The Untold Truth Of Queen Elizabeth II

Queen Elizabeth's 1926 birth date put her in the right age bracket to serve in the Second World War. But as a woman and a royal, she did not have to. In fact, according to the U.K. newspaper The Standard, her father did not want her to. But he eventually caved, and she became the only female member of the royal family to be sent off the army. She enlisted in the Women's Territorial Auxiliary Corps, where she chose a surprising profession for her military service.

Truck driving is traditionally a blue-collar male profession. But this is exactly the profession Elizabeth was allowed to take up during the war. Her father refused to allow her to work in a factory, so instead, she was trained as a mechanic and truck driver. There are even photos showing that she learned how to disassemble, repair, and reassemble engines of different military vehicles. Her pride and joy? Getting her hands dirty. These were badges of honor for her to show off to her friends. While she was not to be treated any differently from her fellow servicewomen, she did have the perk of getting to sleep at home in Windsor Castle rather than in barracks. But for a family that has been branded as "parasites" in the Mirror and other sectors of the U.K. press, Queen Elizabeth was able to claim to have gotten her hands dirty, paid her dues, and gained some practical skills.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, candidate Donald Trump joked about shooting someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue without losing voters. Such an act would have landed him in prison. But Queen Elizabeth could have theoretically gotten away with such a crime because, according to British Heritage, she was above the law.

The monarch enjoys protection from all prosecution under the principle of sovereign immunity. According to Cornell University's Legal Information Institute, this principle of British common law surmises that the state — or monarch — can do no legal wrong and can only be prosecuted for its crimes by its own consent. Queen Elizabeth was the U.K.'s head of state and the courts and law all operated in her name. Police officers in the U.K. do swear to uphold the monarch's rule, just as police officers in America swear to uphold the Constitution. Thus, it is easy to see why she could not be arrested, interviewed, or prosecuted. Although she did not pass laws, from a legal standpoint, she was the law.

Queen Elizabeth would have had to waive her sovereign immunity if she were to ever have been charged in one of her courts. Otherwise, she would have been prosecuting herself, since in Britain, the monarch, as head of the justice system, is always the plaintiff. Fortunately, this provision only applied to her — not to her family members — which made it legally possible to investigate and prosecute royals that have been accused of heinous crimes, such as those committed by Prince Andrew (via Town and Country).

Since taking the throne in 1952, Elizabeth maintained relations with Britain's former colony, the United States. According to Business Insider, as head of state, it was her job to facilitate "the special relationship" between the U.S. and U.K. Thus, she met almost every U.S. president since Harry Truman.

According to BBC America, Queen Elizabeth got along swimmingly with President Dwight Eisenhower, who she met as a princess during his London sojourn as supreme allied commander. They even exchanged recipes. The relationship with the Kennedy administration was more complicated. According to Biography, the queen was suspicious of President John F. Kennedy due to his father's anti-British attitudes during his 1930s ambassadorship in London. First lady Jackie Kennedy did not help. According to the Washington Post, during a 1961 visit to the U.K., Jackie stole the British public's adoration and got into a spat over her Polish relatives being left off a royal dinner guest list. Jackie also criticized Buckingham Palace's furnishings, although it is unclear if Elizabeth ever became aware of them.

Only President Lyndon Johnson never met the queen in person. According to Newsweek, Elizabeth was pregnant at the time of Kennedy's assassination, so she did not attend the funeral where she could have met Johnson. Otherwise, although the two heads of state corresponded, they never invited each other to their respective homes. Why exactly is not known for certain.

The Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), according to the HBC Heritage Foundation, was chartered to procure pelts, which were plentiful in Canada's northern wilderness. But the charter was conditional. The HBC Heritage Foundation notes that the charter required the company pay "​​yearly to [the Crown] and our heirs and successors for the same two Elks and two Black beavers whensoever and as often as We, our heirs and successors shall happen to enter into the said Countries, Territories and Regions hereby granted."

In contemporary English, the charter stipulated that the HBC had to pay two elk and two beaver pelts for the right to trap and hunt if a royal ever visited the Hudson's Bay area. Although the HBC was chartered under Charles II in 1670, no monarch ever invoked the tribute until 1927, when Edward VIII visited as Prince of Wales. George VI followed in 1939, and Queen Elizabeth in 1959. When she visited Canada in 1970, she received live rent instead.

