It was a footman who brought the news to ten-year-old Elizabeth
Alexandra Mary Windsor on December 10, 1936. Her father had
become an accidental king just four days before his forty-first
birthday when his older brother, King Edward VIII, abdicated to
marry Wallis Warfield Simpson, a twice-divorced American. Edward
VIII had been sovereign only nine months after taking the throne
following the death of his father, King George V, making him,
according to one mordant joke, "the only monarch in history to
abandon the ship of state to sign on as third mate on a
Baltimore tramp." "Does that mean that you will have to be the
next queen?" asked Elizabeth's younger sister, Margaret Rose (as
she was called in her childhood). "Yes, someday," Elizabeth
replied. "Poor you," said Margaret Rose. Although the two
princesses had been the focus of fascination by the press and
the public, they had led a carefree and insulated life
surrounded by governesses, nannies, maids, dogs, and ponies.
They spent idyllic months in the Engl