Queen Elizabeth II Dies at 96; Was Britain’s Longest-Reigning Monarch
女王伊丽莎白二世逝世：英国在位最长君主，见证时代起落

LONDON — Queen Elizabeth II, Britain’s longest-serving monarch, whose broadly popular seven-decade reign survived tectonic shifts in her country’s post-imperial society and weathered successive challenges posed by the romantic choices, missteps and imbroglios of her descendants, died on Thursday at Balmoral Castle in Scotland, her summer retreat. She was 96.

伦敦——英国在位时间最长的君主伊丽莎白女王二世于周四在避暑地苏格兰巴尔莫勒尔城堡去世，享年96岁。她70年的统治受到了广泛欢迎，经历了英国后帝国时代的结构性转变，并且经受了她后代的婚恋选择、失误和错综复杂的尴尬局面所带来的一系列挑战。

The royal family announced her death online, saying she had “died peacefully.” The announcement did not specify a cause.

王室在网上宣布了她逝世的消息，称她“安详地去世”。该公告没有说明死因。

Her death elevated her eldest son, Charles, to the throne, as King Charles III. In a statement, he said:

她的逝世使她的长子查尔斯继承王位，成为查理三世国王。他在声明中说：

“The death of my beloved Mother, Her Majesty the Queen, is a moment of the greatest sadness for me and all members of my family.

“我心爱的母亲、女王陛下的去世，对我和我的所有家庭成员来说是最悲伤的时刻。

“We mourn profoundly the passing of a cherished Sovereign and a much-loved Mother. I know her loss will be deeply felt throughout the country, the Realms and the Commonwealth, and by countless people around the world.”

“我们深深哀悼一位广受爱戴的君主和一名深受敬爱的母亲。我深知，整个国家、英联邦以及世界各地无数民众将深切感受到她的离去。”

Earlier Thursday, Buckingham Palace said that the queen had been placed under medical supervision and that her doctors were “concerned” about her health. She had remained at Balmoral for much of the summer. On Wednesday evening, she abruptly canceled a virtual meeting with members of her Privy Council after her doctors advised her to rest.

周四早些时候，白金汉宫表示女王已接受医疗监护，她的医生“担心”她的健康。在夏天大部分时间里，她一直待在巴尔莫勒尔。周三晚上，医生建议她休息后，她突然取消了与枢密院成员的虚拟会议。

On Tuesday, she met with the incoming Conservative prime minister, Liz Truss — the 15th prime minister the queen dealt with during her reign — though in doing so, because of infirmity, she broke with longstanding tradition by receiving her at Balmoral rather than at Buckingham Palace.

周二，她会见了即将上任的保守党首相丽兹·特拉斯——这是女王在位期间打过交道的第15位首相——不过，由于身体虚弱，女王打破了长期以来的传统，将会面地点设在巴尔莫勒尔，而不是白金汉宫。

Elizabeth’s long years as sovereign were a time of enormous upheaval, in which she sought to project and protect the royal family as a rare bastion of permanence in a world of shifting values.

在伊丽莎白作为君主的漫长岁月中，发生了天翻地覆的变化，在价值观不断变化的世界中，她试图将王室塑造为一个罕见的永恒堡垒并予以保护。

At her coronation on June 2, 1953, a year after she acceded to the throne, she surveyed a realm emerging from an empire of such geographical reach that it was said the sun never set on it. But by the new century, as she navigated her advancing years with increasing frailty, the frontiers had shrunk back. As Britain prepared to leave the European Union in 2020, a clamor for independence in Scotland was rekindled, potentially threatening to narrow her horizons yet further.

她继承王位一年后，在1953年6月2日举行的加冕典礼上，她概观一片因地理范围之广而得名日不落帝国的领土。但是到了新世纪，随着她进入晚年，身体逐渐虚弱，帝国的边界已经回缩。当英国准备在2020年脱欧，苏格兰的独立呼声再次燃起，可能会导致她视线中的领土进一步缩小。

Her coronation was the first royal event of its kind to be broadcast almost in full on television. But it was a token of the changes — and global fascination — that accompanied her time as queen that her reign became the subject of a Hollywood movie and a blockbuster series on Netflix, while her family’s travails offered voluminous grist to the busy mill of social media.

