Royals Who Were Unrecognizable When They Were Younger

Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon was born in the year 1900, and she was her parents' ninth child. Even so, her biography, The Queen Mother: The Untold Story of Elizabeth Bowes Lyon, Who Became Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, explains that she was a "much longed-for baby" and was born into an "unusually happy" family — which turned out to be a good thing.

Bowes-Lyon, or the Queen Mother as she would later be called, lived through two world wars and survived a serious house fire at Glamis Castle. After the fire, she was called "a veritable heroine" due to "the salvage work she performed within the fire zone." Her life may have been full of dramatic events, but it was a life well-lived.

In the early 2000s, although she was obviously not as spry as she used to be, she spent the week before her death talking on the telephone with old friends. In the end, Bowes-Lyon lived to be 101 years old. "As so often had occurred during her life," her biography states, "the occasion was almost perfectly staged. Her death was peaceful and painless."