Queen Elizabeth II passed away on Thursday. She was the longest-reigning British monarch in history and one of the most famous and frequently portrayed individuals in contemporary history. She was 96.

The royal family declared that Elizabeth, who had ruled for 70 years, had passed away quietly at Balmoral Castle in Scotland, where she had spent the summer.

Charles, her firstborn son, will take her place. The next king issued a statement in which he said, “The passing of my beloved Mother, Her Majesty the Queen, is a period of the deepest anguish for me and all members of my family.”

Elizabeth II was the monarch of the United Kingdom and 14 other commonwealth realms at the time of her death. Her official title is Elizabeth II, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of her other realms and territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith.

With her reign beginning in February 1952 at the age of 25, she was both the longest-serving incumbent head of state and the longest-serving female head of state in history. She celebrated her Sapphire Jubilee in 2017, marking 65 years in reign, making her the first British monarch to do so. (She had surpassed Victoria in 2015 to claim the title of British queen with the longest reign.)

She was also one of the richest women in the world thanks to her financial and real estate holdings.

Elizabeth insisted that her coronation on June 2, 1953, be shown live on television, demonstrating her understanding of the democratizing power of television before nearly every home had a TV (against the wishes of the British government). The painstakingly prepared ceremony, which attracted an estimated 277 million viewers worldwide and is credited with establishing TV a mainstream medium, became the first major world event to be televised internationally. In the U.K., viewers for the first time surpassed listeners for radio.

In 1969, the first episode of the BBC documentary Royal Family, which was intended to humanize her young family, was shown to more than 30 million viewers in the U.K. alone. Fifteen years later, she would break tradition once more by allowing cameras into Buckingham Palace. It was said that during an interlude, a water deficit was caused by the simultaneous flushing of a large number of toilets throughout London.

The movie was apparently stored in the BBC archives at the request of Buckingham Palace, as it had not been broadcast since the 1970s.

Elizabeth was represented numerous times on television in addition to her own groundbreaking approach to television. She was represented by Helen Mirren in Stephen Frears' 2006 film The Queen, for which she also received an Oscar, and by Claire Foy, Olivia Colman, and Imelda Staunton in Netflix's Emmy-winning television series The Crown.

In a statement, Mirren stated, "I'm mourning with the rest of my country, the passing of a magnificent queen." "I'm proud to identify as an Elizabethan. Elizabeth Windsor personified nobility, if there was such a thing.

In addition to Emma Thompson, Neve Campbell, Kristin Scott Thomas, Jane Alexander, June Squibb, Maggie Sullivun, Freya Wilson, Sarah Gadon, and Fred Armisen, Jeannette Charles made a career out of comically doubling for Elizabeth for more than 40 years. She appeared in such movies as National Lampoon's European Vacation (1985), The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988), and Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002).

Elizabeth was awarded an honorary BAFTA in 2013 for her support of the U.K. cinema and television industries. BAFTA chairman John Willis referred to her as "the most memorable Bond girl yet" at a star-studded gala at Windsor Castle, where Belfast-born Kenneth Branagh presented her with the award. This was in reference to her cameo appearance alongside Daniel Craig during the opening ceremony of the London Olympics.

The Duke and Duchess of York welcomed Elizabeth Alexandra May Windsor into the world on April 21, 1926 in London. After his brother, King Edward VIII, abdicated the throne in 1936, her father would take his place as King George VI.

Elizabeth, sometimes known as Lilibet (a moniker given to her by her grandson Prince Harry's daughter when she was a young girl), was born first and was assumed to be the heir presumptive, or first in line.

She started working for the government during World War II and served in the British Army's female auxiliary, the Auxiliary Territorial Service, where she received mechanic and lorry driving training. She wed Philip Mountbatten, a former prince of Greece and Denmark whom she had first met in 1934, in November 1947.

They would become the longest-serving royal consort in history, and Philip would be by her side throughout their marriage.

In 1951, George VI's health deteriorated. Elizabeth learned of his passing and, as a result, her rapid accession to the throne while she was traveling through Kenya as part of a tour that was also scheduled to visit Australia and New Zealand.

During her leadership, both at home and abroad, there were decades of significant change. In terms of her own responsibilities, several countries would depose her as head of state as they sought independence and made the transition to a republic as Britain's colonial past came under further scrutiny and countries wanted to sever relations. Barbados became the most recent nation to do so in December.

However, the monarch seemed to become acutely aware of the modern, more ceremonial function of the monarchy in public and political life during her reign, which would also witness a change inside the royal family itself.

The monarchy's public-facing nature had some serious problems, not the least of which was the enormous media interest in the royals' personal life. This may have peaked in the 1980s and 1990s when the Windsors were frequently featured on the front pages of tabloid newspapers, especially following the split of Prince Charles and Diana in 1992 and the numerous revelations regarding their romances.

Prince Andrew's divorce from his wife, Sarah Ferguson, which Elizabeth would call a "annus horribilis," also caused more humiliating headlines in 1992. The queen faced harsh criticism after Diana's passing in 1997 for failing to publicly mourn, skipping the flight from Balmoral to London, and ostensibly refusing to lower the flag at Buckingham Palace. Eventually, she gave in to pressure and addressed the nation on television. The show, which took place the day before Diana's funeral, appeared to moderate a lot of the public animosity.

Later, Elizabeth would deal with the crisis brought on by Andrew's connections to financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and the accusations he himself faced. Following a negative interview her second-eldest son gave to the BBC in 2019, the queen reportedly decided to remove him from public service.

In a scaled-back, COVID-19-impacted funeral in April 2021, she laid to rest Philip, her husband of 73 years, in front of millions of viewers while remaining disguised and seated alone.

Their grandkids Peter, Zara, William, Harry, Beatrice, Eugenie, Louise, and James, as well as their children Charles (born in 1948), Princess Anne (born in 1950), Prince Andrew (born in 1960), and Prince Edward (born in 1964), also survive.