More thoughts on the life and death of Queen Elizabeth II
I think the sorrow a lot of people feel on Queen Elizabeth’s death is that, even for those of “mature” years, she was always around. I was a tiny child when she was crowned, and I’m certainly a child no more.
I think I have a memory of glancing at the TV and seeing a moment of the ceremony all those long years ago – or do I only imagine it? I also remember that just a few years later, when I was still a young child, she visited New York and even made an appearance in the area where I lived. Is that a real memory, or not?
She was a beautiful young woman, then a middle-aged one, and then an old but very intrepid one. Her predecessor in name, Queen Elizabeth I, had enormous power. But in contrast, Elizabeth II only had the symbolic power of her personal example, and she set a remarkable one.
She hardly even changed her style of clothing, and in a world of enormous change, she held on as an example of the dignity that was more common in former generations. Her demise coincides with a feeling of gloom in the Western world and for many people it augments it, if only emotionally.
Unlike many royals of old – and probably even today – her marriage was a love match. And yet she had problems with some of her offspring and that made it a tiny bit easier to identify with her, even though other aspects of her life were so singular.
Melanie Phillips voiced worry back in October:
To widespread unease, if not outright concern, the Queen has been missing some public engagements recently due to unspecified health issues…
She has also been advised to stop riding. The Queen no longer riding! The world is indeed wobbling on its axis…
Even so, these restrictions on the Queen’s activities have induced a sense of dread. At age 95, it is on everyone’s mind that she cannot go on for ever.
Yet the Queen is an irreplaceable constant in the life of the British nation. Her public appearances aren’t just the exercise of her role as the symbol of the nation. As so many feel so viscerally, she is the nation.
People feel better just for seeing her out and about with her trademark smile, a few gracious words — and trailing a cloud of insoluble mystery. With her unrivalled sense of duty, her stoicism and her emotional restraint, many see in the Queen the embodiment of a Britain whose cultural identity is inexorably fraying. Many feel in their bones that when the Queen eventually passes, Britain will just not be the same. Despite the fact that the monarchy will continue, something of infinite value will have been lost.
Now Giles [Frazier, an Anglican priest] has framed all this in spiritual terms. He sees in the Queen’s very frailty something especially precious. He acknowledges something that few realise and that is never, ever talked about in post-Christian Britain— that the British monarchy is a sacrament and that the Queen is consecrated to God.
And yesterday Phillips wrote this, probably speaking for a great many people:
It was, of course, always an inevitability, as it is for all of us. And in recent months the Queen had obviously become increasingly frail.
Nevertheless, it felt unthinkable that one day she would no longer be with us. We allowed ourselves to imagine that she would go on for ever. For so many of us this evening, this feels like a personal bereavement. Something of priceless value has been torn from us, and we feel devastated…
She held the country together because of the way she effaced herself to become the quintessence of duty and selfless service to her people, a symbol of unity and true inclusion. We watched the way she conducted her great office — her calmness, her strength, her fortitude, her kindliness, and humility — and we felt soothed and reassured that, in looking at her example, we were gazing at ourselves as a nation in the mirror she held up to us. She loved us with deep devotion, and in return we loved her.
Her son Charles, who will finally become king, simply doesn’t inspire anything remotely like the same devotion. Of course, his mother was a tough tough act to follow.
Losing Phillip took away a lot of her motivation for waking up every day. Her children didn’t seem to bring her much joy, and the grandkids were starting to get worse than the kids.
I do think she was an anchor to some of the best of the past. I think the UK will be a bit unmoored for the foreseeable future. With her gone, I think Scottish independence will be more likely. If King Charles III wants to prevent its happening, then he ought to support the new PMs effort to revitalize the North Sea oil and gas industry.
I’m not British, only been in the UK for a short TDY when I was a technician in the USAF, but the news of the queen’s death made me very sad. She was a gracious queen, but the thing I remember most about her was her order that the Coldstream Guards play for her the Star Spangled Banner on event of 9/11. That broke 600 years of tradition. That was class.
