“We loved you Ma’am”, “Our hearts are broken”: the photos of Queen Elizabeth II made the front page of all British daily newspapers on Friday, with special editions retracing her 96 years of life and 70 years and 7 months of reign.
The Times, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and The Independent singled out the official likeness of the 27-year-old monarch at her coronation in 1953, while The Sun, The Daily Telegraph and The Daily Express preferred photos of an older Elizabeth II, in black and white or in color, but with the same solemnity.
“Grief is the price to pay for love”, headlines The Telegraph, taking up the strong words that the queen had addressed to Americans after the jihadist attacks of September 11, 2001 in New York (United States).
Love is a theme that comes up very often in the columns of the tabloids. “We loved you Ma’am,” proclaims The Sun. “We are proud to have had you as Queen”, he adds, when The Daily Express title “Our beloved queen is dead”.
“Our hearts are broken”, also affirms The Daily Mail, adding: “How to find the words? Our grief is filled with a hundred different emotions and all are painful to grasp”.
“Thank you” also comes up a lot in articles, such as the front page of the Daily Mirror.
– “Long live the king” –
Unsurprisingly, the death of Elizabeth II gives rise to special editions of several dozen pages dedicated to this historic event, with considerable impact for the United Kingdom and beyond.
“A light has gone from our lives. The day the UK and many around the world have been dreading has arrived. It is gone,” reads the editorial in the popular tabloid The Sun.
“The mother of our nation. The most famous, most loved, most respected woman in the world. The backbone of the UK. It’s just hard to think of life in the country without her around,” adds the daily. “The new world will seem strange to us”.
In her obituary, The Times described Elizabeth II as “the woman who saved the monarchy”.
“It is thanks to his dedication and sense of mission that an institution that at times seemed outdated and unable to adapt to the values of contemporary society still retains its relevance and remains popular today,” according to the daily. .
In the columns of the left-wing newspaper The Guardian, the editorial believes that his disappearance marks the beginning of “a new future”. “The one element in our collective life that consistently and reliably remained the same…is gone,” he wrote.
The Daily Telegraph also pays tribute to “a life in the service” of the United Kingdom. “She was more than an aloof and matriarchal symbol of the nation, she was a constant guide and company, always peacefully reassuring even in the most turbulent times (…) The reign of Elizabeth II is over. Long life to King Charles III”, he concludes.
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