Queen Elizabeth II, Britain’s Beacon of Stability, Dies

The death of Queen Elizabeth II, which Buckingham Palace announced on Thursday, is a watershed moment for Britain, at once incomparable and incalculable.

It marks both the loss of a revered monarch — the only one most Britons have ever known — and the end of a figure who served as a living link to the glories of World War II Britain, presided over its fitful adjustment to a post-colonial, post-imperial era and saw it through its bitter divorce from the European Union.

There is no analogous public figure who...