Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor was third in line for the throne at her birth, but it was generally

assumed that

she would never get that far. She was

nine years old when her grandfather King George V died, and the crown passed to her uncle, King Edward VIII,

but he was pressured to either give up

the throne or give up his plans to marry a twice-divorced He American, the Wallis woman, Simpson. chose

abdicating the throne less than a year

after his father's death.

Suddenly Elizabeth's father was no longer the

stuttering, knock-kneed Prince George, but King George VI, and Elizabeth was no longer just a royal princess, she was heir to the throne. Her parents, who had tried to give their daughters a somewhat -- by royal standards -- ordinary upbringing, started handing her newspaper articles about political matters, and arranged for her to receive lessons on the history of the

British constitution. She was home-schooled in

the palace by a governess, Marion Crawford, who was called Crawfie by Elizabeth and her younger sister Princess Margaret, and who later wrote a book about raising the royal daughters.

At 16, as World War II raged, she asked her father if she could serve as a volunteer nurse in bombeddamaged London, but he thought it was too dangerous. She persisted in asking, and when she was 18 he allowed her to volunteer with the Auxiliary Territorial Service, where she was trained to drive and repair heavy transport vehicles, although she was not allowed to do much of the actual driving and repair work.

Her first crush was on her distant cousin Prince Philip of Greece, and at 20 they were engaged, against her father's vehement wishes. There was nothing wrong with Philip, he argued, but she was far too young to consider marriage. Again she was able to wear down her father's

resistance, and Philip and Elizabeth were

married after he renounced his Greek citizenship and title. Four years later, while on a visit to Kenya, she received word that her father had died, making her Queen Elizabeth II.

Elizabeth II is the constitutional monarch of 16 sovereign states known as the Commonwealth realms: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize, Antigua and Barbuda, and Saint Kitts and Nevis. As Head of the Commonwealth, she is the figurehead of the 54-member Commonwealth of Nations; as the British monarch, she is the Supreme Governor of the

Church of England.

During her reign of over 59 years, currently the second-longest for a British monarch, she became queen of 25 other Commonwealth countries as they gained independence. Between 1956 and 1992, half of her realms,

including South Africa, Pakistan, and

Ceylon (renamed Sri Lanka), became republics. Her Silver and Golden Jubilees were celebrated in 1977 and

2002; planning for her Diamond Jubilee

in 2012 is underway.

The duties of Queen are largely ceremonial, but Elizabeth has always conducted herself with dignity, and she was Time Magazine's Woman of the Year in 1952, for providing "a quiet, wellbehaved fairy tale in which the world could believe." She insisted that her children attend ordinary schools, although the royal definition of "ordinary" means they were sent to swanky private schools, and years later she was clearly pained by the assorted scandals and divorces among her children. In 1992, she quietly acquiesced as Parliament passed laws that, for the first time, taxed the royal family's enormous wealth.