Queen Elizabeth is 90 years today, Royals pays tribute

“She’s been a very strong female influence,” Prince William said on Sky News. “And having lost my mother at a young age, it’s been particularly important to me that I’ve had somebody like the Queen to look up to and who’s been there and who has understood some of the more, um, complex issues when you lose a loved one.” Diana died in 1997 in a Paris automobile crash.

William also recalled an incident when his grandmother chastised him when he got into trouble with his cousins Peter and Zara Phillips while driving an all-terrain bike in Scotland.

Elizabeth was the only surviving child of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. At the time of her birth she was heir to the throne.

However, when Elizabeth was two-years-old, her mother was executed. A year later, a male heir, Edward, was born.

She only returned to her father’s court when he married his sixth and final wife Katherine Parr. After Henry’s death, she lived at her stepmother’s home with her new husband, Thomas Seymour.

However, she left her home following an incident with Seymour. Although no one really knows what happened, it is thought Katherine found Elizabeth kissing him.

On King Edward’s death of consumption in 1553, Elizabeth’s sister Mary came to the throne, and Elizabeth was briefly confined to the Tower of London for suspected treason and collaboration with the rebel Thomas Wyatt. After a few months in the Tower, she was sent to Woodstock and placed under house arrest for a year. It was only when Mary I thought she was pregnant that Elizabeth was allowed to return to her Hatfield residence.

Mary’s marriage to Philip II of Spain made it seem possible that an heir would be born, but Mary died childless in 1558. Elizabeth I was crowned Queen of England on 15 January 1559.