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The first Elizabeth had ridden high on the surging tide of the Renaissance to guide England to its golden age of literature and discovery. The beachheads of the future Empire were won by Bess's indomitable sea hawks, "singeing the Spanish King's beard" in continental harbors and on the Spanish Main. Even Queen Anne, lonely, dullwitted, and forever conniving with her disreputable friend Sarah Churchill, had labeled an age with her name and marked some imperial milestones. After Anne, England's next Queen was a demure little German Princess of 18, who stepped out of a life circumscribed by a domineering and jealous mother, to mount the throne and demand for the first time the right to a private bedroom. A half-century later, wide-eyed Victoria had become an aged Empress with drooping jowls, and her Kingdom a true Empire heavy with gold, black with industrial soot, and red with the blood of conquest.
Walk wide o' the Widow at Windsor For 'alf o' creation she owns,
wrote the Empire's unwreathed laureate, Kipling, his pen quivering with awe.
Since Victoria's day her Empire has come on troubled times. The Crown itself has lost its last remaining ounce of direct political power.* But what the Crown has lost in weight, it has gained in glamor. Princess Elizabeth, who will be the next wearer—unless her parents, most improbably, have a son—shows no more sign of greatness than the young Victoria did. She is not required to be great; she is expected to be gracious.
Britain's heiress is called "Princess" by right of her royal birth, but she has no title in the peerage, and is rated a commoner by law. She is medium tall (5 ft. 4 in.), slim (cameras give her a falsely hefty look), full-bosomed, with brown hair, a creamy, fair complexion, blue eyes, and white teeth (a shade oversize). She has neither her father's shy reserve nor her mother's dazzling charm. Last week, as she stood unobtrusively at her father's elbow, she frequently seemed plain bored. But those who looked sharp could catch an occasional rare smile, lighting her face like a searchlight, or see her knit her brow in sober perplexity over some paradox of Empire in an official's talk.
Mr. & Mrs. To all appearances Princess Elizabeth is exactly the daughter that plain, conscientious King George and matronly Queen Elizabeth deserve. That is precisely what her future subjects want her to be. Transplanted by some magic into almost any upper-middle-class suburb in the U.S., Mr. & Mrs. George Windsor would undoubtedly be among the solidest section of the community. With her mind never quite detached from the children, well-read, talented Mrs. Windsor would find time to be popular and businesslike at meetings of the Altar Guild and the Garden Club.
George's library would feature a well-thumbed encyclopedia, and there would be tools in the basement. But George would spend most of his spare time attending to his duties as the unsung treasurer of the Community Chest. The Windsor household would revolve around their well-mannered children, and the elder at least would repay her parents' devotion by leading her local Scout troop and becoming captain of the field-hockey team.