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Ghana Flags fly at half-mast for 7 days in memory of Queen Elizabeth II

Ghana Flags fly at half-mast for 7 days in memory of Queen Elizabeth II

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo has directed for the Flags in the country to fly at half-mast for seven days effective today following the demise of the 96 years Britain monarch, Queen Elizabeth II.

Queen Elizabeth II, Britain’s longest-reigning monarch died on Thursday, September, 8 after 70 years on the throne.

Relatives of the Buckingham Palace who announced her death said she died at Balmoral Castle, her summer residence in Scotland, where members of the royal family had rushed to her side after her health took a turn for the worse.

President Akufo-Addo in a social media post extended the country’s deepest condolences to the new British monarch, King Charles III, the Royal Family and the government of Britain.

“On behalf of the Government and people of Ghana, I extend deepest condolences to the new British monarch, King Charles III, the @RoyalFamily, the Prime Minister, and the Government and people of Great Britain on the death, today, of HM Queen Elizabeth,” he said.

In honour of the Queen’s memory, President Akufo-Addo said “all official flags in the nation fly at half-mast for seven days, as from tomorrow, Friday, 9th September.”

Aside him, many African leaders have also sent their tributes to the royal family to assure them of the Africans support to the London Bridge which has fallen.

Queen Elizabeth II was believed to be the link to the almost-vanished generation that fought World War II, she was the only monarch most Britons have ever known.

Her 73-year-old son Prince Charles automatically became king and would be known as King Charles III, his office said. Charles’ second wife, Camilla, would also be known as the Queen Consort.

The monarch was a constant and reassuring figure in Britain and on the world stage as she helped lead her country through a period of profound shifts in geopolitical power and national identity.

The designs of postage stamps and bank notes changed through the decades, but they all depicted the same, if aging, monarch. The British national anthem now shifts to “God Save the King,” but most Britons have only known the other version, for the queen.

Her son and heir, Charles, summed up the power of her constancy in a rare television documentary aired in 2012 to mark her 60th year as queen.

“Perhaps subconsciously,” he said, “people feel encouraged, reassured by something that is always there.”

Her last major constitutional action came on Tuesday, when she accepted the resignation of Prime Minister Boris Johnson and asked his successor, Liz Truss, to form a new government.

In a monarchy dating back to at least the 10th century with King Athelstan, Elizabeth’s reign was the longest.

In 2015, she broke a record once thought unassailable, surpassing the 63-year rule of her great-great-grandmother, Queen Victoria. While Victoria retreated from her regal duties after the early death of her husband, Prince Albert, Elizabeth — with her outwardly stern demeanor, iron constitution and abiding handbag — remained fully engaged in her queenly duties for most of her life, and true to a pledge she made on her 21st birthday.

Then a fresh-faced princess on tour with her parents in South Africa, she broadcast to British Empire listeners around the globe: “I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service, and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong.”

The length of that service, measured against that of other leading figures, proved astonishing — coinciding with that of 15 British prime ministers, 14 U.S. presidents and seven popes. As supreme governor of the Church of England, Elizabeth appointed six archbishops of Canterbury.

She also had to navigate shifting public attitudes toward the royal family as the increasingly unfettered media laid bare its troubles. The low point came in 1997 with the death in a car accident of her former daughter-in-law, Princess Diana, and public anger at the queen’s halting response to it.

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It was one of few missteps, and the crisis passed: By the time of her Diamond Jubilee in 2012, Queen Elizabeth was the subject of a four-day love fest that included a waterborne procession on the River Thames that rivaled a medieval pageant.

Her approval rating stood at 90 percent. At a service at St. Paul’s Cathedral, then-Archbishop Rowan Williams said, “We are marking six decades of living proof that public service is possible, and that it is a place where happiness can be found.”

By the time of her platinum jubilee in 2022 marking her 70 years as queen, the national celebration had added another dimension, a shared recognition that the reign was almost over and was of a type that would not be seen again in terms of its length, pomp and place in a changed British society.

