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Queen Elizabeth II's record-setting reign was truly worthy of 'The Crown.'
Before she died on Thursday, the UK's longest-serving monarch was admired for her quiet strength, which reflected the country's wartime motto, "Keep calm and carry on."
The same could not be said about her royal children, who filled her 70-year reign with enough sex and scandal to make "The Crown," a racy Netflix show, possible.
Here, The Post looks back at some of the biggest royal scandals during her reign, from how she became queen to her "year from hell" and her last years, when Brexit and Prince Andrew's ongoing sex scandal made him look bad.
HOW SHE EVEN BECAME QUEEN
Queen Elizabeth became queen by accident. This was because Edward VIII gave up his short reign as king to be with Wallis Simpson, an American divorcee. This was the biggest royal scandal of her generation.
The royal family's website says, "Edward realized he had to choose between the Crown and Mrs. Simpson, who, as a twice-divorced woman, would not have been acceptable as Queen."
Edward stepped down after only 325 days, even though he hadn't been crowned yet. When he gave up the throne, his children lost their places in the line of succession. This made way for Elizabeth's historic rule.
Robert Lacey, a royal biographer, has said, "People forget that she got to the throne because of a scandal." Edward finally married Simpson in France in 1937, and he stayed there for the next 35 years, dying in Paris in 1972.
NAZIS
Edward's scandals did not stop when he stepped down as king. In 1937, he and his new wife went to see Adolf Hitler at his vacation home. According to his biography, they gave Hitler a full Nazi salute when they saw him.
Edward even tried to teach the disgusting salute to a young Elizabeth, which was caught on video and shared by The Sun in 2015 under the headline "Their Royal Heilnesses."
The Sun said that the pictures didn't make Elizabeth look bad, but instead showed Edward's "warped prejudices." "The man who was King for a short time was already a Hitler fan, and he stayed that way until 1970, long after the horrors of the Holocaust were known," the paper said at the time.
In fact, the royal family comes from Germany. They used to be called the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, but changed their name to the House of Windsor during World War I.
In 2014, when Princess Michael of Kent found out that her father had been an officer in Hitler's SS, she said she was "shocked."
Prince Harry, who was 20 years old at the time and was the queen's grandson, went to a costume party in 2005 dressed as a Nazi soldier. He wore a red armband with a big swastika on it.
"I'm sorry, it was a bad choice of costume," Harry said in the middle of the chaos.
… AND RACISM
Elizabeth's family, including the late Prince Philip, has also been accused of racism for a long time.
In 2017, Princess Michael of Kent apologized for wearing a blackamoor brooch to her first meeting with Harry's then-fiancée Meghan Markle, who was about to become the first bi-racial royal. Princess Michael said she was "very sorry and upset" that it had "offended" people.
Markle also said that she had to leave the family because of an unknown racist royal. She and Harry have never been able to say for sure who in their family had asked them about the likely color of their mixed-race children.
In a strange twist, Harry had been shamed before for making racist comments. In 2009, he was caught on video calling someone a "Paki" and a "rag-head."
AN “ANNUS HORRIBILIS” OF SEX SCANDALS
Elizabeth was married for 73 years, but some of her children's affairs in the 1980s and 1990s caused scandals that many people thought could end the monarchy.
Her middle son, Prince Andrew, was called Randy Andy for a long time before he married Sarah Ferguson in 1986. However, it was this son's wife who made the most news, especially in 1992 when she was photographed having her toes sucked by US financial adviser John Bryan.
In the same year, Prince Charles and Princess Diana, whose wedding seemed like a fairy tale, broke up because both were accused of cheating.
Diana would later be famous for saying that her ex-husband cheated on his current wife, Queen Consort Camilla, because "there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded." Because Diana cheated on Charles, untrue rumors spread that Princes William and Harry were not with Charles.
Since the queen's daughter Princess Anne also got divorced in 1992, the queen officially called it her "annus horribilis," which is Latin for "horrible year."
PRINCESS DIANA’S DEATH
In 1997, Princess Diana’s death in a car crash in Paris sparked an outpouring of grief around the world — but no word from the queen.
In what is widely seen as one of her biggest missteps, Elizabeth remained holed up in Balmoral, waiting days to finally address the nation in a televised address.
The monarchy’s popularity plummeted during this turbulent period, but Queen Elizabeth’s steadfast presence eventually won back the populace.
HARRY AND MEGHAN’S MEGXIT
When Prince Harry decided in early 2020 to quit being a senior royal, it caused a crisis for the monarchy that had never happened before. The situation got worse when Harry and his wife Meghan Markle gave an explosive interview in which they were accused of bullying and racism.
The queen replied that "the whole family is saddened" and that "the issues raised, especially the one about race, are troubling" and that the family would talk about them privately.
But they were very strong until she died. Markle kept criticizing the royal family in interviews this month, and she and Harry were ignored during a rare trip to the UK, which brought them closer when the queen got sick and died. As her family rushed to be with her, Markle was noticeably not there, even though she seemed to have planned to go.
THE PRINCE AND THE PEDOPHILE
Andrew was also dragged into the biggest sex scandal in recent history, which involved his late pedophile friend Jeffrey Epstein, during the queen's last years.
Even though Epstein had been jailed for child-sex crimes, Andrew had a hard time explaining photos that showed him chatting with the perv while he was staying at his Manhattan mansion in 2011.
But things got worse when Virginia Roberts Giuffre, one of Epstein's accusers, said over and over again that she had been forced to have sex with the prince.
The queen fired Andrew from his royal duties after he gave a terrible interview to the BBC in late 2019. This year, while he was being sued by Giuffre in Manhattan, she stripped him of his royal titles.
He settled the lawsuit in February, but it cost him money. A source told The Post that he settled for $12 million.
Andrew knew Epstein through a British heiress named Ghislaine Maxwell. Maxwell got 20 years in prison this year for sex trafficking young girls for Epstein.
