OPINION | Duty, the only word that defined Queen Elizabeth II

Seven Highlights in the Life of Queen Elizabeth II 1:37 Editor’s Note: Peter Bergen is a CNN national security analyst, vice president of New America, an author, and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. The opinions expressed in this comment are his own. See more opinions on CNN. (CNN) — Duty is a pretty old-fashioned concept these days in a world plagued by public figures who are only hungry for power to achieve it by any means available. But duty is the word that best sums up the reign of Queen Elizabeth II, who died Thursday at the age of 96. The queen gave herself selflessly. His was a role that is ceremonial, but also deeply rooted in the world’s oldest constitutional monarchy and in a country that has given the world many of the concepts and policies we associate with democracy. Seven years after the end of World War II, the queen, only 25 years old, ascended the British throne. Harry Truman was the President of the United States and Winston Churchill was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Since then, the monarch has reigned for 13 additional US presidencies: Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and now Joe Biden. Apart from Elizabeth II, which monarchs had the longest reigns? 0:54 In many ways, the queen symbolized the “special relationship” between the United Kingdom and the United States. A rite of passage for nearly every one of the 14 US presidents since she took the throne has been to host a state visit for the president to the UK or attend a formal state dinner hosted by the president in Washington. Most recently, she met with President Joe Biden in June at Windsor Castle. According to Robert Hardman, the dean of royal biographers, she was particularly close to Reagan, whom she considered “the most charming.” They shared a love of the outdoors and horses. It was a friendship that lasted long after Reagan left the presidency, Hardman reported in his 2018 book “Queen of the World.” The queen and Obama also enjoyed a close relationship, according to Hardman. She had an extraordinary career; most British subjects can only remember one monarch. During her long reign, the queen presided over the dissolution of large swaths of the British Empire, continuing a process that began under her father’s reign. She also officially installed three women as her prime ministers: Margaret Thatcher, Theresa May and, just on Tuesday, Liz Truss, who met the queen for her formal investiture as prime minister at Balmoral Castle in Scotland. . The queen was a symbol of unity, expresses the British ambassador to Mexico 2:59 As queen, she made a staggering 21,000 commitments and was a patron of hundreds of organizations, including those dedicated to education and training, sports and recreation, faith, arts and culture, according to statistics released by the Royal Household in May, when Britain celebrated the queen’s 70th anniversary on the throne. The contrast is striking between who was the queen and former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who resigned after being forced from office. Johnson is a serial liar on matters big and small, attending private parties at his official Downing Street residence during a rigorous Covid-19 lockdown that he himself had authorized. (He later apologized.) The queen also provided a stark contrast to Trump, whose personal lawyer at the time of his 2016 campaign for president, Michael Cohen, bribed a porn actress who claimed to have had an affair with the candidate, and who is on record as having done more than 30,000 false or misleading statements while he was president, according to The Washington Post. The queen led an exemplary personal life, rarely speaking in public except at official events such as the annual State Opening of Parliament. Earlier this year she missed her first speech before Parliament for the first time since 1953, delivered in her place by her son and her heir, Carlos. It was a telltale sign of her growing frailty. The content of the queen’s weekly meetings with the 15 British men and women who have been her prime ministers has mostly remained a closely guarded secret, but one can imagine that a monarch who met regularly for seven decades with an extraordinary variety of prime ministers, from Churchill to Thatcher, had some sage advice for many of them. The queen was also part of a long tradition of strong British female leadership dating back to Queen Boudicia, who led a rebellion against the Roman Empire. It was her namesake Elizabeth I who fought against the mighty Spanish Empire, while Queen Victoria ruled during the era that bears her name during which the British Empire became the largest empire in history. Watch the great moments of the life of Queen Elizabeth 2:53 It is no coincidence, I do not think so, that during the reign of Elizabeth II the British had three prime ministers. After all, the British were used to a woman serving as head of state, so having a female leader didn’t seem like a stretch. Meanwhile, the United States has yet to have a female president. Of course, during her extraordinarily long reign, the queen made mistakes, the best known of which was her initial public silence when Princess Diana was killed in a car accident in Paris 25 years ago. The stiff gesture she had made the British get over bombing London during World War II was simply not the right attitude for a population now much more willing to show their emotions publicly. The great outpouring of public grief that followed Diana’s death caught the queen off on the wrong foot. She remained in seclusion at Balmoral Castle and only lowered the British flag over Buckingham Palace after considerable public outrage that the royal family was not doing enough publicly to show her grief. But that dissatisfaction has long since dissipated. As she celebrated her Platinum Jubilee on the throne earlier this year, 86% of British citizens said they were satisfied with the way the queen was doing her job. Charles inherits a monarchy that remains very popular with the British public. This year 68% of British citizens supported the continuation of the monarchy. It is one of Queen Elizabeth II’s key legacies and yet another example of how she did her duty.