她的加冕典礼是第一次在电视上几乎完整直播的此类王室活动。这象征着世界的变化和全球吸引力，在她作为女王的统治时期，这些东西伴随始终，她的统治成为好莱坞电影和Netflix的一部大热连续剧的主题，而她的家人的种种困扰也为喧闹的社交媒体提供了大量的素材。

Just as telling in the chronicles of her rule, Britons’ unquestioning deference to the crown had been supplanted by a gamut of emotions ranging from loyal and often affectionate tolerance to unbridled hostility. The monarchy was forced, more than ever, to justify its existence in the face of often skeptical public attention and scrutiny.

从她的统治历程可以看出，英国人对王室的毫无疑问的顺从态度已经被各种各样的情绪所取代，从忠诚和通常充满深情的宽容到肆无忌惮的敌意。面对通常持怀疑态度的公众关注和审视，王室不得不证明其存在的合理性，这种被迫程度是前所未有的。

Elizabeth, though, remained determinedly committed to the hallmark aloofness, formality and pageantry by which the monarchy has long sought to preserve the mystique that underpinned its existence and survival. Her courtly and reserved manner changed little.

然而，伊丽莎白仍然坚定地致力于维持标志性的超然、礼数和华丽盛典，这是王室长期以来试图保护的神秘性，是王室存续的基础。她彬彬有礼的矜持态度几乎没有发生变化。

As the coronavirus pandemic of 2020 spread to Britain, forcing people to suspend their normal lives and social ways, the queen left Buckingham Palace, in central London, for Windsor Castle, west of the capital, a move that recalled the decades she had spent inspiring genuine affection among many Britons.

随着2020年的新冠病毒大流行蔓延到英国，人们被迫暂停正常生活和社交方式，女王离开了伦敦市中心的白金汉宫，前往首都以西的温莎城堡，这一举动让人回想起多年来她是如何在许多英国人心中激起真实的爱戴之情。

It was to Windsor that she and her younger sister, Margaret, were sent to escape the threat of German bombing after the outbreak of World War II in 1939. It was from Windsor, too, that she made her first radio broadcast as a princess in 1940, age 14, ostensibly directed at British children who had been evacuated to North America, according to her biographer Ben Pimlott, but also intended to sway official thinking in Washington, which had not yet entered the war.

1939年第二次世界大战爆发后，她和她的妹妹玛格丽特正是被送去温莎躲避德国轰炸的威胁。也是从温莎那里，在1940年，14岁的她以公主的身份进行了她的第一次电台广播。据她的传记作者本·皮姆洛特称，这次广播表面上是面向那些被疏散到北美的英国儿童，但也是为了影响当时尚未参战的华盛顿的官方想法。

“My sister, Margaret Rose, and I feel so much for you, as we know from experience what it means to be away from those we love most of all,” Elizabeth said then.

“我和我的妹妹玛格丽特·罗斯对你深感同情，因为我们体验过远离我们最爱的人意味着什么，”伊丽莎白当时说道。

In 2020, too, she sought to equate her plight with that of her subjects. “Many of us will need to find new ways of staying in touch with each other and making sure that loved ones are safe,” she said in a statement released after she and her husband, Prince Philip, arrived at Windsor. “I am certain that we are up to that challenge. You can be assured that my family and I stand ready to play our part.”

在2020年，她也试图将自己的情况与她的人民的困境等同起来。“我们中的许多人需要找到新的方式来保持联系，并确保亲人的安全，”她和丈夫菲利普亲王抵达温莎后发表的一份声明中说。“我确信我们能够应对这一挑战。你可以放心，我和我的家人随时准备尽我们的职责。”

On April 5, 2020, in a televised address that evoked her 1940 broadcast, she urged her subjects to fight the virus with the same bulldog tenacity that wartime Britons had shown. It was only the fourth special broadcast of her monarchy outside of her scheduled TV appearances at Christmas.

她在2020年4月5日的电视讲话让人想起了她在1940年的广播，在电视讲话中，她敦促她的人民以战时英国人所表现出的斗牛犬般的坚韧去抵御病毒。除了英王圣诞文告之外，这仅是她在位期间的第四次特别广播。

“I hope in the years to come everyone will be able to take pride in how they responded to this challenge,” she said. “And those who come after us will say that the Britons of this generation were as strong as any.”

