Elizabeth II

Wha

t is a queen for anyway? As the crowds cheer and rock stars gyrate next week to celebrate Elizabeth II's 50 years on the British throne, the question sounds churlish, even impertinent. Surely we should let the Brits have their fun, let the 76-year-old monarch—soul of probity and dutiful service—have her reward for a life sentence of grand ceremonies and banal conversations, without laboring to figure out why, in the 21st century, she ought to exist. But the question would not sound strange to Elizabeth herself. She has been grappling with it her whole life. And, in her implacable way, answering it because, after all, there she still is, waving and smiling, granting knighthoods, opening hospitals.

Six months ago, officials at Buckingham Palace feared that the celebrations of her Golden Jubilee would be lifeless and sour. The climb back from Princess Diana's death in 1997, when Elizabeth's wooden initial response provoked public fury, has been arduous. Her offspring have continued to provide embarrassing fodder for the tabloids, from Edward and Sophie trying to trade their lineage for gain to Prince Harry's dabbling in drugs.

But the gratitude is flowing. The crowds greeting the Queen in her recent tours of the country are big and kind: 20,000 in Falmouth, 30,000 in Newcastle (including a streaker with "Rude Britannia" painted on his pale buttocks). Partly this is sympathy for a woman who has just lost her sister, Princess Margaret, who died at age 71 in February, and mother, who died Easter weekend at 101. Perhaps, after the throngs that lined London's streets for the Queen Mother's funeral, it also represents a surprised rediscovery that the royal family—not just charismatic black sheep Diana, but its dutiful core—has something to offer. Yet most of all it is respect for Elizabeth, as someone who has fulfilled every task expected of her. In 50 years, she has undertaken 251 official overseas visits to 128 different countries, launched 17 ships, sat for 120 portraits, conferred 380,630 honors and awards (and owned more than 30 Corgis).

Of course, she has her critics. Mark Leonard, co-author of the pamphlet Modernising the Monarchy, argues that "there is a perfectly rational case for simple abolition." Indeed. The Queen's formal powers, which include picking the Prime Minister and dissolving Parliament, are flagrantly undemocratic. Some 68% of Britons think the royal family is out of touch with ordinary people, according to a MORI poll; only 39% believe the monarchy will last another 50 years. But that is not the only conundrum built into the Queen's role. She keeps her job only if she doesn't exercise any of its powers. She believes she received her calling from God, yet must measure her success through tabloids and pollsters. An elderly white aristocrat raised to believe in Empire, she is expected to embody a whole multicultural nation now wrestling with complex questions of what it means to be British—and English, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish.

The central task of her reign has always been managing the monarchy's image, from which all legitimacy flows. In the 1950s, editors were decorous, convinced that negative news or gossip would outrage readers. But the culture of deference was displaced by a raucous war for circulation and TV viewers, where skirmishes were fought with tittle-tattle about the Windsors. "The main change of the last 50 years is that the monarchy has become absorbed into, embroiled with, the culture of celebrity," says John Baxendale, a cultural historian at Sheffield Hallam University. The royals could not have remained Victorian icons; they had to find their footing in a media age. But the progress they made was undermined by scandal, especially through the mutual loathing of Charles and Diana. The public snapped it up, ogling the juicy parts while clucking disapprovingly about the "terrible decline in standards." This was a peril mainly for Elizabeth's offspring. She herself never cheapened the brand. In fact, courtiers often wished she was not so reticent and had a greater sense of the touching gesture that would play on TV.

A combination of introversion and rigidity came as close as anything has to destroying her reign. The catalyst was the death of Diana, whose publicity-soaked campaign to become Queen of people's hearts resonated on levels Elizabeth had never contemplated. Courtiers could not initially persuade the Queen to fly the royal standard at Buckingham Palace at half-mast (it had not been lowered when her father the King died) or to make any convincingly warm gesture toward the memory of Diana—who had been leaking viciously against the Windsors for years. Angry crowds, furious commentators and smart advisers persuaded Elizabeth within days that a seismic change had shot through public opinion, and the funeral, organized largely by her aides, was a success for her and as a tribute to Diana's memory.

It was a watershed. Elizabeth would never try to touch people on the primal level Diana reached, but she recognized times had changed. No one expects an instinctively conservative woman in her seventies to overhaul radically her job of 50 years, which leaves those who want to reform or abolish it in an awkward fix. The Jubilee has prompted various suggestions for change: among them, that she should retire and that a system for picking an elected president be devised. But the republicans have no real leverage. For all its vicissitudes, the monarchy remains shockingly popular—70% prefer it over a republic, a percentage that has barely budged in 30 years.