For the first time since before Elvis became a sensation, Britain has a new monarch:
Queen Elizabeth II, Britain’s longest-serving monarch, whose broadly popular seven-decade reign survived tectonic shifts in her country’s post-imperial society and weathered successive challenges posed by the romantic choices, missteps and imbroglios of her descendants, died on Thursday at Balmoral Castle in Scotland, her summer retreat. She was 96.
The royal family announced Queen Elizabeth II death online, saying she had “died peacefully.” The announcement did not specify a cause.
Her death elevated her eldest son, Charles, to the throne, as King Charles III.
Her long life included service during World War II, the Cold War, massive cultural shifts, scandals, upheaval and interactions with no less than 15 Prime Ministers. Two years ago, she urged Britons to show the same resolve in the face of COVID-19 that they did during the war. And two days ago, she met with her final PM — newly elected Liz Truss. She was simultaneously respected and made the butt of jokes, most memorably for me, at least, in The Naked Gun. But she herself had a dry sense of humor and was more than willing to poke fun at her own image and embrace cultural icons, as in the 2012 Olympics.
I have made a lot of jokes about the monarchy and am somewhat dubious about their continued existence. But as queens go, this one was not bad. RIP.
I wonder if she’s something like the last one.
Like she was a living Chesterton’s Fence and now she has been removed from office.
Now what?
Whatever it is, I doubt it’ll be like the way we used to do it. It doesn’t work like that anymore. It couldn’t if it wanted to.Report
A quick search, and monarchies currently account for more than half a billion people and an economy of $16T per year. The UK is the second-largest behind Japan, but accounts for about 12% of the people and 1/6 of the economy.Report
I meant something more nebulous, I think.
Like how Hugh Hefner’s death happened and then #MeToo kicked off.
Was QEII also a little Dutch boy?Report
My comment wasn’t intended as a refutation, just a comment.Report
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WajRffn0PMReport
She was the highlight of the trilogy.Report
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The Maori King made a statement regarding the Queen’s death:
https://www.1news.co.nz/2022/09/09/kiingitanga-offers-respects-to-queen-elizabeth-ii/Report
John Lydon (you may know him as Johnny Rotten) has written an op-ed for The Times. The op-ed is, of course, behind a paywall but Variety has some excerpts for you to enjoy:
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As I recall, during her reign they shouldered more of the burden of paying for themselves. Not all of it, but an increasing part of it.Report
The British Royal family is incredibly wealthy. Liz II possibly had a networth of 500 million. The entire royal family can be worth as much as 88 billion according to Forbes in 2017. They are not exactly scrimping by. Charles III has an estimated net wealth of 600 million.Report
I’m aware of the general magnitude – which as I recall is why she began making them pay for stuff the state used to pay for.Report
The whole concept of wealth involves a relationship with one’s belongings and with others that a royal doesn’t have. A royal can be a tyrant or a servant but never a citizen.Report
96 is a pretty good run. That being said, I am perplexed by the continued existence of monarchies and aristocracies especially when they hold zero power. The royal houses of Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Belgium are even more powerless/laid back than those of the United States, and they continue on for reasons I find perplexing.
Charles III seems much disliked in the U.K. and Commonwealth compared to his mom. I do wonder if some of those countries will finally declare themselves outside the commonwealth.Report
Andrew Sullivan quoted CS Lewis to explain it:
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At least we can watch athletes and movies.
Besides, Sullivan has shown himself to be both a terrible person and to have a terrible understanding of his fellow humans and their nature, such as it is, so if he quotes something about how humans are, you can almost assume it’s wrong.Report
I need a list of good people, I tell you what.Report
santa.listinquiries@gmail.comReport
TV Tropes covered this.Report
there aren’t any.
there are people who DO more good than bad in their life (I strive to be that) but even people who do good do a lot of bad. And people who do a lot of bad sometimes do good.
