喜迎登基70周年，英国女王力挺卡米拉当未来“王后”，查尔斯王子快“熬”出头了？（附视频&摘要稿）
据英国媒体报道，当地时间2月6日，95岁的女王伊丽莎白二世迎来登基70周年纪念。她于一天前在公开信中对民众表示，当威尔士亲王、查尔斯王储当上国王时，她希望查尔斯的妻子卡米拉拥有“王后”头衔。
1997年，查尔斯的第一任妻子黛安娜王妃因车祸去世，他随后与“老情人”卡米拉复合，于2005年简单举行了婚礼。相比广受爱戴的黛安娜，卡米拉在英国民众心目中一直形象不佳。
在这样重要的时刻，女王公开为女媳妇寻求民众支持，联系到此前内部遭遇的种种丑闻，以及丈夫去世给她带来的冲击，外界有声音猜测她是否会在短期内传位给儿子。毕竟，查尔斯也已经73岁了。
自光荣革命以来，英国实行君主立宪制已300多年。无论政局如何动荡，王室仍坚挺。无论遇到多大风浪，女王自己也始终保持“待机”状态。
2019年底，王室否认了她将在95岁退休的消息，称女王从1952年成为君主之前，就已经宣誓对国家效忠，宣布过永不退位，永不辞职，永远不退休。
女王本人已成为英国首位在位达70年之久的君主。2月6日这一天，伦敦街头处处展示女王的肖像以示庆祝。今年6月5日，白金禧年庆祝活动将在白金汉宫附近举行，除了庆祝女王统治时期的服务，还会表彰为国家做出贡献的人们。
Over the course of the past 70 years, the Queen has bear witness and shaped the history of the United Kingdom.
From the day of Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation, through natural disasters and personal tragedies, the monarch has worked to represent and unite her people under British values.
On the anniversary of the Queen’s ascension, The Telegraph’s associate editor Camilla Tominey picks out the seven moments from each decade of the monarch’s reign which most impacted the public.
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In June, Britain and the Commonwealth nations are set to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II’s “Platinum Jubilee,” her record-breaking 70-year reign. The people will hoist pints aloft at street parties, nibble proper sandwiches at garden picnics and watch a huge parade roll through the capital, with a golden carriage led by thousands of honor guards bedecked in military finery.
That is the plan, in four month’s time, and all good health to the queen — who appeared briefly on Saturday, with a cane, to cut a cake and greet a few of her neighbors.
But Feb. 6, the exact day Elizabeth became sovereign in 1952? For the monarch, this is traditionally a more muted anniversary, a day of quiet reflection.
Because for a princess to become a queen? A king must die. This date marks when her beloved father, King George VI, passed away, asleep in his bedroom on the ground floor of Sandringham Estate, the country retreat where a more frail, more cloistered and widowed Elizabeth, aged 95, is residing now, waiting for the pandemic to recede.
“It is a day that, even after 70 years, I still remember as much for the death of my father, King George VI, as for the start of my reign,” she wrote in an anniversary statementreleased Saturday.
The story of the day and hour of Elizabeth’s accession to the throne has been told many times, but it remains a captivating tale. It’s history with echoes of Arthurian romance.
On the morning of her father’s death, 25-year-old Elizabeth was perched in a treehouse in Kenya, from which she’d watched a herd of elephants led by matriarchs come to a watering hole.
“There has been much speculation, not least because of historical parallels, about when precisely Elizabeth became Queen,” wrote Sally Bedell Smith, in her biography of the monarch. “It undoubtedly happened when she was atop the African fig tree, which draws a romantic line to the moment in 1558 when Elizabeth I, seated next to an oak tree at Hatfield House, heard that the death of her sister, Queen Mary, meant she was the monarch, also at age twenty-five.”
For many months, King George — known to today’s generations for overcoming a debilitating stutter in the 2010 Oscar-winning film “The King’s Speech” — had been in declining health.
