Elizabeth II's Birth Chart

The ranking weighs the attention astrologers give a feature against how often simulated births of the 1920s show it. First is the Sun's want of any major aspect (about one chart in 21); second, Saturn no more than three degrees from the Midheaven (about one chart in 16, counting any angle); third, Venus exalted in Pisces (about one chart in 14); fourth, the six planets in fixed signs, where about one chart in 18 have six or more.

The second four are commoner: Mars and Saturn in each other's signs, a mutual reception some pair of classical planets forms in about 36% of the sample; the Sun in the opening degree of Taurus, with about one chart in 5 having a classical planet that early in a sign; Venus as Lord of the Geniture (about one chart in 8); and Saturn retrograde, as in about 38% of the decade's charts.

Four of the eight, the exaltation, the fixed-sign count, the reception and the retrograde, hold all day, and the Sun's isolation and first-degree position each last most of one. Only two sit close to the announced minute: Saturn's place by the Midheaven and Venus's rank as Lord of the Geniture, from 2:29 AM. The Sun's house, which turns on seconds, comes up with the Whitehall notice after the aspects.

The aspect table holds 17 major contacts, angles included, and the Sun is in none: the nearest misses are Jupiter, 7°41′ wide of a sextile, and Neptune, 8°10′ short of a trine. Only the Moon moves fast enough to end the isolation within a day, leaving the range of a square at 7:46 PM the evening before and reaching that of a trine at 11:14 PM, so the feature owes nothing to the precise hour.

Traditional astrology treats a planet without aspects as acting on its own terms; modern writers read an unaspected Sun as an identity that runs apart from the rest of the chart, its sign and house carrying extra weight.

Away from the Sun, Jupiter opposes Neptune at 0°28′, the closest aspect in the chart, and Mars, 1°38′ from Jupiter, opposes Neptune at 1°10′, all three lasting all day. Venus has one major aspect, a trine to Pluto at 1°15′. The Moon's two major aspects are wide and tied to the clock: the trine to Mercury lapses at 3:36 AM, and the opposition to Mars formed only at 2:06 AM.

The notice, dated April 21, 1926, was printed that day in a London Gazette Extraordinary, issue 33153, page 2773, and again in the Edinburgh Gazette of April 23. Its words, “This morning at twenty minutes before three o'clock,” fix the hour, and it names three people present at 17 Bruton Street: the Duke of York, the Countess of Strathmore and the Home Secretary, Sir William Joynson-Hicks. Few birth times stand on firmer ground than a notice drafted within hours with a minister in the house.

The Royal Household's official biography gives 2.40 a.m., and the Derby Daily Telegraph and the Birmingham Daily Gazette printed 2.40 that same day, as Royal Central quotes them. No source offers another hour.

The clock needs one correction. Under the Summer Time Act 1925, British clocks had gone forward on April 18, 1926, three days before, so the hour is British Summer Time, UTC+1, or 01:40 UTC on April 21, 1926. Read as Greenwich time it would fall an hour later, with Aquarius rising and Uranus as modern chart ruler; Saturn, Aquarius's traditional ruler, would keep that title until 4:14 AM.

On the summer clock the rising sign is secure: the stated minute falls 1 hour 20 minutes into Capricorn's 1 hour 46 minutes on the horizon, 25 minutes short of its end. Houses are finer. The Sun passed from the 3rd into the 2nd house about 20 seconds before, the only planet a shift of four minutes or less could move to another house; Saturn left the 10th for the 9th at 2:35:24 AM; and Venus entered the 1st at 2:29 AM, which also starts its claim to Lord of the Geniture.

Since “twenty minutes before three” may be rounded, the Sun's and Saturn's houses and Saturn's closeness to the Midheaven are best held open. Venus has 10 minutes in hand, the other planets keep their houses through a quarter of an hour of error either way, and all ten keep their signs all day.

The figure search finds two T-squares, both with Saturn at the apex. Mars in Aquarius and Jupiter, 1°38′ from it, each oppose Neptune in Leo, and all three square Saturn in Scorpio, at 1°56′ from Jupiter, 3°34′ from Mars and 2°24′ from Neptune: in effect one fixed T-square with a doubled base, every aspect of it lasting the whole day. Chart readers put a T-square's strain at its apex, more so when that planet rules the Ascendant or holds an angle, as Saturn does here.

Saturn is at 24°26′ Scorpio, retrograde, against a Midheaven of 25°34′ Scorpio. The Midheaven passed Saturn's degree at 2:35 AM, so Saturn closes out the 9th house instead of opening the 10th, and stays within three degrees of the angle until 2:47 AM. Many astrologers count a planet this near the Midheaven as angular whatever the cusp says and link Saturn there with standing earned slowly. Traditional authors list its backward motion, about 0°03′ a day, among a planet's accidental weaknesses.

