LONDON — Thumbing through the tanned pages of centuries-old records in the basement of the British Library, Nicholas Radburn came across an illustration that took him aback. A crown resembling ...

In fact, the purpose of the monarchy has been a common question for decades—TIME addressed that matter in a cover story in 1992, the year Queen Elizabeth II dubbed an “annus horribilis ...

Today, the real division in support for the monarchy is by age, rather than political affiliation: 80 percent of people over 65 years old want it to continue, compared with 37 percent of young adults.