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HM Queen Elizabeth

The Queen Mother

 

1900 - 2002

 

Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon was born the ninth daughter of the 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne, Lord Glamis, on 4th August 1900 into a family whose ancestors had for 200 years or so had been important Scottish landowners.

As an infant she crawled, walked and talked at an early age and developed a forward and venturesome personality a trait that as a commoner she was to bring into the Royal Family when she became engaged to Prince Albert on 13th January 1923.

The Royal Wedding took place on 26th April 1923 in Westminster Abbey. The couple became Duke and Duchess of York. Their first daughter now HM Queen Elizabeth II, was born on 21st April 1926 and their second , Princess Margaret, on 21st August 1930. The following six years were, unknowingly, to become the best of their entire lives until her father-in-law, King George, died on 20th January 1936.

It soon became apparent that Albert's brother Edward would not be taking the throne and the her husband Albert would be thrust into a role for which he was unprepared as on the 11th December his brother abdicated.

Albert became George VI on 12th may 1937 and his bride became Queen Elizabeth, Queen Consort. For the next fifteen years the royal couple where to lead Great Britain through one of the most troubled times in the nations history during which the Queen Mother was taken into the hearts of it's people. Tired and strained from the ordeal her husband died in the early hours of 6th February 1952 and their daughter Elizabeth became Queen Elizabeth II.

The experiences over which  Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, had triumphed from commoner to Queen, through the Second World War, raising two daughters one of whom would take the throne, and then loosing her husband would probably have been enough for anyone but what was unbeknown to anyone at the time was that her service to the people of  the United Kingdom was to continue for another fifty years until a bright and warm Easter day in 2002 when she finally and quietly joined her husband.