The Sun, 0°12′ into Taurus, had crossed the sign line at 9:36 PM the previous evening and stayed inside the first degree until 10:12 PM on the birth date. Some astrologers credit a planet in a sign's opening degree with that sign's qualities undiluted. The 1st and 2nd houses hold six planets between them, and the Moon, in Leo whatever the hour, shares the 7th house with Neptune.

The six fixed-sign planets are the Sun, Moon, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune, seven of twelve points with the Scorpio Midheaven; only Venus and Uranus, in Pisces, are mutable. Older seasonal doctrine calls the fixed signs each season's settled middle month and takes a chart weighted toward them to signal constancy and slowness to change course.

Water leads the elements with five points; earth has only the Sun and the Ascendant. The planets form a splay, clusters split by three wide gaps, the largest 92°24′, a shape seen in about one chart in 6 born in the 1920s. Only the Moon, Saturn and Neptune are above the horizon, the 10th to 12th houses are empty, and at London's latitude Placidus leaves four signs intercepted, as some interception does in about 41% of the decade's charts.

With sunrise 3 hours 14 minutes off, the chart is nocturnal, as for any birth between the Sun's center setting at 7:58 PM the evening before and rising at 5:59 AM. Hellenistic sect doctrine puts the Moon, Venus and Mars on the night team, all three in sect here, and the Sun, Jupiter and Saturn out of it. Venus gains most: exalted in Pisces, angular in the 1st house, and 46°14′ west of the Sun as a morning star.

Venus also ties with Mars and Jupiter at the top of the site's strength scores and is Lord of the Geniture in the traditional tally, the planet older texts let color the whole nativity. Saturn, chart ruler on both the modern and traditional schemes, fares worse: out of sect, retrograde and dignified only by term, its one support a mutual reception by domicile with Mars, the two linked by a square of 3°34′.

Mars and Jupiter were moving faster than average and no planet was combust, Mercury being the nearest at 25°32′ from the Sun. None of the planets strays out of bounds; Jupiter at 14°38′ south mirrors Neptune at 14°32′ north, a contraparallel that declination-minded astrologers take as an echo of the pair's opposition.

The record holds nine public dates, each with a published source. On her 21st birthday, April 21, 1947, during the royal tour of South Africa, she pledged her life to the service of the Commonwealth in a radio broadcast from Cape Town. On November 20 that year, aged 21, she married Prince Philip at Westminster Abbey.

She was in Kenya on an official visit when her father, George VI, died, and became Queen on February 6, 1952, at 25. Crowned in Westminster Abbey on June 2, 1953, at the first coronation shown on television, she gave the first televised royal Christmas broadcast, from Sandringham, on Christmas Day 1957.

In May 2011, at 85, she began a four-day state visit to Ireland, the first by a British monarch to Dublin in a century. Her reign passed Queen Victoria's on September 9, 2015, and on February 6, 2022, she became the first British monarch to reach a Platinum Jubilee, 70 years on the throne. She died at Balmoral Castle on September 8, 2022, aged 96.

David Attenborough, born in Isleworth on May 8, 1926, is the nearest match: he too has a Taurus Sun, and his slow-moving Saturn had hardly shifted in the weeks between the two births. Cristiano Ronaldo shares the Leo Moon, matched by sign only, his reported hour being untraced. Mark Zuckerberg, with no birth time on record, matches on the Taurus Sun, and Sachin Tendulkar adds a Mars in the same stretch of Aquarius.

In the Lahiri zodiac, offset by 22°49′ that year, the Sun drops back to 7°22′ Aries and the Moon to 19°17′ Cancer, in Karka all day and, at the hour of birth, in the nakshatra Ashlesha. The lagna, 28°34′ Sagittarius, sits at the end of Dhanu; Makara (Capricorn) replaced it at 2:44:31 AM, only 4 minutes past the notice's minute, so the lagna is the Vedic answer a rounded time could overturn. Dhanu's lord Jupiter sits debilitated in Makara, whose own lord would be Saturn.

Only Saturn and Uranus keep their tropical signs. Venus slips into Aquarius, losing its exaltation; Mars and Jupiter land in Capricorn, where Jyotish exalts Mars and debilitates Jupiter; Mercury falls back into Pisces, its debilitation sign; and the Sun reaches Aries, its exaltation in both traditions.

Saturn first came home on November 22, 1955, 29.6 years into her life. The second return needed three passes, because Saturn turned retrograde over the spot, and was complete on September 26, 1985; the third arrived on November 5, 2014. Jupiter returned eight times, last on October 28, 2021. Since Saturn rules the Capricorn Ascendant, return-minded astrologers give its cycle extra weight; the dates claim nothing about what they marked.

The sky on this page is computed for 01:40 UTC on April 21, 1926 over 51°30′ N, 0°08′ W, the Bruton Street frontage as it stands now, since the 1926 house was pulled down in the late 1930s. Rates compare her chart with a large batch of simulated births set at random moments of the 1920s in towns around the world, and the hold times come from casting her chart afresh at short intervals through that local day. Interpretive lines report what astrologers say, not claims about Elizabeth II; the about page covers historical clocks.