She was indeed once beautiful, then old and intrepid, and she certainly once held together a country which (like almost every other nation in the West, including our beleaguered republic) is now ever more rapidly falling asunder, the social fabric completely unravelling. Millions around the world have mourned her, but a rather discordant note was struck by an entitled, yet viciously hateful, Nigerian woman fortunate enough to be teaching at Carnegie Mellon (Uju Anya), whose tweets about the suffering she wished upon the queen in her last hours were so vile that they were taken down by Twitter and condemned even by WaPo’s Bezos and by her own university.
I was quite sad at the news. She certainly appeared to be a remarkable woman for the reasons cited in your post and likely many others, and was easy to admire from here in the US. How unusual to have someone in such a position for so long serve as a stabilizing force, despite having little or no constitutional power. I suspect she will be greatly missed. I also have doubts about her son and successor, but I wish him well. I am more optimistic about William.
Melanie Phillips speaks truly: “[The Queen] held the country together because of the way she effaced herself to become the quintessence of duty and selfless service to her people, a symbol of unity and true inclusion.”
She even included us former rebels. As another anniversary of 9/11 approaches on Sunday, I was reminded of her unprecedented tribute to our country on the morning after the attacks in 2001. She asked the band of the Coldstream Guards to play the “Star-Spangled Banner” outside Buckingham Palace. Given that the Queen knew the circumstances of our national anthem’s composition in 1814, her gesture was gracious as well as sympathetic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LF_GgAAaLhM&ab_channel=OvationEddie2
Phillips continues, ” . . . we felt soothed and reassured that, in looking at her example, we were gazing at ourselves as a nation in the mirror she held up to us. She loved us with deep devotion, and in return we loved her.”
No one will ever say anything remotely similar about Brandon.
Apropos of Charles III, given his age and lukewarm popularity, he does have the option of reigning for a few years and then abdicating in favor of Prince William. There are three recent precedents of reigning monarchs stepping down for reasons of age and health. In 2013, Beatrix of the Netherlands abdicated in favor of her son Willem Alexander, and Albert II of Belgium abdicated in favor of his son Philippe. In 2019, Emperor Akihito of Japan abdicated in favor of his son Naruhito– Akihito now having the title of Emperor Emeritus. Don’t know whether Charles would fancy being King Emeritus, but it’s a thought.
I feel with the Queen. Her children turned out awful, as did mine. She tried to stay true to God, as do I. Unlike me, she was always gracious and tried to bring light into her duties, without putting her nose into others’ lives, and I always admired her for that. I will miss her. With her death, the national atheist/pagan hegemony is complete.
She was a constant, a serene constant for all of my life, and I was born in 1954. My daughter and I felt so very sorry for her after Prince Phillip died, and we could see plainly in pictures of her over the last year that she had become very thin and frail.
End of an era, indeed. End of an epoch.
My daughter and I were out and about today, and noticed that many flags in front of schools and public places were at half-mast.
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/65660.html
It is a little hard for me to fathom people who talk of grieving for her. Ninety -six productive years. True to her persona to the end, she made the transition without ever becoming dependent, or a burden. Who could ask for more?
That being said, it is certainly appropriate to pay her heartfelt honor. She was without doubt one of a kind. Some might say a throwback; but that would not do her service. She was very much a woman of her time.
I commented on another thread that we could only wish that each of our Heads of State would serve their terms with some measure of her dignity and devotion to the task.
Charles is in a no-win situation. Or at least in the underdog role. His own history is “spotty”. But beyond that, the media chose their favorite in Diana, and anyone within her orbit had to be made to look small. I don’t believe Charles had much of a chance. He may be a perfectly capable monarch, but he will probably never “measure up” in the eyes of many. We have our TDS segment; many Brits have CDS. Again a caveat. I think Charles became much more his own man once he had the public, as well as private, support of Camilla. He may surprise.
PS I just noted that CNN is running a story on Camilla’s divisive history. True to form.
I don’t know that her children turned out to be awful, barring Andrew. Anne had a failed marriage, but a happy second one, and her children and grandchildren seem okay. Anne herself has been a quiet hard-working Royal in support of her mother, and will probably continue in support of her brother. Charles made a mistaken first marriage. His son Harry appears to have some of his mother’s instability, but William seems solid. Edward is happily married and reports are his brother may make him Duke of Edinburgh, instead of Andrew.
Charles gave a good first speech today, and was greeted by friendly crowds at Buckingham Palace. If he can, like his mother, refrain from politics as monarch, maybe it will be okay.
she was a symbol for the West, for the concept of duty, and deportment, and civility, in a world that has abandoned it utterly, we shall not see her like for a long time, the parallel is with victoria, but she receded at the peak of the Empire’s self confidence, before the Great war sapped the civilizational confidence of her people,
The utterly repellent Carnegie Mellon associate professor Uju Anya was far from alone in her daylong vilification of Queen Elizabeth II. Many other voices on Twitter spent the day railing ignorantly and ahistorically about the late queen’s alleged “colonialism” and of course about racism in general (the latter charge was trotted out to smear anyone who objected to the despicable little Twitterfest). Naturally, many of these disturbed individuals were carrying on from the comparative (by contrast with, say, Nigeria or Zimbabwe) comfort and security of academic sinecures in the United States. These people, loud though they are, could not wield such destructive influence on their students and on society at large without the support of elite and/or bureaucratic White Saviors and their dimwitted white acolytes. I am sorry that our world is on a glide path to economic hell, but a potential upside is that Woke dysfunction and sociopathy will become unaffordable luxuries. I can hope.
and the grandkids were starting to get worse than the kids.
One has imprudently put himself under the thumb of his Hollywood wife. The wife of one of the others sued him for divorce a propos of nothing that is public knowledge. Not sure what you have against the other six.
Charles is an awkward man and high school never ends for some people. Even if his domestic life had been well-ordered, people would still manufacture reasons to despise him.
The Queen’s uncle married someone inappropriate, the Queen’s sister does the same, then three of their six children marry people who had more esoteric shortcomings and a fourth in law decides to bolt for reasons which are not public knowledge. Now, one or two of the next generation have married someone off and the wife of a third is bolting. They don’t seem to know how to play this game anymore.
I don’t know that her children turned out to be awful, barring Andrew.
Not awful, just imprudent and shabby.
Oldflyer:
I don’t think they’re grieving for her, they’re grieving about her and the loss of her.
Camilla’s divisive history.
I’m willing to wager she was passive and biding her time. Didn’t need to do much to outbid Diana, who was adept at generating domestic trouble.
The utterly repellent Carnegie Mellon associate professor Uju Anya
You realize the manner in which the faculty are recruited, trained and screened generates rather more kooks of this sort than you ever meet in everyday life. Now why do we rely on these people to sort the labor market?
I don’t think much la roi charles, except he seems to have gathered every silly fad since rab butler, a Tory wet taught him at Oxford, you would think the example of his parents would have made an impression on him, but you would be wrong,
another great orator whose wisdom got him in too much trouble, for being frighteningly on point, was enoch powell, whose fluency in arabic and pashto, as well as latin, made him see all too clearly his country’s future, in his rivers of blood speech, in 1968, he could see the ‘blood dimmed tide’ all too clearly,
the bigger picture,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_OzymdJ03c
As I recall, the Coronation was filmed, as well as telecast live in the UK. The film was processed aboard the jet which took it to New York, in order to be broadcast in the USA in glorious black and white. I remember watching it, and feeling it was a bit spooky. Later the National Geographic did a whole story with resplendent colour photos of the event. My French-Canadian mother was not impressed.
“…the British monarchy is a sacrament and that the Queen is consecrated to God. ”
Remember that the Anglican Church very consciously in its break from Roman Catholicism looked to the “national” churches of Eastern Orthodoxy as models.
The Roman Catholic jibe against the Orthodox was that they seemed to consider being the Emperor/Czar as the eighth sacrament. There are solid historical reasons for thinking this way, e.g. quite a few of the major Church Councils were convened by the Emperor (e.g. Nicea).
The title Defender of the Faith (Fidei Defensor) was given to King Henry VIII by Pope Leo X for Henry’s pamphlet against Luther & Lutheranism. After Henry’s break with Rome, the title was simply re-positioned to mean the defender of the Anglican faith & church. From Henry it gets applied to every British monarch afterwards, including Elizabeth II, and it became their duty to defend the Anglican faith.
Neo: “I think I have a memory of glancing at the TV and seeing a moment of the ceremony all those long years ago – or do I only imagine it?”
That’s interesting, as I have a similar “was it really a memory?” sense of having seen the coronation. I’ve tried to piece this together with knowledge of other events around that time, and I really don’t think my family had a tv at that point. Maybe I’m remembering pictures in a magazine. But I definitely have *some* kind of memory. Also a weird sense of kinship with Charles, as a boy within weeks of the same age as me.
Anyway, I think a big part of what so many of us are feeling is that this well and truly symbolizes the end of something, and a sense that what’s replacing it is at best less worthy of our esteem. It doesn’t constitute the end, which has been well under way for a long time, but it marks it.
Mac says, “I’ve tried to piece this together with knowledge of other events around that time . . . ”
I clearly remember the 1952 presidential election as well as the Queen’s coronation– partly because my family had a primitive (by today’s standards) Philco TV, and the local station ran the earliest paid political TV ad.
Colorized version here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3SOrYf1_ng&ab_channel=Inter-Path%C3%A9History
And yes, a lot has changed since that relatively innocent ad; my parents (particularly my dad) would have been horrified by Biden’s infamous speech at Independence Hall.
As for feeling some kind of weird connection with Charles, I know what you mean– I was born three months before he was.
I wonder if part of Charles’s character “twists” are the result of excessive demands made by Prince Phillip when Charles was a boy. Then again, he seems to have deep love for his mother – probably real and not a public act.
But aren’t they also the only two adults who officially and clearly “out ranked” him? A truly strange upbringing for anyone, I guess.
I’m too young (60s) to recall the coronation, but I’m sure that Charles’ investment (coronation? surely not) as Prince of Wales was on TV here. That’s my first recollection of the monarchy, though I do recall seeing Churchill’s funeral on TV as an even younger child, home sick from school.
I’ve never understood why Americans…specifically American Women…are generally so enamored of the British “royalty”. Maybe it’s just the whole fairy tale thing…imaginings of being a princess? Falling in love with a handsome prince? I don’t know but I’ve never understood it.
They’re basically the recipients of the most lavish welfare entitlements in the world.
I respect Elizabeth for her moral compass. For the grit and determination she’s shown throughout a challenging life. For her loyalty and integrity. For her willingness to put her duties ahead of her desires. Those are admirable traits in anyone. Inheriting a title and a position as a figurehead? Not so much.
I guess the fascination with the royal family soap opera is basically the same phenomena that causes people to actually pay attention to celebrity gossip and watch insipid TV shows about people who are famous just for being famous. I’ll never understand those trends either.
Ah well…to each his own.
They’re basically the recipients of the most lavish welfare entitlements in the world.
Their living expenses are met out of private income and out of the crown estate income, not from tax collections.
If I’m not mistaken, the royal family’s expenses are a fraction of what’s expended looking after the American president.
I’ve never understood why Americans…specifically American Women…are generally so enamored of the British “royalty”.
The alternative to a monarchy is having a superannuated politician as your head of state.
I wonder if part of Charles’s character “twists” are the result of excessive demands made by Prince Phillip when Charles was a boy.
He failed at being married to a very difficult woman. That’s not a quirk; that’s roughly normal. He’s awkward; that’s quite common and some people viscerally despise that. He’s spent his life around scads of domestic servants and office staff and his habits display that; his son is much more circumspect and arranges his life to have fewer strangers around the house.
Charles will hopefully do better than his ancestor and also long term Prince of Wales, “Dirty Bertie,” who became King after his mother’s death. He changed his name from Albert, his father’s, to Edward. His love of France and enmity to his German cousin, Wilhelm, may well have led to WWI. He was well known as a drunk, a philanderer and a cheat at cards.
The fact he preferred camilla to diana does not say much good about him
Mike K–
Edward VII was also nicknamed “Edward the Caresser,” a takeoff on Edward the Confessor (d. 1066), one of the last Anglo-Saxon kings of what is now England. As you probably know, Fast Eddie’s long-term mistress Alice Keppel was the great-grandmother of Charles’ girlfriend-on-the-side Camilla.
The one scandalous royal left out of the thread so far is the late Queen’s youngest uncle, George, Duke of Kent. He joined the RAF in the early years of WWII and was killed in a military plane crash in Scotland in 1942. There is still some mystery surrounding that crash, leading to rumors of the sort that arose after Princess Diana’s death– that the royal family wanted its black sheep out of the way and arranged for the “accident” (now generally attributed to a navigational error by the crew). George, who was the artsy member of an otherwise stuffy family, was a tom cat in the 1920s– he had affairs with both women and men (including Noel Coward) before and after his marriage. He had an illegitimate child by a woman who reportedly introduced him to heroin and morphine. There is a 2005 Channel 4 documentary titled “The Queen’s Lost Uncle” about Prince George:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AK8z5b4NJ3o&ab_channel=TheBeauMonde
Sort of like one of winshaws in jonathan coes carve up series
Connected
https://www.dailywire.com/news/fbi-hiding-potentially-explosive-records-on-jeffrey-epstein-internet-sleuth-claims-after-foia-denial
Dislike for Charles is visceral and elemental. I think I understand him better after watching The Crown. It’s tough to be the heir to the throne. His father was hard on him. He couldn’t marry the woman he loved. His first wife could be difficult. He’s not untalented or unintelligent. I can sympathize with him, but I can’t like or admire him. Even the humanizing elements like his love for The Goon Show and Charles and Camilla calling each other “Fred” and “Gladys” are cringeworthy. Maybe it’s because we threw off kings and queens and princes so long ago. Charles and some of the other royals have all the entitlement of other aristocrats without the sense of duty that the late queen had. I think he’ll probably put in ten years and then step aside for his son.
I think I understand him better after watching The Crown.
No, you understand the issue of the screenwriter.
Even the humanizing elements like his love for The Goon Show and Charles and Camilla calling each other “Fred” and “Gladys” are cringeworthy.
He and his wife have nicknames they use. And he likes a particular radio commentary. That’s your idea of ‘cringeworthy’.
Charles and some of the other royals have all the entitlement of other aristocrats without the sense of duty that the late queen had.
What gives you the idea they lack a sense of ‘duty’? Do you have any clue what any of them do all day?
he had affairs with both women and men (including Noel Coward) before and after his marriage. He had an illegitimate child by a woman who reportedly introduced him to heroin and morphine. There is a 2005 Channel 4 documentary titled “The Queen’s Lost Uncle” about Prince George:
Did you check the footnotes on any of these contentions?
His love of France and enmity to his German cousin, Wilhelm, may well have led to WWI
He died four years prior to the war. The Reinsurance Treaty between Germany and Russia expired 11 years before he ascended the throne. Joseph Chamberlain’s attempts to negotiate an alliance with Germany occurred during the but end of his mother’s reign.
He changed his name from Albert, his father’s, to Edward.
He was christened ‘Albert Edward’.
Peterson, being a Canadian citizen, comments on the passing of the Queen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5os9bT9zuo
His comments about US vs Canadian vs UK politics are interesting.
I personally disagree with him because, while the USA’s system is far from perfect, I assert it is, according to many Brits I’ve talked with, much much harder to get them to pay attention to the plebiscite. The notion that the government has your “representatives” there and listening to you is not at all engendered by the behavior of the government.
The USA, they do tend to listen to certain loud voices more than the typical bunch, they do, at least, fear our wrath. Just look at the 1-6 commission. The whole thing — totalling only hundreds of citizens, clearly has them utterly terrified.