“我希望在未来的岁月里，每个人都能为他们如何应对这一挑战而感到自豪，”她说。“而我们的后代会说，这一代的英国人和以前一样强大。”

She added, “We should take comfort that while we may have more still to endure, better days will return. We will be with our friends again; we will be with our families again; we will meet again,” the last line a direct reference to a wartime song by Vera Lynn, “We’ll Meet Again.”

她还说：“我们应该感到欣慰的是，虽然我们可能还要忍受更久，但美好的日子总会回来的。我们将再次与我们的朋友在一起；我们将再次与家人团聚；我们会再次相见，”最后一句直接引用了薇拉·琳恩的一首战时歌曲《我们会再次相见》。

In 2017, Elizabeth celebrated the 70th anniversary of her marriage to Philip, whom she first met when he was a teenager in the 1930s. Until his death last April, Philip had settled into an unusual role, usually two steps behind his wife, providing her with stoic support, even if his occasional tactless comments hurt his image.

2017年，伊丽莎白庆祝了与菲利普的结婚70周年纪念日，她初遇菲利普是在上世纪30年代，当时他还只有十几岁。一直到去年4月去世，菲利普都习惯于自己不同寻常的角色，往往甘居妻子身后，给她坚定不移的支持，即使偶尔不得体的言论有损他的形象。

Despite many reports of early peccadilloes on Philip’s part — hidden from public view with the help of cooperative newspaper barons — their bonds endured, a throwback to earlier decades of more durable relationships. And his death, their second son, Prince Andrew, said, “left a huge void in her life.”

尽管关于菲利普早年一些行为不端的报道有很多——在乐于配合的报业大亨的帮助下一度被隐藏于公众视野之外——但他们的婚姻是那种几十年前更为持久的关系，带有旧时代的特点，最终得以维持。他们的次子安德鲁王子说，菲利普去世“给她的生活留下了巨大的空白”。

Some predicted that Elizabeth would recede into the shadows after Philip’s death, much as Queen Victoria did after the death of her husband, Prince Albert. But she surprised many by re-emerging as a spry presence in public life, entertaining world leaders at a summit meeting in Cornwall in June 2021 and playing host to Bill Gates and other businesspeople at Windsor Castle after a climate-change investment conference.

一些人预测，伊丽莎白会在菲利普去世后退隐幕后，就像维多利亚女王在丈夫阿尔伯特亲王去世后一样。但令许多人惊讶的是，她重新活跃在公众视线之中，2021年6月在康瓦耳郡的峰会与世界领导人谈笑风生，并在一场气候变化投资会议结束后，于温莎城堡招待了比尔·盖茨和其他商界人士。

Still, the hectic schedule took a toll. Elizabeth was photographed using a walking stick, a rare concession to her stiff knees. She was kept overnight in a London hospital in October 2021 after what aides said was an episode of exhaustion. Few doubted the effect of the loss of Philip, who had been a stabilizing force in the family.

不过，繁忙的日程给她带来了负担。伊丽莎白被拍到使用拐杖，这是她对僵硬的膝盖做出的罕见让步。2021年10月，她在伦敦一家医院住了一晚，助手说是因为过度劳累。失去菲利普的打击是巨大的，因为他一直都是家族中稳定局面的人。

Elizabeth’s own children seemed less immune to marital calamity.

伊丽莎白的子女则似乎难以避开婚姻的不幸。

In 1992, Prince Charles and his immensely popular wife, Diana, agreed to separate, as did Prince Andrew and his wife, Sarah Ferguson. Elizabeth’s second child, Princess Anne, divorced her husband, Mark Phillips, the same year. Coupled with a series of other upheavals, the queen labeled 1992 her “annus horribilis.”

1992年，查尔斯王子和人望极高的妻子戴安娜同意分居，安德鲁王子也与妻子莎拉·弗格森分居。伊丽莎白的第二个孩子安妮公主在同年与丈夫马克·菲利普斯离婚。再加之其他一系列波折，女王将1992年称为她的“灾年”。

But worse was to come.

但更糟的事情还在后面。

In 1997, the death of Diana in a car crash in Paris wrote some of the darkest chapters of Elizabeth’s reign, and for a while the monarchy itself seemed threatened by a huge wave of public support for Diana that left the queen seeming cold and emotionally estranged from her subjects.

