A doting Duchess of York and her daughter, Princess Elizabeth, May 1926.
The Life Picture Collection / Getty Images.
An early royal wave: the princess acknowledges bystanders, riding in a carriage of the Royal Mews.
Popperfoto / Getty Images.
Dressed in the ‘dainty, fairy-like’ dress her mother preferred, Elizabeth with her grandmother, Queen Mary, photographed by Marcus Adams on 31 March 1927.
Photograph by Marcus Adams / The Royal Collection, Camera Press London.
On 24 October 1931, wearing her first long dress, five-year-old Elizabeth was one of twelve bridesmaids in attendance on her second cousin, Lady May Cambridge, at her wedding to Captain Henry Abel-Smith.
Sueddeutsche Zeitung Photo / Alamy Stock Photo.
Elizabeth standing outside Y Bwthyn Bach, the miniature thatched cottage presented to her on her sixth birthday by the people of Wales and constructed in the gardens of the Royal Lodge, Windsor Great Park, c.1933.
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Although portraitist Philip de László painted six-year-old Elizabeth without any markers of her royal rank, he was quite certain, he wrote, that she was ‘the future Queen of Great Britain’.
Magite Historic / Alamy Stock Photo.
From C. Edmond Brock, whose father built the Victoria Memorial in front of Buckingham Palace, the Duchess of York commissioned this ‘family picture of myself and our two daughters’, completed in 1936. Brock’s several images of the princesses were favourites of their father’s.
PA Images / Alamy Stock Photo.
Elizabeth on a tricycle, 1933.
PA / TopFoto.
Elizabeth in a carriage with, from left, her father, the Duke of York, King George V and the Duchess of York, on the way to Crathie Church, Scotland, 26 August 1935.
Hulton Archive / Getty Images.
Wearing dresses of ‘white silk with old cream lace and... little gold bows all the way down the middle... and robes of purple velvet with gold on the edge’, Elizabeth and Margaret joined their parents and grandmother on the balcony of Buckingham Palace after George VI’s coronation, 12 May 1937.
Hulton Archive / Getty Images.
Marcus Adams’s first photograph of the new Royal Family at Buckingham Palace, taken on 20 December 1938, proved immensely popular. The following year Elizabeth’s parents used the picture as their Christmas card.
Photograph by Marcus Adams / Camera Press London.
Elizabeth was sixteen when Cecil Beaton photographed her in the Bow Room at Buckingham Palace, wearing a pink dress with blue pearl bows.
© Cecil Beaton / Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
A smiling Elizabeth at Sandringham in 1944.
Granger, NYC / TopFoto.
Second Subaltern Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor of the ATS, busy with vehicle mechanics, 1945.
Popperfoto / Getty Images.
Margaret and Elizabeth travel on the footplate of a steam engine towing the royal train across South Africa, February 1947. On the right is F. C. Sturrock, the South African Minister of Transport.
Topical Press Agency / Getty Images.
Elizabeth married Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten, formerly Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark, created HRH The Duke of Edinburgh by George VI, on 20 November 1947. She borrowed the diamond fringe tiara from her mother; her earrings were twenty-first birthday presents from her grandmother, Queen Mary.
Popperfoto / Getty Images.
Elizabeth and Philip watching a cricket match at Windsor, 1948. Philip is about to bat for Windsor Great Park Team A.
ANL / Shutterstock.
A beaming Elizabeth and Philip with six-month-old Prince Charles Philip Arthur George, 27 April 1949.
PA Images / Alamy Stock Photo.