There’s a lot of debate in this thread about the rights and wrongs of monarchy, the extent to which the Queen chose to serve, and so on. There isn’t much context about Britain as it was when she became Queen. Since I used to be a historian, I figured I’d throw some in.
Princess Elizabeth wasn’t originally expected to become Queen. Her father was only the second son of King George V and was not expected to become King either. But, in a move that was deeply shocking at the time, the older son, King Edward VIII, abdicated in 1936 so that he could marry a divorcee.
The abdication crisis was complicated and further complicated by the Commonwealth. The members of the Commonwealth, all of whom had Edward VIII as their king, had to agree to the abdication. The government of the Irish Free State, as it was then known, used the opportunity to dramatically reduce the role of the King.
Elizabeth’s father became George VI and she became the heir presumptive. At this point (1936) it still wasn’t clear that she would become Queen. She was just 10 years old and if her parents had a son, he would leapfrog his older sisters and become the heir.
Edward VIII had become Duke of Windsor after the abdication and he remained something of a thorn in the sides of the royal family and British government. There were fights about money and titles and whether the Duke would be allowed to return to the UK. There were bad feelings all round. In 1937 the Duke visited Nazi Germany, which infuriated the British government. During World War II he was considered to be pro-Nazi and was for a while under surveillance by the Americans.
Things had in some ways calmed down by 1952, when George VI died. But the UK was still intensely feeling the effects of World War II. There were several financial crises, the country’s debt was enormous and rationing didn’t end until 1954.
The British Empire had also continued to fall apart. Today many people consider that a good thing, with countries gaining independence and people gaining self-determination. But from a monarch’s perspective, losing an empire is a pretty terrible failure.
I’ve missed out all sorts of things because this was already so long. But that, roughly speaking, was the situation when Princess Elizabeth became Queen Elizabeth II in 1952.