Reuters
London, August 19: After 63 years on the throne, Queen Elizabeth next month becomes Britain’s longest-ruling monarch but there is little prospect of her stepping aside, as other ageing European crowned heads have done, in favour of her son, Charles. Those close to Elizabeth – who Sept. 9 takes the long-service record from her great-great-grandmother Queen Victoria – say the 89-year-old has no intention of succumbing to the European fashion for abdication.
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That means Prince Charles, 66, already a record-holder himself as Britain’s longest-serving heir apparent, will have to wait longer still until he becomes king. “I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family,” Elizabeth said in a 21st birthday broadcast to the nation in 1947. The milestone of overtaking Victoria has already prompted speculation as to whether Elizabeth might step aside.
When asked if abdication were a possibility, a senior palace source told Reuters: “Life means life.” The religious overtones to a British coronation are deeply symbolic for Elizabeth, who as queen is Supreme Governor of the Church of England. “The queen won’t abdicate, she must not abdicate, there’s absolutely no reason for her to abdicate and indeed constitutionally and religiously she cannot abdicate: she is an anointed queen,” royal historian Hugo Vickers said.
Margaret Rhodes, the queen’s cousin and a friend since childhood, believes she will never break her commitment to the nation. “The vows that she made on coronation day are something so deep and so special that she would not consider not continuing to fulfil those vows until the day she dies,” Rhodes told the BBC in 2006. The abdication in 1936 of the queen’s uncle Edward VIII – for reasons of love rather than old age – proved traumatic enough, plunging the monarchy into a constitutional crisis that put her reluctant father on the throne.
