Queen Elizabeth II, left, in a portrait by Jeff Stultiens. Queen Victoria painting by Alexander Basano. (Left, Associated Press; Corbis)
Long live the Queen, indeed. Just past teatime in London today (or about 10 a.m. Eastern time), Elizabeth II will become the oldest monarch in Britain’s history, surpassing Victoria, who was 81 years, 7 months and 29 days old when she died in 1901.
Buckingham Palace says nothing special is planned to mark the occasion. The Lede pictures her sitting in a floral-upholstered wing chair, scratching one of her Corgis behind the ear and smiling enigmatically at the noteworthy moment.
Elizabeth has nearly eight years to go yet before she would overtake Victoria’s other noteworthy place in the monarchical record books, the length of her reign — 64 hugely eventful years, from the abolition of slavery to the Boer War. But the chances look pretty good: Elizabeth is thought to be fairly healthy, as octogenerians go, and her mother lived to be 101.
Britain has been remarkably lucky in its ruling queens. Only a handful of women have held the throne in their own right over the British monarchy’s long history, stretching back twelve centuries, but what queens they were: the remarkable Elizabeth I, who saw off the Armada in 1588 and set the country on its unique path to greatness; Victoria, on whose empire (and royal progeny) the sun never set; and now Elizabeth II, who has seen that empire transformed into Commonwealth and her country remade into a more modern kind of world power, in finance and the arts, democracy and diplomacy and diversity.
No wonder they name majestic ships for such queens. No wonder they cast Helen Mirren or Cate Blanchett to portray them.
As for the direct Victoria-vs.-Elizabeth comparisons, The Mirror offers up an extensive tale of the tape today. One they omitted: Victoria gets a whole evocative era of history, sensibility and style named for her, even in places she never ruled (like San Francisco or Cape May, N.J.). No chance of that kind of immortality for the current Elizabeth, though — the “Elizabethan era” is already taken.