I wish there were good people but 53 years on this earth has taught me there ain’t no such critter; best you can hope for is “they do more good than bad in life”Report
Nearly every society does seem to create a special group of people that other people like to follow, admire, and obsess about. The only way not to have something of celebrity culture seems to require intentionally setting up a dour society that nobody with a right mind wants to live in. Even then I’m pretty sure that theocratic societies probably have famous preachers, priests, and imams that people follow like famous athletes, movie stars, or pop stars in secular developed democracies.Report
Come the revolution, every “Trad” Whatever will be rounded up and sent to an internment camp run by Her Majesty Queen Hillary Clinton.Report
Meh. I enjoy movies and many people enjoy sports and they sometimes get political power (for better or for worse) but they often need to get elected.
C.S. Lewis and Chesterson are not sources of wisdom in my opinion. I will concede that there might be something to a ceremonial head of state psychologically and socially.Report
Chesterton is, Lewis is up for debate (Lewis is an excellent preacher for the choir, not so much for the heathen).
I suppose I can see the benefit of a head of state being the golden calf.
I mean, you’re likely to have the same golden calf next week.
If your favored golden calf is a sports star or actor or singer? Ugh. You’re going to be getting a new one every couple of days.Report
I’ve basically given up trying to remember whether any particular quote came from Lewis or Chesterton. That said, I find Chesterton to be a better writer. He’s deceptively dense. You can read a paragraph that seems to be one idea repeated five times in different words, then at the end realize that you’ve been to five different places. That last sentence makes you reflect on the ideas again. I recall one time where he used the word “crucial” and only later I realized he was saying “of or related to the Cross”.
Back to the subject, there’s a problem in talking about what a king is, and it’s that a king to an Englishman is a different thing than a king to a Spaniard, because England is different than Spain. There’s an elitism in Spanish culture that’s different from English consciousness of class. An English king represents something like continuity where a Spanish king would represent authority. An Englishman wouldn’t look to a royal for reward but for example, and for stability. And I’m just using Spain as one example. Every culture is going to be different.Report
Its a testament to Elizabeth’s good character and honorable life, that such a quote in this day and age doesn’t produce guffaws of derision and scorn, both for the author and anyone who quotes it.Report
Perhaps they continue precisely because they are powerless and laid back, and, therefore, not worth the powder to blow them to Hell. And under Elizabeth II, the royals were a nifty tourist attraction. Sort of like Disney Land.Report
Possibly! I have seen the living cultural patrimony argument made in their defense but the Royals still receive taxpayer money and I think that is a wrong. When I was in Rome in 2018, one of the museums we went to was actually a private house with a good art collection. It was owned by a former aristocratic family that needed to open their place to the public to pay for taxes. I like that variant. “You can keep your stuff. You can keep your titles but they mean nothing. We will tax the hell out of you.”Report
You don’t need to leave to Commonwealth to drop the monarchy, most Commonwealth countries don’t have the King as head of state. I mean, India in in the Commonwealth.
As to why most of these countries don’t change, the main reason is there’s no need to. The King isn’t in charge in any meaningful sense, so there really isn’t a problem to solve. And constitutional change isn’t something most governments do, unless there’s a major problem that needs solving.Report
The British monarchy serves a valuable purpose. It is a storehouse of reverence for the Monarch, reverence that otherwise generally defaults to the practical leader of the nation. When I look at the absurd moral convulsions that republics have over their Presidents, etc, and compare it to how Canada or the UK treat their Prime Ministers (not quite as reverently as janitors, but janitors in the civil service actually clean things) I can’t help but think that the Constitutional monarch nations have the better system. The military, also, pledges loyalty to the Monarch, not the Prime Minister, and you don’t need to be a libertarian to understand why that power is far more sensibly stored there than in the hands of a political executive.
Now, in theory, you can get rid of the Monarch and just have some other office to do the same job but the question begs: why bother. The idea of creating another political appointment for politicians to horse-trade and kiss each other’s posteriors over fares very poorly when compared to an a-political and historic institution like the Monarchy. Indeed, since the Monarchies (under HRM and her Grandfather especially) figured out the new paradigm republicanism only really flourishes when the country in question has a bloody colonialist history or when the given Monarch in question starts fishing up badly.