“The King, a heavy smoker, underwent a left total pneumonectomy in September 1951 for what euphemistically was called ‘structural abnormalities’ of his left lung, but what in reality was a carcinoma,” wrote Rolf F. Barth of Ohio State University in a “pathologists’ reassessment” last year.
“His physicians withheld this diagnosis from him, the public, and the medical profession,” he and co-author L. Maximillian Buja wrote.
Too ill to travel, 56-year-old George tasked Elizabeth and her husband, Philip, with undertaking a months-long tour of the Commonwealth, in what was then the twilight of the British Empire.
George saw his daughter off at London Airport on Jan. 31, 1952. Newspapers said the king looked “well and cheerful.” One of his biographers would later suggest “haggard” as a better description. The crowd let out a cheer as he waved goodbye to Elizabeth.
It would be the last time the two saw each other.
The young couple traveled to Kenya, where a BBC newsreel shows Elizabeth in a print dress and Philip in white naval uniform, bedecked in medals, emerging from the BOAC Argonaut plane.
“When the royal couple stepped off into the hot sunshine of Nairobi, no one knew then that the girl who had arrived here as Princess Elizabeth would leave five days later as queen,” the British broadcaster would report.
From the Kenyan capital, the two, accompanied by a small entourage, traveled three hours to Sagana Lodge, a villa alongside a trout stream, presented to them as a wedding gift from the Kenyan state.
“It was a dangerous time in the British colony. The Mau Mau campaign had just broken out across the White Highlands,” wrote historian Nicholas Bestin the Observer. “The officials responsible for the princess’s tour of Kenya, Australia and New Zealand felt unable to guarantee her safety while she was in Kenya. It was only fear of ridicule that stopped them canceling the African leg of the trip.”
On Feb. 5, the couple traveled further into the forest, to Treetops Hotel, a game-viewing lodge. Their three-bed cabin was reached by a rickety ladder and built into the branches of an ancient fig tree, overlooking a waterhole and salt lick.
“Treetops is old hat now, but in 1952 it was the only place of its kind in the world,” wrote Best, who has been researching lodge founder Eric Sherbrooke Walker, a colorful character, former bootlegger and friend of royals.
In an interview, Best told The Washington Post that Walker positioned local men with spears at the edge of the forest to deter journalists, out of concern for Elizabeth’s privacy and also because the smell of more humans would frighten the wildlife.
Naturalist and big-game hunter Jim Corbett, who accompanied the couple, spent the darkest hours of the night at the entrance of the lodge with a shotgun, to keep curious leopards away, Best said.
That afternoon and evening, Elizabeth saw and filmed with her handheld movie camera rhinos, warthogs, baboons and a herd of elephants.
“Look, Philip, they’re pink!” Elizabeth told her husband, according to Smith’s account.
The elephants had been rolling in red dust.
That same day, King George had been shooting hares — he killed nine — at Sandringham Estate back in England.
“The King, a great shot, was on top of his form,” his neighbor Lord Fermoy told a newspaper.
George dined with his wife and younger daughter, Princess Margaret, before retiring to his bedroom at 10:30 p.m.
The Birmingham Gazette reported that the king died in his sleep sometime in the early morning hours of Feb. 6, after a “perfectly happy day.”
Newspapers later described the cause of death as “a blood clot in his heart.”
Because of the distance and difficulty of communications, it took hours for the news to reach rural Kenya. The message was relayed to Philip’s private secretary, and from Philip to his wife when they’d returned to Sagana Lodge.
Without ceremony or even awareness, but in accordance with British tradition, Elizabeth had become queen.
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The newspaper front pages rang out, “Long Live Queen Elizabeth,” while noting, “Her Majesty, pale with grief, leaves by air for home.”
There was a proclamation of the accession at St. James’s Palace in London that day, signed by 150 members of the Privy Council.
More than a year later, on June 2, 1953, the over-the-top coronation of Elizabeth II took place in Westminster Abbey, a much more joyous, public, televised occasion, watched by millions.
But that is another story.
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