Prince Albert, Duke of York – “Bertie” to the family – was the second son of George V. He initially proposed to Elizabeth in 1921, but she turned him down, being “afraid never, never again to be free to think, speak and act as I feel I really ought to”.
When he declared he would marry no other, his mother, Queen Mary, visited Glamis to see for herself the girl who had stolen her son’s heart. She became convinced that Elizabeth was “the one girl who could make Bertie happy”, but nevertheless refused to interfere. At the same time, Elizabeth was courted by James Stuart, Albert’s equerry, until he left the prince’s service for a better paid job in the American oil business.
In February 1922, Elizabeth was a bridesmaid at the wedding of Albert’s sister, Princess Mary, to Viscount Lascelles. The following month, Albert proposed again, but she refused him once more.
Eventually, in January 1923, Elizabeth agreed to marry Albert, despite her misgivings about royal life. Albert’s freedom in choosing Elizabeth, legally a commoner though the daughter of a peer, was considered a gesture in favour of political modernisation; previously, princes were expected to marry princesses from other royal families.
On 6 February 1952, King George VI died peacefully in his sleep. Shortly afterward, Elizabeth began to be styled Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother. This style was adopted because the normal style for the widow of a king, “Queen Elizabeth”, would have been too similar to the style of her elder daughter, now Queen Elizabeth II. Popularly, she simply became the “Queen Mother” or the “Queen Mum”.
She was devastated by the King’s death and retired to Scotland; however, after a meeting with Prime Minister Winston Churchill, she broke her retirement and resumed her public duties. Eventually she became just as busy as Queen Mother as she had been as Queen.
On 30 March 2002, at 3:15 p.m., the Queen Mother died in her sleep at the Royal Lodge, Windsor Great Park, with her surviving daughter, Queen Elizabeth II, at her bedside. She had been suffering from a cold for the last four months of her life. She was 101 years old, and at the time of her death was the longest-lived member of the royal family in British history. This record was broken on 24 July 2003, by her last surviving sister-in-law Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester, who died aged 102 on 29 October 2004.