Queen Elizabeth II officially becomes U.K.’s longest-reigning monarch

LONDON-Queen Elizabeth II attended an engagement in Scotland and was met by cheering and flag-waving crowds Wednesday, on the day she is set to become Britain’s longest-reigning monarch. At that point, she’ll have held her title for more than 23,226 days, 16 hours and 23 minutes.

At 2:30am (AEST) Queen Elizabeth II became the United Kingdom’s longest serving monarch.

“It’s inevitable that I should seem a rather remote figure to many of you, a successor to the kings and queens of history”, she said in her first televised Christmas broadcast in 1957.

Acknowledging her record-breaking reign, the queen admitted “it is one to which I have never aspired”.

Prime Minister David Cameron paid tribute to the Queen in an address to the UK Parliament.

“We couldn’t be more proud of her”, Cameron said.

Queen Elizabeth requested that if the event is to be marked at all, she wanted it to be done so with respect to the Monarchs before her, reverence, zero sense of triumphalism and no hint of celebration about Victoria’s death.

She arrived there with her husband Prince Philip after an inaugural ride of the new £294 million Scottish Borders Railway.

Queen Victoria was the great – great – grandmother of Queen Elizabeth 89.

It can only be speculated that she marked the moment with her favourite daytime drink: a gin and Dubonnet (according to royal watchers, she calls it a “gin-and-it” and likes to have one before lunch). “She has served this country with unerring grace, dignity and decency”. She has often stated that it was her “second home”, feeling totally at ease in Canada, meeting as many Canadians as possible from all walks of life and backgrounds in the communities where they live. A long life can pass many milestones.

She added: “I just can’t believe it’s as long as Queen Victoria…such a big person in history…to beat.and you know, with such style”.

Buckingham Palace has released a touchingly informal photograph of the queen to mark the occasion, in which she reads official correspondence in the audience room of said palace-although something off-camera appears to have caught her unfailingly sharp eye.