1997年，戴安娜在巴黎的一场车祸中去世，为伊丽莎白的统治写下了一些最黑暗的篇章。公众对戴安娜的巨大支持似乎一度威胁到君主制本身，让女王看起来冷漠无情，在情感上与自己的臣民十分疏远。

The monarchy survived, but well into the 21st century new challenges emerged.

君主制最终得以延续，但在迈入21世纪多年后，仍有新的挑战出现。

In 2019, Elizabeth was dragged unceremoniously and against all previous rules of protocol into political machinations over Brexit, as Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union was known, a debate from which she would once have remained remote.

2019年，伊丽莎白被突兀地拖进了英国脱欧的政治图谋之中，打破了此前所有的规章，当时英国要退出欧盟的消息已传开，以往，她会与这样的争论保持距离。

In the same year, Prince Andrew became embroiled in scandal after giving a disastrous television interview in which he seemed unaware of the toxic impact of a friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted American sexual predator. Accused of sexual impropriety with a teenage girl introduced to him by Mr. Epstein — an allegation he has denied — the prince, also known as the Duke of York, withdrew from public life that November. (In January this year, he was forced by Buckingham Palace to relinquish his military titles and royal charities, a stinging rebuke by the royal family a day after a federal judge in New York allowed a sexual abuse case against him to go ahead.)

同年，安德鲁王子在一次灾难性的电视采访后被卷入丑闻，在采访中，他似乎没有意识到与被定罪的美国性侵者杰弗里·爱泼斯坦的友谊会带来有害影响。因为被指控对一名爱泼斯坦介绍的少女实施了不当性行为——他否认这一指控——这位被称为约克公爵的王子于当年11月退出了公众生活。（今年1月，纽约联邦法官允许继续审理一起指控他的性侵案，翌日白金汉宫迫使他放弃了自己的军衔和王室慈善职务，表明了王室对他的严厉谴责。）

In her annual Christmas address to the nation in 2019, the queen described the year as “bumpy.”

在2019年的年度圣诞致辞中，女王称这一年“十分坎坷”。

It was about to get bumpier.

但未来还有更多颠簸。

In 2020, in a move that was perhaps as humiliating as any family convulsion the queen had confronted, her grandson Prince Harry, the sixth in line to the throne, caught her and the rest of the family off guard when he and his American wife, Meghan Markle, announced plans to “step back” from royal duties — a move that some commentators compared to the decision in 1936 by the queen’s uncle, King Edward VIII, to abdicate so that he could proceed with plans to marry the American Wallis Simpson.

2020年，女王遭遇了可能是最为蒙羞的一场家族动荡，她的孙子、王位第六顺位继承人哈里王子与其美国妻子梅根·马克尔宣布准备“退出”王室职务，让女王和其他家族成员措手不及，一些评论人士将此举与女王叔父爱德华八世在1936年的退位决定相提并论，当时他这样做是为了继续与美国人沃利斯·辛普森结婚的计划。

Yet far from carving out a “progressive new role within this institution,” as they had hopefully declared, the young couple were forced into a hard exit, agreeing in a severance deal with Buckingham Palace to give up their loftiest royal titles, forgo state funding and repay at least $3 million in taxpayer money that had been used to refurbish their official residence on the grounds of Windsor Castle.

然而，这对年轻夫妇非但没有像他们希望的那样“在这一制度中开拓出进步性的新角色”，而是被迫艰难地退出，在与白金汉宫达成的分割协议中，他们同意放弃最崇高的王室头衔，放弃国家资助，还要退回至少300万美元的纳税人资金，这些钱曾被用来翻修他们在温莎城堡的官邸。

As the new decade unfolded and the end of Elizabeth’s reign approached, it seemed as if the House of Windsor was under assault from within as never before, a process compounded with spectacular global fanfare by a two-hour television encounter between Meghan and Harry and Oprah Winfrey.

随着新十年的开始和伊丽莎白统治末期的临近，温莎王朝似乎承受了前所未有的内部攻讦，梅根、哈利和奥普拉·温弗瑞的两小时电视访谈引发的全球轰动加剧了这种情况。

During the show, broadcast from California first in the United States, then a day later in Britain, the couple assailed an unidentified member of the royal household as racist. Ms. Winfrey said later that Prince Harry had assured her that he and his wife had not been referring to the queen or Prince Philip. In the interview, Ms Markle said that she had felt so isolated in her unaccustomed royal role that she had actively contemplated suicide.

