Reflections on the death of Queen Elizabeth II and the monarchy

Elizabeth II became the Queen in a different country to the one in which readers of this column inhabit.

I would struggle to think of much to criticise the individual Elizabeth Windsor for; yet having experienced grief and bereavement in a great enough dose in the past, I haven’t found any of those emotions stimulated by her sad, yet unsurprising death. I am a monarchist, not a royalist, after all, in that a constitutional monarchy is my preferred political system within which to live, however, I do not possess any great interest in the individuals who comprise the royal family, or experience much in the way of emotional or reverential feeling towards them.

And her death, like that of her late husband, Prince Philip, is of course unsurprising. The length of her reign was what was most significant about her, and such a feat as seven decades as sovereign cannot be achieved without having had a good innings. I feel quite comfortable that she did not appear to have been the type who wanted personal celebrity and public emoting anyway, and she understood the importance of the monarchy being a thing apart from the rest of civil society.

But perhaps the monarchy’s aloofness is simply based upon the continuity of the personage at its apex. Elizabeth II became the Queen in a different country to the one in which readers of this column inhabit. When her father, George VI, died, Stalin was in the Kremlin and Truman was in the White House. The rock n’ roll craze had not begun, nor had the satire boom, and BBC colour television was a long way off. Africa was mostly partitioned amongst colonial rulers, and Churchill, as Prime Minister (incidentally born just under 101 years before the final PM to be appointed by Elizabeth), was quarrelling on his third visit to Congress about our strategic interests in the Korean peninsula. The Queen was the last of the imperial monarchs and the first of the post-imperial.

In 1952, murderers could be hanged, abortions were rare, divorce was a scandal, and homosexuality was illegal. It was a different country. Murders are now five times as common (with much better life preserving medical care available), abortions are measured in the hundreds of thousands, divorce is not a scandal, and homosexuality is recognised as a form of love that can be saluted by marriage. Much has changed. She spanned the whole lot.

Whilst mostly the Queen occupied a position outside of the dirty world of politics and current affairs, for better or worse, that was not entirely consistent. The House of Windsor continues to have considerable political clout, which it uses for its own benefit.  No doubt this is driven by the royal staff of advisers, but they are wielding the power of the palace. And the image of the Queen most seared into my mind is of her sitting alone in St George’s chapel at Windsor Castle for Prince Philip’s funeral whilst wearing a mask. As an individual it showed her typical sense of stoicism, but also the way in which the monarch could be drawn into the theatre of politics (incidentally, one can sense the ghost of the old lockdown mentality in this period of national mourning. The itch to cancel events is being exercised, as is the obligatory emotional response and official opinion formation. Perhaps there will be doorstep clapping organised or Union Flag face coverings available? There have certainly been arrests of dissenters and protestors).

During her reign, those most likely to adopt the republican cause have treated the monarchy as an irrelevance, or something to be gently chipped away at with claims of financial burden. Perhaps now its separateness from the rest of civil society has been broken, due to the passing of the individual who seemed to continue no matter what else in the country ceased to continue. Will the reign of King Charles III be an enduring one, or will it be an opportunity for republicanism to end something it does not like but could not attack whilst it was protected by the personal approval rating of Elizabeth II?