Which one of the following statements regarding Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom is correct?

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — A, She reigned for 70 years and died at the age of 96 years. Three dates settle the whole question. Elizabeth Alexandra Mary was born in Mayfair, London, on 21 April 1926. She acceded to the throne on 6 February 1952, on the death of her father George VI, while she was in Kenya; her coronation followed at Westminster Abbey on 2 June 1953, the first to be televised. She died at Balmoral Castle in Aberdeenshire on 8 September 2022. Subtract and both halves of option (a) fall out: from February 1952 to September 2022 is a reign of 70 years and 214 days, and from April 1926 to September 2022 is an age of 96 years and 140 days — her ninety-sixth birthday had passed some five months before she died. Both figures were, in any case, in the public record before her death rather than only after it: her Platinum Jubilee, celebrated through the first half of 2022 and marking seventy years on the throne, made her the first British sovereign ever to reach that anniversary, and she had already become the longest-reigning British monarch on 9 September 2015 when she passed Queen Victoria's 63 years and 216 days. Her reign of 70 years and 214 days is the longest of any British monarch and the longest of any queen regnant anywhere in history; it is second only to that of Louis XIV of France, 72 years and 110 days, among sovereigns of sovereign states — which is exactly where the '72 years' in option (c) comes from. She was succeeded on the day of her death by her eldest son as Charles III. In India the Ministry of External Affairs announced on 9 September 2022 that the Government would observe a day of national mourning in her memory, with the national flag flown at half-mast.

Why the other options are wrong — (b) The dangerous one, because it is internally consistent — 94 minus 68 is 26, the same gap as in the correct option, so the usual cross-check does not expose it. What it is, in fact, is a true statement about the wrong year: 1952 plus 68 and 1926 plus 94 both land on 2020, so this describes Elizabeth II as she was two years before she died. A candidate whose memory of 'about seventy years on the throne' is fuzzy at the edges, and who never fixed the death year at 2022, will find nothing wrong with it.  (c) Internally impossible, and that is enough to strike it without knowing a single date about her: 92 minus 72 means she would have become queen at twenty, whereas the age gap in her case is twenty-six. The 72 is not accidental — it is the length of the reign of Louis XIV of France, 72 years and 110 days, the longest verified reign of any sovereign and the one record Elizabeth II did not take. The option is built for the candidate who remembers her as a record-breaker and reaches for the biggest number on offer.  (d) Also internally inconsistent — a gap of twenty-four rather than twenty-six — and both numbers are too small. Sixty-six years would have taken her only to 2018, and ninety would have been her age in 2016, when she marked her ninetieth birthday with public celebrations that were themselves widely reported. This is the option for a candidate working from the vague memory that she was 'about ninety' and 'reigned for decades', which is precisely the kind of approximation this question is designed to punish.

Concept: The United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy: the sovereign is head of state but not head of government, reigns rather than rules, and acts on ministerial advice. Succession is automatic and instantaneous, which is why Elizabeth II's reign is dated from 6 February 1952, the day her father died, and not from her coronation sixteen months later. She was also head of state of a shrinking group of other independent countries known as the Commonwealth realms — seven of them when she acceded, fifteen when she died, and thirty-two different sovereign states across her lifetime as one after another became a republic. Separately from that, she held the title Head of the Commonwealth. That title exists because of India. When India resolved to become a republic while remaining in the Commonwealth, the London Declaration of April 1949 invented the formula: member states would recognise the King as the symbol of the free association of independent member nations and as such Head of the Commonwealth, a personal and symbolic office that carries no constitutional power in any republic. Her father George VI had already relinquished the title Emperor of India in June 1948, and India became a republic on 26 January 1950, two years before her accession — so Elizabeth II was never Queen or Empress of India, only Head of a Commonwealth that India had chosen to stay in.

State PCS 2023 Q35 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2023 Q35 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer