The funeral of Queen Elizabeth II, whose 70-year reign saw the aftermath of World War II, the Cold War and dizzying technological change, marks another step in the farewell to the 20th century.

The British monarch wields little real power, but Elizabeth was a titanic figure on the 20th-century stage, whose first prime minister was war leader Winston Churchill, met the first man in space Yuri Gagarin, and made landmark visits to newly independent nations as a Briton The empire fell apart.

Her death, aged 96, was even more symbolic as it came just over a week after the death of former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, 91, another among the fewer and fewer surviving icons of the last century, dissolving the USSR and Eastern Europe escaped the grip of Moscow.

Her disappearance comes as the world still recovers from the Covid-19 pandemic, rocked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that has revived fears of nuclear war, and waking up to how climate change is dashed the hopes of this generation and those to come could do.

“These were absolutely pivotal figures whose likes we will find hard to see again,” said Gilles Gressani, director of French geopolitical journal Le Grand Continent.

“We live in an interregnum – a space between two reigns, two eras,” he added.

“We often have this fear and anxiety; we know full well that the world is changing because of the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, terrorism, the economic crisis and the climate crisis.”

Queen Elizabeth II will be buried with her father, King George VI, and other family members at Windsor Castle outside London on Monday, after a state funeral attended by world leaders in the heart of the British capital.

Gradually, the world loses the threads that still connected it to the 20th century, and only a few iconic figures remain alive.

The great culture giants also say goodbye – Jean-Luc Godard, one of the most influential filmmakers of the 20th century and father of the French New Wave, died last week of an assisted suicide.

Nelson Mandela, who campaigned to end apartheid in South Africa and then became its first majority president, died in 2013. Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, who ruled his country for half a century and was a Cold War icon, died in 2016.

Jimmy Carter, 97, is the only surviving former US president to have ruled exclusively in the 20th century, during a convulsive one-man mandate that ousted the Shah in Iran’s Islamic Revolution.

His successors, Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush, died in 2004 and 2018, respectively.

The current Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetans, has been in exile in India since 1951, when a Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule failed. He is 87 and still working.

And Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 83, who took office in 1989 after the death of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, remains in a post for life.

Some of the largest bridges that have survived in the 20th century today are of a cultural nature.

Rolling Stones lead singer Mick Jagger, 79, still performs with his group, while Beatles icon Paul McCartney, 80, is continuing an illustrious solo career that included a critically acclaimed set at this year’s Glastonbury Festival.

The Queen herself was a symbol of the transition to modernity, with her coronation in 1953 becoming the first major event to be televised worldwide, and her first televised Christmas message in 1957 paving the way for other world leaders paved.

Most importantly, the Queen’s death marks a major break with the memory of World War II, a conflict that her father, King George VI, along with his daughters and other Londoners, had to endure in bomb-ridden London.

“The Queen was directly involved in the 1945 victory. Being one of the victors of 1945 greatly shaped the identity of the United Kingdom and the Queen embodied that to her death,” said Thomas Gomart, Director of the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI).

“For me, in a way, the death of Elizabeth II marks an end of World War II,” he said.