By Michael F. Duggan
And so the second Elizabethan Era draws to a close.
Not to get all weepy about an accident of birth—and in spite of my ambivalence about monarchy—I liked the Queen. All life is mostly accidental and just in being born each of us has won a trillion lotteries. In terms of social rank, the Queen just won one more lottery than the rest of us. Britain could have (and has) done worse in terms of the monarchy, and although it seems like an anachronism, there are certainly worse systems than constitutional monarchy. Although not a complete surprise, hearing of her death left a feeling that a decent, vaguely benevolent omnipresence had been taken. Approximately the same age as such long-gone people as Robert Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe, she seemed like a permanent part of the international landscape.
Okay, she wasn’t a hands-on executive like Franklin Roosevelt during the Great Depression or WWII, or John Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis, but she was more than a figurehead. She was the moral leader of the British People from the Korean War until yesterday, an omnipresence of constancy and consistency. Both high-minded and tough-minded, she was the dignified Keeper of the Flame of national institutions, a relayer of national continuity.
Oh, sure, critics (Charles Krauthammer?) have long noted that the only political institution more absurd than the American vice presidency is the Royal family. But I think that this is only partially true. Marxians and some progressives deride these kinds of traditions, and yet this particular one is about 1,200-years-old (how old is the oldest Marxist government and to what degree has it lived up to the principles of Marxism?). It obviously resonates with a lot of people as a mostly harmless preoccupation and is the kind of historical and social detail that Marxians and Marxists tend to leave out of their moral-rationalist calculations.
Much of what one reads about the Royal Family and “The Firm” is calculated PR and the lingering pageantry of a dead empire. But as with the outpouring of emotions after Diana’s death, the feelings of ordinary people for the Queen both in Britain and abroad, their sense of loss appears to be a mixture of both false intimacy and real affection. Could it a coincidence that all of the county liquor shops were out of Dubonnet yesterday afternoon? Of course there is also PR that you cannot buy, and a double rainbow is said to have appeared over Buckingham Palace as the sun broke through the clouds yesterday afternoon. I was not there, but I assume that it really happened and was not just a wishful fictional device, like the Angles of Mons.
We all know the trivia: from the girl who could change tires and work on the engines of military vehicles during WWII, the the 25-year-old who inherited a moribund empire after her father’s untimely death, the most-traveled, longest-serving (15 prime ministers, 14 U.S. presidents) British monarch in history. She was not, as Prime Minister Truss (who has now served under two British monarchs) observed, “the rock on which modern Britain was build” (hardly a compliment), but rather the dignified means of relinquishing what Britain had been, both beneficial (the welfare state and social democracy), and problematic (the Empire itself). Above all, she embodied the devotion to duty to the institutions and traditions of Great Britain over a long period of great change and numerous crises.
She was not perfect. As one might expect of royalty, and in spite of the continuing displays of affection by the public, she was often remote from the day-to-day lives of ordinary people, and her grasp of contemporary issues and engagement in addressing them was uneven. Like Churchill and her father, she could be a guiding moral force in troubled times, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Perfectly (if predictably) turned out in bright colors and a big hat, and perfectly well spoken, she embodied qualities so conspicuously missing from much of today’s world. She was regal.
But what about her successor to the Throne?
Except for his treatment of Diana—which was in part the tragic result of the absurd and brutal realities of being an heir to the throne—I have always liked Charles (I had the chance to meet him in my old job, but alas, was out sick on the day of his visit). A man of intelligence, ideas, and opinions, and grandnephew and protege of Lord Mountbatten, I think that we can expect a more hands-on monarch in important areas like the environment and perhaps geopolitics. If, like his mother, he is a force for benevolence in the world, let us recognize it and appreciate him.
Certainly no one can say that he has not paid his dues.