Queen Elizabeth II's seven-decade reign made her Britain's longest-serving monarch, fulfilling her duties until she died on Thursday, Sept. 8, at the age of 96. Over a life that stretched across most of a century the world transformed around Elizabeth even as the institution she represented stubbornly clung to tradition.

Some of this is by design — and no doubt at the insistence of The Firm, the organization that runs the royal household and maintains its interactions with the public. Most is the result of Elizabeth's insistence on maintaining the corona of privacy expected of her station. The less we knew about who the queen was as an individual, the easier it was to maintain the ideological portrait of the crown's integrity and constancy.

Queen Elizabeth II grew up in tandem with TV, becoming the first British monarch to allow full coverage of her coronation ceremony in its entirety. Her reign coincided with the monstrous expansion of tabloid culture, the explosion of celebrity influence, and the ostentatious consumerism of 1980s and 1990s, along with the commercialization of counterculture in music, fashion and in the art world.

Each stratum treats access or the lack of it as a type of currency, making the untouchable, indecipherable Queen fame's equivalent of El Dorado. Getting to know her was the rarest of privileges; knowing what she really thought about anything happening in the world was nigh impossible.

Sir Paul McCartney said it best in "Her Majesty," the 23-second hidden ditty that closed The Beatles' 1969 classic "Abbey Road."

"Her majesty's a pretty nice girl, but she doesn't have a lot to say," he croons to the strains of his acoustic guitar. "Her majesty's a pretty nice girl, but she changes from day to day . . ."

The essence of gentility and service, Elizabeth was equal parts public figure and living mystery. She was real and mortal, and most of us never knew what she thought about anything beyond what experts told us. And who can say whether they were right? She rarely did.

But her relative unreadability also made her a blank canvas that readily accepted any message that suited the situation. This made her a brilliant comedy co-star and the heart of TV and film dramas endeavoring to explore her humanity . . . or underscore her lack of it.

From her starring role as the subject of one of rock's most famous album covers to her cameo as Paddington Bear's fanciest companion at high tea, here are five ways we viewed Queen Elizabeth II through popular culture.

The Smiths' 1986 hit "The Queen Is Dead" lets its title shoulder most of the ire, styling Morrissey's disdain for the monarchy in sullen lyrics that close by repeating, "Life is very long when you're lonely."  The Stone Roses flip that concept with 1989's politely titled "Elizabeth, My Dear," with lyrics explicitly stating the singer's desire to topple the monarchy:

Tear me apart and boil my bones I'll not rest 'til she's lost her throne My aim is true, my message is clear It's curtains for you, Elizabeth my dear

This day in Sex Pistols history... June 7th 1977. The Sex Pistols celebrate the Queen's Silver Jubilee day by hiring a boat to travel along the River Thames in full view of the Houses of Parliament. https://t.co/st8zgTJVbr pic.twitter.com/7p6Dp8ZK0t

— Sex Pistols Official (@sexpistols) June 7, 2022

Warhol featured three other monarchs in his series, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark and Queen Ntombi Twala of Swaziland, none of whom are as instantly recognizable as the woman who symbolized queendom for most of the post-World War II West.

The queen rarely revealed her emotions, owing to the inscrutability and dignity required of her station. But she was a human with the same aches as the rest of us, something she reminded the public, when she gave a speech admitting to the emotional difficulty living through 1992, the year she famously described as the family's "annus horribilis." Three of her four children's marriages crumbled that year, which was topped off by a fire tearing through Windsor Castle.

Aside from that rare instance of speaking her pain aloud, Elizabeth hid her troubles, along with that of Britain, behind that facade keeping calm and carrying on. For Peter Morgan and other writers endeavoring to tenderly close the distance between the glacial royal and the vulnerable human, this presented an opportunity to write a personality for the queen based on what we, or they, either hope or assume about her behavior when the eyes of the world aren't on her.

Morgan manifests this through three actors in "The Crown," with Claire Foy playing Elizabeth as the young queen, Olivia Colman taking over in the third season to portray her in middle age and Imelda Staunton taking over the role for the series' final two seasons. Before "The Crown," however, Dame Helen Mirren established what would become the streaming serie's core tension in "The Queen," set in the wake of Diana's death. By giving us a version of Elizabeth struggling to balance the longstanding expectation to stifle her emotions with her public's demand to share in their sorrow, Mirren plays out what is presumably the punishing emotional duality of the royals' existence: being a symbol to millions while existing as a full person.

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If we think we know something about what it is to be Queen Elizabeth II, it's probably due to these works, even though her personality has been dramatized by many more works, whether with the maternal softness "Downton Abbey" star Penelope Wilton lent her in the live-action version of "The BFG" or the matriarchal spikiness Stella Gonet assigned to her in 2021's "Spencer." Every emotional note these actors and writers played through their portrayals is guesswork, for the most part. To those who adore Elizabeth, however, they contribute to a fuller picture of who they hope she is, or want her to be.

Melanie McFarland is Salon's TV critic. Follow her on Twitter: @McTelevision

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