God Save The Queen

It will be a mess when she’s gone

- By Jack Royston. Photograph Chris Jackson

WHEN QUEEN ELIZABETH II ASCENDED TO THE throne in 1952, Harry Truman was in the White House. Joe Biden, who would become president 13 administrations later, was in elementary school, and around 85 percent of Elizabeth’s 68 million present-day subjects weren’t even born yet. If the 95-year-old queen—whose mother, the beloved “Queen Mum,” lived to the age of 101— remains on the throne for another 30 months or so, she will surpass Louis XIV of France as the longest-reigning sovereign in recorded history.

As it happened, Louis was also one of the last Bourbon kings of France before the Revolution swept away his great-great-great-grandson Louis XVI. When the last chorus of “God Save the Queen” is sung, the British throne will pass to Elizabeth’s first-born son, Charles, the brooding, diffident Prince of Wales, who has never escaped the shadow of his sainted ex-wife, Diana.