Charles will give republicans their chance, no doubt, but I think he’s too elderly to screw up the way he’d need to overcome inertia and institutional advantage. William and Kate seem like especially clever operators and if/when the Monarchy gets down to them, I expect it’ll be on very solid footing until we find out what sort of person wee George shapes up to be.Report
In fairness, I don’t know how much of that is having a monarch, and how much of that is having a directly elected Head of State. I don’t think Germany has this problem with its President.Report
The problem with the nobody President is that they are obvious nobodies and thus aren’t the emotional lightning rods real monarchs are. So that’s a void the Chancellor can and has horned in on.Report
This is pretty much the issue with ceremonial Presidents. The idea is that an elected ceremonial President can serve as a receptor of warm and fuzzies in the same way a constitutional monarch does. Ceremonial Presidents do not have any history or tradition behind them and tends to be an award to people for long service to the state. So the Prime Minister ends up getting the emotional attachment of at least a plurality while the ceremonial President gets none.Report
This is well put; though it’s interesting to remember that the relationship of King to parliamentary parties wasn’t always neutral; it was lawful (well, usually, but more so after a severed head), but not always neutral. The studied neutrality is a somewhat recent affectation.Report
Thank you and certainly it wasn’t always neutral. Heck, a saying I once read somewhere was “the King started Parliament so he could get his lords to come around and hear what he had to say, then in time it flipped around.” We’re talking about an institution that has progressed from head cutting all the way through to ribbon cutting. It’s an incredible sweep of history.
The studied neutrality was an innovation I’ve often heard ascribed to Walter Bagehot in his discussions of Dignified vs Efficient government. I think it’s more a recommendation than a requirement of the monarch though anyone who’d suggest that the Sovereign stray off the neutrality reservation had better have a strong argument behind it considering how well studied silence has served the Windsors for over a century.Report
Agreed; I expect it is Prudence personified.
But prudence is still a virtue often best observed in its breach.Report
https://twitter.com/reneeygraham/status/1568284294304469000?s=20&t=EnDsmnsb9ASrfqviez90jA
ABC, NBC, and CBS decided to air King Charles III’s speech but not the speech by Biden on the dangers to American Democracy.Report
Even Chip, who loved the Biden speech, hasn’t pointed to anything new in it.Report
As opposed to all the revelations in Charles’s speech e.g. his elder son is going to be Prince of Wales.Report
Older son taking that spot is expected, but also “new”.
The GOP being a threat to America and it’s way of life has been the election claim since at least 1964 when LBJ said Goldwater couldn’t be trusted with nukes.Report
Successions are so boring these days. Andrew should declare Charles to be illegitimate and have him locked up in the Tower, like the old days,Report
I think Andrew has bigger problems on his plate than the fact he’s so far of the line of succession that he can’t even see it anymore.Report
Rumors that Harry is moving to the Netherlands to take up ancestral dutchy are being denied a little to vigorously for my tastes. The Markle machine constantly referring to Camilla as just “the Papist” or “Queen Convert” is only the beginning. William and Kate are definitely not eating from the box of chocolates sent from Sussex house this Christmas.Report
There are a handful of things that William could do to overthrow Charles and start a land war in Europe.
There aren’t a ton of them but there are more than none.Report
Prince of Wales to a 73 y/o king is a decent gig… as long as Camilla doesn’t pop out a child to provide a factional heir.
Which, let’s be honest, if she does then we should assume that God spoke to her in her tent and we should definitely make that one king.Report
I mean, even if she somehow did so that kid’d be behind Harry in succession which, with William having several perfectly healthy children of his own, is basically almost as far as Andrew is. It’s 2022- odds of you needing more than 2 spare heirs are extremely low.Report
Right, technically. But second wives and legitimate issue can be a factional rallying point for shenanigans – especially in counterfactual biblically tongue-in-cheek comboxes. 🙂Report
That’s the point; he needs a position that lets him pardon himself.Report