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ABC News
ABC News
National
Toby Mann and wires

Queen Elizabeth visited Northern Ireland 22 times over a 70-year reign, dividing opinions

Throughout Queen Elizabeth's reign over Northern Ireland, local opinions of her were as divided as the territory.

Her rule spanned all the years of The Troubles, in which more than 3,000 died in sectarian conflict.

King Charles III visited Belfast for the first time on Tuesday, just days after being proclaimed as King.

Loyalists in Northern Ireland, who want to keep the region under British rule, remain among the royal family's most devoted subjects.

So how often did the Queen visit Northern Ireland, what were the key moments during her time there, and how did this compare with visits to other parts of the UK?

'Almost cemented the peace process'

The Queen visited Northern Ireland 22 times during her reign, and three times before she was crowned.

The first visit was in 1945. In 1953 she returned again, this time as monarch.

Following visits in 1954 and 1961, the Queen returned to Belfast in 1966 to open a bridge named in her honour.

After staying away for 11 years, the Queen visited Northern Ireland as part of Silver Jubilee celebrations in 1977.

She was not to return for another 14 years, as The Troubles escalated and security concerns increased.

In 1979, Lord Louis Mountbatten, a cousin of the Queen and a much-loved mentor to the then-Prince Charles, was killed by an Irish Republican Army bomb.

The Queen did not return to the country until 1991. The majority of her visits came during the 1990s and 2000s, after the peace process took hold.

In 2012, in one of her most important visits to Belfast, she shook the hand of former IRA commander Martin McGuinness, who at the time was Northern Ireland's deputy first minister and a leading Sinn Féin politician.

The gesture "almost cemented the peace process" 14 years after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement largely ended the violence, said Peter Sheridan, head of peace-building organisation Co-operation Ireland, who organised the event and was metres away when the two shook hands.

The Queen made it back three times after that critical 2012 visit, but had to cancel a planned 2021 appearance at an Armagh church service commemorating the establishment of Northern Ireland 100 years earlier.

"Over the last half century I have always enjoyed my visits to Northern Ireland," she told the Northern Ireland Assembly in 2002.

"Even in the most troubled of times I have been heartened by the warmth and good humour of the people I have met."

Members of Sinn Féin — the main Irish nationalist party, linked during The Troubles to the IRA — are attending commemorative events for the Queen and met King Charles II on Tuesday.

Sinn Fein's president Mary Lou McDonald paid tribute to the 96-year-old monarch following her death last Thursday, calling her "a powerful advocate and ally of those who believe in peace and reconciliation".

Nonetheless, Ms McDonald has made it clear that her party will pursue a referendum on reunification with Ireland.

"We've built the peace and now we look to the next phase, the reunification of Ireland, we are living now in the end days of partition and the momentum behind Irish unity is unprecedented," Ms McDonald told the Irish Independent.

The Queen was also the first British monarch to visit the Republic of Ireland since its independence from London almost a century earlier.

'The Queen did not shy away'

The Queen's trip to the Republic of Ireland in 2011 was described by Prime Minister Micheál Martin on Thursday as being crucial in the normalisation of relations.

She made powerful gestures of reconciliation for Britain's bloody past in Ireland during the four-day state visit, culminating in a speech in which she expressed regret for centuries of conflict.

"During those memorable few days, the Queen did not shy away from the shadows of the past," Ireland's President Michael D Higgins said in a statement.

The Queen's use of the Irish language, once banned under British rule, drew an audible grasp from then Irish President Mary McAleese and a spontaneous round of applause from the guests at Dublin Castle, the former nerve centre of British rule in Ireland.

Other symbolic moments included the laying of a wreath to those who died fighting the British crown and stepping out onto Dublin's Croke Park stadium, the scene of a massacre of 14 people by British forces almost a century earlier.

Her description of the two countries as "firm friends and equal partners" put relations with the former colony at an all-time high, after the fraught decades that followed the 1919-1921 War of Independence.

Many visits to Wales, countless trips to Scotland

While her trips to Northern Ireland were heavy with significance, the Queen travelled far more extensively in other countries within the United Kingdom.

In 1948, the then-Princess Elizabeth was given the Freedom of the City of Cardiff.

According to the BBC, the Queen made more than than 300 visits to Wales, often travelling there by royal train.

At age 17, she visited Wales on her first civil tour of the UK.

Her last official trip to Wales was in October 2021, for the opening of the Welsh parliament.

Meanwhile, few places held a spot in her heart like Scotland, where the Queen had deep ties and visited innumerable times.

Besides spending her summer months at Balmoral, her mother, the late Queen Mother, was Scottish and as a child the Queen grew up playing on her grandparents' estate of Glamis Castle in central Scotland.

"Each year, the Queen spends a week visiting various regions in Scotland, meeting Scots from all walks of life and hosting thousands at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in recognition of their good work," the UK royals website said.

"Known in Scotland as Royal Week, and to others as Holyrood Week, these visits celebrate Scottish culture, achievement and community."

Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon praised the Queen on Monday as "the Queen of Scots" and "the great constant — the anchor of our nation".

The Queen spent her last days at her beloved Highland retreat, Balmoral Castle.

She was thought to have felt the most free at Balmoral Castle, where she could retreat, though not escape entirely, from the pressures of the monarchy.

Operation London Bridge: Funeral plans for Queen Elizabeth II

ABC/wires

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