking to the children of the United Kingdom, or gathered around their televisions for her coronation, or watched her final Christmas speech or her Platinum Jubilee on their phones.”

“She, in turn, dedicated her whole life to their service,” he said.

Mr. Biden said in his statement that he first met Queen Elizabeth in 1982 during a trip to Britain as a young senator. His most recent meeting came about a year ago, when the president spent time in Cornwall, England, for a meeting of the leaders of the Group of 7 industrialized nations.

After meeting with her at Windsor Castle last June, Mr. Biden said the queen reminded him of his mother “in terms of the look of her and just the generosity.” He said that he didn’t think “she would be insulted” by the comparison.

In his statement, the president recalled the way the queen treated him and his wife, Jill Biden, during that visit, saying that she “charmed us with her wit, moved us with her kindness, and generously shared with us her wisdom.”

Mr. Biden also recalled on Thursday the queen’s visit to Jamestown, Va., in 2007, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the first permanent English colony in the New World, calling her a stalwart supporter of the United States.

And he wrote that “she stood in solidarity with the United States during our darkest days after 9/11, when she poignantly reminded us that ‘grief is the price we pay for love.’”

Mr. Biden said the queen’s “legacy will loom large in the pages of British history, and in the story of our world,” and pledged “continuing a close friendship with the king and the queen consort.”

Saskia Solomon

Johnny Munro, 33, a civil servant, said he got to the scene as soon as he could. “It’s difficult to explain. It’s really strangely affecting, for someone you’ve never met. She’s obviously been a constant for our country. The way she’s gone about her role and performed her duty in such a servant-hearted way has just been this example to us all.”

Alex Marshall

Numerous small changes to British daily life are expected in the coming weeks to welcome the new monarch — King Charles III, who ascended to the throne after the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, on Thursday.

For instance, the queen’s portrait appears on British money and postage stamps, and those will need new designs.

But one change will be less obvious: the words to the national anthem.

For the first time since 1952, English sports fans, for example, will need to change an important word in the tune they sing before matches — instead of “God save the queen,” they now have a king to pay their respects to. (Scottish and Welsh fans sing other songs.)

The British national anthem — “God Save the Queen” or “God Save the King,” depending on who is reigning, which is also used by many Commonwealth countries as the royal anthem — is not written into law, so its words could change immediately, making the first verse, the one traditionally sung:

God save our gracious king!Long live our noble king!God save the king!Send him victorious,Happy and glorious,Long to reign over us,God save the king.

One immediate question is whether fans embrace those tiny changes or continue singing “queen” — at least for now — in tribute to the much-loved Elizabeth. The answer will soon be apparent: England’s men’s soccer team plays Italy in Milan on Sept. 23.

Whatever happens at that match, the first time sports fans do sing the new words will be a highly symbolic moment, but also a discombobulating one for the English public.

For many Britons, old recordings of people singing “God Save the King” for Elizabeth’s father, George VI, sound strange, a remnant of another era, rather than a sign of an exciting future.

Alan Blinder

The U.S. Open will hold a moment of silence before Thursday evening’s semifinal match between Ons Jabeur and Caroline Garcia in New York.

Mark Landler

As a constitutional monarch, Queen Elizabeth II played a role in British public life that was both strictly circumscribed and profoundly embedded.

She met weekly with more than a dozen prime ministers during her reign — a list that began with Winston Churchill — though her counsel was given in strictest confidence.

Yet while she studiously avoided politics, the queen occasionally dropped a hint of her views. She tangled with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1986 over Britain’s refusal to join in sanctions against apartheid South Africa and, plainly relieved, called for reconciliation after Scotland voted against leaving the United Kingdom in 2014. She acted, with varying degrees of success, to bind together Britain during times of crisis, such as the Suez crisis of 1956, the Falklands War of 1982 and the Brexit referendum of 2016.

If anything, the queen seemed to loom even larger in the sunset of her reign. She acted as a reassuring symbol of Britain’s history at a time when the country was debating its place in the world after the rancorous split from the European Union. And she bore up stoically after the death of her husband, Prince Philip, in 2021, mourning in pandemic-imposed isolation at his funeral at Windsor Castle.

In April 2020, when the coronavirus was pummeling Britain, Elizabeth urged her subjects to commit themselves to a national cause similar to that of World War II. She likened the enforced separation of Britain’s lockdown to the sacrifices families made during the war, when parents sent away their children for their own safety.

“We should take comfort that while we may have more still to endure, better days will return,” the queen said. “We will be with our friends again; we will be with our families again; we will meet again.”

That last line referred to “We’ll Meet Again,” a 1939 song that became a wartime favorite in Britain. It served as a poignant reminder that as a young princess, Elizabeth had served in that war, working in the auxiliary service as a driver and mechanic. Seven decades later, at her death, she was still serving.