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Research dossier · People & Ideas

Elizabeth II

Queen of the United Kingdom from 1952 to 2022

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 17, 2026
Entity authoritySource title only
Source-derived summary

Elizabeth II was Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms from 6 February 1952 until her death in 2022. She was queen regnant of 32 sovereign states during her lifetime and was the monarch of 15 realms at her death. Her reign of 70 years and 214 days is the longest of any British monarch, the second-longest of any sovereign state, and the longest of any queen regnant in history.

Editorial summary

“Elizabeth II” enters the record as queen of the United Kingdom from 1952 to 2022. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Elizabeth, Queen and United can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1952, 2022—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Elizabeth, Queen and United.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Elizabeth II” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Elizabeth, Queen and United provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The first chronological checks are 1952 and 2022.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Elizabeth II”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Elizabeth II primary sources, Elizabeth II archive and Elizabeth research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Elizabeth II”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Elizabeth II” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.