Читать книгу The Queen: History in an Hour - Sinead Fitzgibbon - Страница 3

Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them.

Although this oft-quoted phrase from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night was coined some 400 years ago, during the reign of the first Queen Elizabeth, its sentiment is one which exemplifies the life and reign of an altogether more modern monarch, Queen Elizabeth II.

Born into one of Europe’s longest-running dynastic monarchies, the infant Princess Elizabeth, daughter of the Duke of York, was third in line to the throne at the time of her birth. But despite occupying this rather elevated position in the royal pecking order, the probability of her ever acceding to the highest position in the land was remote to say the least – so remote, in fact, that no one seriously contemplated the possibility that such a situation would ever arise.

The line of succession was expected to pass to her father’s older brother David, the as-yet unmarried Prince of Wales, and subsequently to his future children; It would take a calamity of epic proportions to propel Elizabeth onto the throne. The young princess, it seemed, was destined to live a rather unspectacular life in relative royal obscurity, albeit with the privilege and comfort accordant with her position. But, if there is anything at all to be learned from history, it is that things rarely go according to plan.

In 1936, when Elizabeth was just ten years old, a cataclysmic event shook the British Royal Family to its very core. Quite unexpectedly, Elizabeth found herself in the centre of a maelstrom, the circumstances of which would alter the course of her life forever.