“While we celebrate the mightiness of Elizabeth II’s allegiance to a life of service, we should also acknowledge that an antiquated version of monarchy must now pass into history,” wrote journalist and royal watcher Tina Brown in her 2022 book, “The Palace Papers.”

Nothing captured this moment more clearly than the image of the queen at her husband’s funeral, held in 2021 amid restrictions related to the covid-19 pandemic. Dressed in black and with her face veiled by a mask, she seemed alone if not isolated in the oaken pews of St. George’s Chapel, Windsor.

The ensuing months were marked by increasing frailty, a rare hospitalization and a covid infection. She was unable to perform long-standing and familiar public duties.

Into her 90s, she maintained a rigorous calendar of events and appearances. They numbered more than 400 in her diamond jubilee year. Her public life was defined by these duties, some seemingly trivial, such as handing out symbolic alms, others mantled with pomp and pageantry — the opening of Parliament or the hosting of a state dinner.

To an outsider, such recurring events might seem perfunctory, but in their recurring character, Charles said, they “help to anchor things” in a dynamic world and, moreover, threaded the monarch through the tapestry of British life.

Her role as queen defined Elizabeth’s life, but her unflagging dedication to the job also defined the monarchy. Unlike her sister and several of her children, including Charles, she kept her personal life intact and avoided private scandal and public controversy. The prospect of abdicating — there were calls for such a move when her great-grandson and third direct heir, Prince George, was born in 2013 — was alien to someone who clung not to power, but to duty.

Dickie Arbiter, a former royal spokesman, said at the time that Elizabeth’s piety alone would prevent it: “She sees herself of having sworn to serve for life not only to the people, but to God.”

The paradox — and possibly the greatest feat — of her reign was her ability to be so visibly dutiful for so long without revealing her inner self. “Of all the world’s public figures, she is the most private,” veteran British journalist Bill Deedes wrote on her 80th birthday.

The queen never gave interviews, published her journals or stepped anywhere near the fray of party politics.

In his book “The Real Elizabeth,” journalist and historian Andrew Marr wrote, “Her view of her role has been that she is a symbol, and that symbols are better off keeping mostly quiet. The Queen’s style of monarchy has buried much of a sense of self, as we understand that today. … The Queen is still what she does. There is only a little space (though an interesting space) between Queen Elizabeth II and the woman who lives her life.”

Toward the end of her life, as she cut back her public duties and confronted a series of personal crises, that space seemed ever smaller. In 2020, her grandson Prince Harry essentially defected from the royal family after his marriage to American actress Meghan Markle. In 2021, Elizabeth lost her near-lifelong soul mate Prince Philip after 73 years of marriage, and she had to deal with the fall from grace of her second son, Prince Andrew, accused of sexual misconduct.

And yet for most of her reign, the queen was so deft at subordinating herself to her role that her subjects “actually know much less about the queen than they imagine,” said biographer Robert Lacey in a 2015 interview with The Washington Post.

“But it seems to me that’s less important than that people feel they know her very well.”

Were it not for a divorcée from Baltimore, however, the world would hardly have registered a woman known to friends by her childhood nickname of Lilibet.

Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor was born a royal princess on April 21, 1926, at her maternal grandparents’ house in London’s Mayfair district. Her mother, also Elizabeth, was from Scottish aristocracy.

Her father, Albert, Duke of York, was the second son of King George V. Princess Elizabeth’s younger sister, Margaret Rose, was born four years later.

The family eventually moved to a mansion on the Windsor estate upriver from London that gave their dynasty its name. As a child, Elizabeth looked set for a genteel life of relative obscurity as a minor royal.

The Duke of York’s older brother, Edward, was in line to succeed their father as king when he died in early 1936.

Source: www.spotonnews.net

Joyceline Natally Cudjoe

An Entertainment Columnist, Content Writer, Blogger, Novelist, Poet, and a Publicist. For business or story tip off, contact me on +233 24 646 6866 or email: [email protected]

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