这档节目先在美国加州播出，一天后在英国播出，在节目中，这对夫妇指控一位身份不明的王室成员是种族主义者。温弗瑞后来说，哈里王子向她保证，他与妻子所指并非女王或菲利普亲王。马克尔在采访中说她不适应王室身份，感到无比孤立，以至于真的考虑过自杀。

Buckingham Palace was taken aback, and it responded with a terse, 61-word statement that sought to contain the drama within the familiar royal palisade of privacy. The royal family was “stunned to learn the full extent of how challenging the last few years have been for Harry and Meghan,” the statement said.

白金汉宫惊讶不已，用一份只有61个词的简短声明作出回应，试图将这场闹剧控制在王室习惯的隐私范围内。该声明称，“得知哈里和梅根在过去几年所遭遇困境的详情，”王室“深感震惊”。

“The issues raised, particularly that of race, are concerning,” it said. “While some recollections may vary, they are taken very seriously and will be addressed by the family privately.”

“他们提出的问题，特别是种族问题令王室十分关切，”声明表示，“虽然一些记忆可能有所出入，但王室会严肃对待此事，并将由家族私下处理。”

Despite the challenges, the queen pressed ahead with her Platinum Jubilee celebration in June this year to commemorate her seven decades as sovereign with a four-day public holiday, complete with a star-studded televised concert outside the gates of Buckingham Palace. But in the run-up to the occasion, the twin themes of failing health and family frictions seemed to blur together.

尽管面临诸多挑战，今年6月，女王仍坚持用四天的公共假期来庆祝她的白金禧年，并在白金汉宫大门外举办了一场群星璀璨的电视音乐会。但在庆典前夕，女王本人健康状况恶化和家族矛盾这两大问题似乎交织到了一起。

In February, she tested positive for the coronavirus, and in May she was forced by what Buckingham Palace called “episodic mobility issues” to cancel an appearance in Parliament to deliver a speech setting out the government’s legislative agenda — one of her most important public ceremonies.

2月，她新冠病毒检测呈阳性，到5月，由于白金汉宫所称的“偶尔行动不便”，她被迫取消了在议会发表关于阐述政府立法议程的演讲，这是她最重要的公共仪式之一。

It was the first time in almost 60 years that she had missed the event. She had been absent from it only twice before during her reign because of pregnancies with princes Andrew and Edward, her youngest child.

这是近60年来她首次缺席这一场合。作为女王，她此前仅缺席过两次，分别是在怀上安德鲁王子和她最小孩子的爱德华王子期间。

Significantly, Prince Charles, the heir to the throne, read the speech on her behalf, with the queen’s bejeweled ceremonial crown — the Imperial State Crown — placed next to him, as if to assert her symbolic presence.

值得注意的是，王位继承人查尔斯王子代表女王宣读了讲稿，同时还将她在典礼上佩戴的宝石冠冕“帝国皇冠”放在身边，似乎是为了彰显她的象征性存在。

Just days earlier, her office had announced that when the royal family appeared on the balcony of Buckingham Palace during the proposed Platinum Jubilee — regarded as the most potent of royal photo opportunities — Prince Andrew, Prince Harry and his wife Meghan would not be present.

就在那之前几天，女王办公室宣布，当王室成员在拟议的白金禧庆典期间出现在白金汉宫的阳台上时——这被视为王室合影的最佳机会——成员不会包括安德鲁王子、哈里王子与他的妻子梅根。

Ostensibly, their exclusions were because the monarch wished to limit attendance to “those members of the royal family who are currently undertaking official public duties on behalf of the Queen,” in the words of a palace spokesman. But many Britons interpreted the move as a snub to family members who had brought unwelcome comment and unflattering headlines to the closing years of the queen’s reign.

表面上，用白金汉宫发言人的话来说，这些人被排除在外是因为女王希望将出席人数限制在“目前仍代表女王履行公务的王室成员”。但许多英国人相信，这是在冷落女王统治末期制造负面评论和不光彩新闻的家族成员。

Prince Harry is one of eight grandchildren who, along with Elizabeth’s four children, survive the queen, as do 12 great-grandchildren.

哈里王子是女王身后留下的八名孙辈之一，她的遗属还包括四名子女，以及12名曾孙辈。

来源：好英语网