Elizabeth the Steadfast

Elizabeth II, Britain's longest-serving monarch, embodied the traditional values of duty, fidelity and constancy throughout her glorious reign, yet always managed to move with the times. Matthew Dennison pays tribute

- 

THE sovereign who safeguarded the dignity of the Crown through a period of unprecedented social change, including the iconoclasm of the 1960s and the trivialising invasiveness of the celebrity culture that dominated the second half of her reign, Elizabeth II will be remembered for her unwavering fidelity to timeless concepts of royalty absorbed during her childhood from her parents and grandparents, for unflagging devotion to duty and for the constancy that earned her the title 'Elizabeth the Steadfast'.

'She looks a Queen and obviously believes in her right to be one. Her bearing is both simple and majestic-no actress could possibly match it,' wrote the politician and historian John Grigg at the time of the Silver Jubilee. In a cynical age, Elizabeth II preserved aspects of sovereignty's ancient mystique-the likeable, often glittering embodiment of monarchy-albeit acknowledging popular pressure for greater accessibility. We do not want the Queen to be one of us,' wrote the women's editor of the Reading Evening Post in February 1991, 'but we do want her to be with us.' Over time, Elizabeth II developed an instinctive understanding of this precarious distinction. Through more than seven decades on the throne, she balanced the requirement of accessibility with distance, the white-gloved hand smilingly extended in greeting, and skilfully she balanced her formal role as head of state with that of head of the nation, encouraging, applauding and inspiring wide-ranging initiatives that, above all, promoted community wellbeing, pride in the nation and the continuing evolution of a tolerant, compassionate, unified society. From the landmark 1969 fly-on-the-wall documentary film Royal Family, she emerged, in the words of one television critic, as a warm, friendly person, with a thoroughly engaging sense of humour'.