1970 was the 300th anniversary of the company charter. In celebration, the company gave Elizabeth two very frisky live beavers, who spent the entirety of the ceremony frolicking in their tank. When the queen asked what they were doing, the HBC governor simply told her, "it's no use asking me. I am a bachelor," suggesting that the beavers were not just playing. Despite a rainy day, the beavers stole the show and provided a delightful photographic memory. Today, the charter has been modified to remove the rent obligations.

European royalty are all related to each other. According to History Answers, frequent kin marriages led to closely-related families and genetic disease. European dynasties tended to marry with other European Christians. Rarely did the Islamic world manage to insert itself into Europe's nobility. But Queen Elizabeth might have been related to the Islamic prophet Muhammad thanks to an 11th-century Spanish relation.

This claim commonly references Burke's Peerage (via History), which in 1986 traced Elizabeth's ancestry to the Islamic prophet. This claim, although now absent from the site, has been repeated across the Muslim world. Its veracity rests upon Elizabeth's relation to an Andalusi princess named Zaida (pictured above) and her descent from Muhammad.

According to Al-Arabiya, Zaida, daughter of Abu al-Qasim Muhammad ibn Abbad of Seville became the concubine of Alfonso IV of Castille in the 11th century. Their descendants intermarried with English royalty in 1375. But it is unclear if Zaida was related to Muhammad at all. Her father supposedly descended from Muhammad through his daughter Fatima. But none of this is known for certain. As Nobles and Nation in Central Europe notes, family trees and bloodlines were manipulated or outright fabricated for political reasons. In Elizabeth's case, it seemed like an attempt to calm interfaith tension in an increasingly pluralistic U.K.

As both head of the Anglican Church and the U.K.'s head of state, Queen Elizabeth had the responsibility of meeting with the head of Anglicanism's old enemy, the Roman Catholic Church. Relations between Catholics and Anglicans have much improved since the days of Henry VIII, and the queen met with multiple popes since the 1950s (via ABC News). But one visit stands out — her private Vatican audience with Pope John Paul II in 2000.

When Queen Elizabeth visited the Vatican in 2000, her staffers argued about her outfit. According to the book "The Other Side of the Coin," written by the queen's former dresser Angela Kelly (via Evening Standard), her advisors urged her to wear a brightly colored outfit for her private meeting with Pope John Paul II. She agreed and they went to Rome.

There was a major problem, however. According to Italian newspaper La Stampa, all women must wear all-black, long-sleeved dresses that go below the knee and a head covering during private papal audiences. Only four people, the Catholic queens Sofia of Spain, Paola and Fabiola of Belgium, and Grand Duchess Maria Teresa of Luxembourg were exempt and could wear white. When the Vatican reminded the royal party of the dress code, Elizabeth panicked. She did not have a black outfit and there was no time to get one. But fortunately, Kelly, who had been raised Catholic, had snuck in two black dresses for the queen and averted a diplomatic embarrassment. The audience went ahead without a hitch.

On September 8, 2022, Queen Elizabeth II's death at the age of 96 was announced several hours after it was reported her health had taken a serious downturn — and almost all senior members of the Royal Family had rushed to her side in Balmoral, per the BBC. The news made headlines around the world, but her funeral was to be the real showstopper.

The queen's coronation in 1953 was the first televised coronation of a British monarch in history, per The New York Times, and so it was too with her grand finale. Her funeral was a meticulously planned affair, surrounded by the largest security operation on British soil since WWII (via The Washington Post). For good reason, too: A global audience of over 4 billion people was expected to watch – over half of the population of the planet.

For those that wanted to pay their last respects to the queen in person, or for the numerous representatives of the almost 200 nations and territories that were invited, the event was even more daunting in scope on the ground. Per The Washington Post, so many heads of state arrived en masse that, to soothe a giant security headache, most were bussed into London, instead of the limousines they would typically expect. And the line to see Queen Elizabeth II as she laid in state, prior to the historic televised funeral, was a truly British queue — over 10 miles long at its greatest extent, per the BBC.