Queen Elizabeth II has officially spent 25,000 days on the throne – the most days of any British monarch.
The Queen has now reigned for 68 years, five months and 12 days.
As she marks this massive milestone, here is what we know about the life of this long-serving monarch, her family, her net worth, and what her actual ‘job’ is…
Queen Elizabeth was born on April 21, 1926, to the future king and queen of England.
Her dad was King George VI (1936 – 1952) and his wife Queen Elizabeth, later known as the Queen Mother.
She had one sister, Princess Margaret, four years younger than her, who died in the year 2002 aged 71.
At the age of 10, Elizabeth became the heir presumptive to the throne. This happened because her father took over throne following the abdication of his brother Edward in 1936.
The Queen’s childhood nickname was ‘Lillibet’, and she was known for being very sensible, as well as loving horses and dogs.
By 1947 Elizabeth was making her first overseas tour as the future queen, and was engaged to Philip Mountbatten, aka Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark.
She got to know Philip, her second cousin once removed who was five years older, on three occasions in 1934, 1937 and 1939.
Even though Elizabeth was just 13 in 1939, she felt she was in love with him and they began to exchange letters.
Their eventual marriage was very controversial because of Philip’s family links to German noblemen who worked with Nazis, but it was permitted anyway.
He converted from Greek Orthodoxy to Anglicanism before being given the title of Duke of Edinburgh.
They wed in November 1947 – and in 1952, following King George’s period of ill health and death from lung cancer, Queen Elizabeth assumed the throne.
Her coronation on June 1953 came during a turbulent time for her and her sister Margaret, then 23.
The Queen and senior politicians were objecting to Margaret marrying a much older man, RAF officer Peter Townsend, who was divorced with two children.
Ultimately Margaret did not marry Townsend and ended up marrying the Earl of Snowdon in 1960, though they later divorced.
During those years, Elizabeth had become a mother to Prince Charles (born 1948) and Princess Anne (born 1950).
And at this time, the British Empire was transitioning into what is now known as the Commonwealth of Nations, which the Queen remains the head of.
Frequent tours around the Commonwealth to visit her people have made Elizabeth the most widely-touring monarch in history.
In 1957, the Suez Crisis meant the Queen had to sort out her first major constitutional crisis, selecting a Tory Prime Minister to step in after Sir Antony Eden’s resignation.
That ended up being Harold Macmillan, and she was heavily criticised for the choice, and the fact she relied on advice from others.
Only on very few occasions after this did the Queen have such involvement in the British government.
Elizabeth had her third and fourth children, Princes Andrew and Edward, in 1959 and 1963 respectively.
Then in 1970, her first ‘royal walkabout’ – the first time a reigning British monarch has met ordinary members of the public as a royal duty – was organised.
The 1970s and 1980s involved a few clashes between the Queen and various Commonwealth country leaders who did not fully understand or appreciate her role in their governance.
The latter decade also saw several threats to the Queen’s safety, including two attempted assassinations, and a man breaking into Buckingham Palace and getting into the monarch’s bedroom in 1982.
The marriage of Prince Charles to Princess Diana in 1981 kicked off a decade of huge tabloid speculation about the royals and their strained marriages.
This stoked republicanism and added to the growth of anti-monarchist feeling.
News reports also talked of a private clash between the Queen and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher over several issues, including Thatcher’s refusal to help end South African apartheid using sanctions.
Later, the Queen was credited by former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney with being a ‘behind-the-scenes force’ helping to bring an end to apartheid. But she did clash with another Canadian Prime Minister, Pierre Trudeau, over the issue of constitutional amendments.
Also, the fact that Edward, Anne, Andrew, and Andrew’s wife, Sarah Ferguson, had taken part in TV game show It’s A Knockout, on top of the impact of far-reaching reports of adultery and huge expenses, helped the Queen became a target of satire by the start of the 1990s.
The early 1990s were likely a stressful time for Queen Elizabeth, in that Andrew separated from Sarah, Anne divorced her husband Captain Mark Phillips, and, most famously, Charles and Diana split up.
However, overall the fact that her family was in such disarray just improved the Queen’s own approval ratings, as she was untouched by such scandal.
At the end of December 1995, the Queen wrote a letter to Charles and Diana encouraging them to divorce.
They did so in 1996, which was followed a year later by Diana’s death in a Paris car crash.
The Queen was in Balmoral on an extended family holiday at the time.
Intense press speculation and a public backlash regarding the Queen not having her Buckingham Palace flag at half mast led the Queen to give a TV broadcast the day before Diana’s funeral.
In 2002, the year of her Golden Jubilee, the Queen lost both her mother and sister.
In the mid-noughties, reports claimed the Queen disapproved of Blair’s decision to get involved in Iraq, though she admired his peace-making achievements in Northern Ireland.
And in 2007 the Queen became the first ever monarch to celebrate a diamond wedding anniversary, and that same year she surpassed Queen Victoria as the oldest-serving monarch in British history.
The Queen, who has had keyhole surgery on both knees, was hospitalised for a day in 2013 after showing symptoms of gastroenteritis.
Around this time Prince Charles began to represent her at more Commonwealth events she was not healthy enough to keep travelling to.
In 2015, the Queen became the longest-reigning British monarch and longest-reigning queen regnant and female head of state in the world.
She also became the oldest current head of state on the resignation of Robert Mugabe in 2017, the year which saw Queen Elizabeth celebrate her Sapphire Jubilee and a platinum wedding anniversary.
The Queen does not ever intend to abdicate, though Charles will continue filling in for her at events she does not feel fit enough for.
The queen has eight grandchildren – Princes William and Harry, Princesses Eugenie and Beatrice, Zara Tindall, Lady Louise Windsor, Peter Phillips and James, Viscount Severn.
Her eight great-grandchildren are Prince George, Princess Charlotte, Prince Louis, Mia Grace Tindall, Mia Grace, Isla and Savannah Phillips and Archie Harrison.
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