Word: queens
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...decades she seemed the fairy godmother of an entire adoring nation. Elizabeth, Queen Consort to King George VI and mother of Queen Elizabeth II, was, historians will doubtless record, the woman who helped restore the majesty of the throne after the abdication of George's brother Edward VIII in 1936. But the Queen Mother's former subjects will be more likely to remember her as the sprightly Queen Mum who seemed almost a part of everyone's family...
...wishers outside her home on her 101st birthday celebration last August with a raised glass of champagne. Only seven weeks ago, although grief stricken and looking frail, she insisted on attending the funeral of her 71-year-old daughter, Princess Margaret. Last Saturday afternoon, her job well done, the Queen Mother died in her sleep at Royal Lodge, Windsor, outside London...
...Queen, however, was not a role she coveted. A persistent rumor has it that the small, sapphire-eyed Lady Elizabeth rejected Prince Albert's first proposal in 1921. Two years later, however, she decided to accept, and the two were wed amid a trumpeting of pageantry in Westminster Abbey. Elizabeth and Albert were in their 13th year of a quiet marriage and the parents of two girls when Albert's older brother Edward VIII gave up his crown to marry Wallis Simpson, an American divorce. Albert thereupon became King George VI and Elizabeth his Queen Consort...
That quality blossomed during World War II, when the Queen revealed a doughty spirit. She visited hospitals and slums and delivered broadcasts in fluent French to the women of occupied France. The end of the war did not bring an end to Elizabeth's challenges. Her husband fell ill in 1947 and five years later died of lung cancer. As the King's widow, she helped her daughter shoulder the burdens attendant upon a queen. The "smiling Duchess" glided with resilient good humor through roughly 10 engagements each month until she was midway into...
...Queen Mother, Elizabeth was an implacable defender of the Royal Family against modernity and change. Still smarting from the scandal of Edward and Mrs. Simpson, she demanded of its members the highest standards of morality and behavior. So the sexual, social and financial shenanigans of the past two decades strained her relationship with the younger royals. When the extramarital affairs of the Prince and Princess of Wales became common gossip, both got a dressing down. Yet, of them all, grandson Charles was her favorite and she his. Even within the family, a biographer once noted, Charles is seen...