Queen Marks 50 Years of Rule

Queen Elizabeth II marked 50 years as Britain’s monarch Wednesday, but it was no day of celebration: The anniversary also marks the day her father, King George VI, died unexpectedly when she was a young princess on holiday.

Yet the queen broke with her usual tradition of staying in seclusion at the royal estate at Sandringham in Norfolk, about 100 miles northeast of London, where her father died. In a significant gesture, she opened a cancer ward at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in the nearby town of King’s Lynn.

Her father, a heavy smoker, suffered from lung cancer before dying of a coronary thrombosis when Elizabeth was 25.

The queen visited the new Macmillan Cancer Ward, a care and therapy ward for cancer patients. Wearing a bright green coat and matching hat, she greeted staff members and chatted with patients--many of whom were receiving chemotherapy during her visit.

The queen mother, the widow of King George and now 101 years old, stayed at Sandringham and attended a morning church service there. She is said to be recovering from a cold.

The anniversary, known officially as Accession Day, has always been a commemorative rather than a celebratory event in the royal calendar.

This year, it was marked with a 62-gun royal salute from the Tower of London, the booms echoing over the Thames River, and a 41-gun salute in London’s Hyde Park.

Before a crowd of tourists and royal fans, the King’s Troop, Royal Horse Artillery--named by the queen’s father--galloped through the park, pulling World War I cannons, which were loaded and fired by soldiers in gold-braided uniforms.

The day was also marked in modern fashion, with an Internet message from the queen to her subjects thanking them for their “loyalty and support.”

Fifty years ago, Princess Elizabeth was on an official visit to Kenya with her husband, Prince Philip.

She was spending a short break at a safari park in an exotic but somewhat primitive treehouse, a gift to British royalty from the Kenyan government.

Named Treetops, it literally was at the top of a tree, accessible only by a ladder. It was here that she learned of her father’s death through the limited communication systems of the time.

As her cousin Lady Pamela Hicks recalled on television, “She went up that ladder a princess and came down in the morning a queen.”