How could this life be but to end in a stoic act of service to the nation?
The 96-year-old Queen, who ascended the throne when Winston Churchill, who was born in 1874, sat down in Downing Street for the second time, pulled herself together with her usual devotion to attend the audience for the official appointment of Liz Truss, born in 1975, one of the most important constitutional To carry out tasks of the monarchy - entrusting the prime minister with forming a government - for the fifteenth and final time.
On her 21st birthday, as a princess, in a speech broadcast worldwide from Cape Town, she vowed to devote her entire life, be it long or short, to the service of “our great imperial family” “to which we all belong”.
How seriously she meant it, Elizabeth II.
immediately before her death once again in a grandiose way.
God knows it's not an easy inheritance that she bequeathed to her son.
Gina Thomas
Features correspondent based in London.
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The fact that she spoke of the imperial family in her speech on the occasion of her coming of age in April 1947 - almost five years before she succeeded her father - indicates the distance to today.
At the time, India was still part of the British Empire, whose legacy is now so hotly debated by culture warriors.
When she was crowned in June 1953, the title "Emperor of India" held by her father was obsolete.
Significantly, just this week, at the same time as the transfer of power in Downing Street just completed, it was announced that the world's largest democracy had pushed the country of its former colonial masters from fifth to sixth place in the ranking of the strongest economic powers in the last quarter of 2021.
The Queen had to rule over the withdrawal from the Empire that had already begun under her father.
During her reign, the kingdom developed into a multi-ethnic, post-colonial state, not without considerable effort, but also thanks to the monarch's personal commitment to maintaining links with the former colonies.
With the marriage between her grandson Harry and Meghan Markle, the transformation has penetrated into the heart of her own family, as well as the private life of the members of the royal family, which reflects modern social conditions of a universal process, has been given a new meaning.
She did not see modernity as a threat
As much as the territory of the former empire, on which the sun never set, has shrunk, as much as the mother country has shrunk in power after World War II, the Queen's global reach has been instrumental in propelling Britain above its weight class on the international stage was able to hit.
This happened not only because the monarch always attached special importance to her role as head of the alliance of the Commonwealth countries, which was challenged by politician Enoch Powell with apocalyptic warnings about the consequences of immigration.
The Brexiteers also benefit from the gentle power of their dignity and integrity, which they knew how to convey to a broad public that was not necessarily receptive to the original rule, when they praise the global ambitions and opportunities