People like to make out her life was easy and that it's not fair that she inherited such a privileged position, but I think the exact opposite. Her life seemed like living hell to me. Every day for the last 70 years she's had to serve this largely ungrateful country, and she did so without complaint. Even in her 90s she took her duties extremely seriously, and I respect the hell out of her for that.
It was only a couple of days ago she invited our new PM to Balmoral Castle to form a government. She was clearly looking weak and it's been no secret that she's been struggling to fulfil her duties as Queen for a while, but even just two days before her death at the age of 96 she put on the performance that was expected of her. And she did this practically every day of her life.
RIP. I doubt anyone will ever live up to her legacy. Despite all the problems I have with the royal family, I couldn't feel more pride that she was our Queen.
Can't the Brits abolish royalty, how they abolished slavery?
In the UK, our Armed Forces actually pledge alliance to the monarch, not the government. And the monarch is meant to stay out of all politics. In theory, if a prime minister/government decided to go rogue and try to become a dictatorship, the monarch is a last line of defence that can stand in the way and restore order.
Of course one could argue that the monarch is in fact the dictator you’re trying to stop, or that there’s nothing to stop a monarch of bad moral character from becoming a dictator. Both systems have their strengths and weaknesses. But I no longer look as poorly at Constitutional Democracies as I once did or Republics as richly.
With a Republic you’re basically playing the “wisdom of numbers” card, and hoping that through the various votes, from party elections through to national elections, a person of decent enough moral character is elected into the highest position of power. With the British system, you’re putting faith that the strict rules, customs and ceremonies that dictate the education and behaviour of the Royal Family translate into monarchs that have the moral character to deal with the position. With Liz that worked out extraordinarily well. If it had been someone like Prince Andrew, probably not so much.
When seen through this lens, the pomp and ceremonies stop looking archaic and quaint and start to make a bit more sense. It’s why there’s such a massive divide between the Meghan/Harry camp and the Royal Family. Meghan and Harry see the strict protocols as constricting the individual and they’re completely right. However, that’s the whole point, the member of the royal family is meant to be constrained and molded into the function they’re meant to perform in service of the people as the individual instinct runs the greatest risk of turning the monarch into a dictator.
I would say this is the defining factor between US and UK culture and why there has always been a bit of confusion and misunderstanding of each other, going right back to the war of independence; America values that individual dream more than anything else whereas the Brits distrust it because of its potential dark side to tyranny. Brits gloss over the mental health issues (stiff upper lip) that accompany giving up your individual dreams in favour of slotting neatly into your allocated function in the class system and the Americans gloss over that chasing dreams can sometimes end up being purely self serving.
Based on current trends, the UK (and the world) is trending more towards the US way of things, driven primarily by technology and the internet. 30 years ago, if you wanted to watch anything on TV tonight your only option would have been coverage of the Queen’s death, which is mandated to run on all channels. This would have formed a pretty formidable “group mourning mentality” or “collective consciousness”. Today that is diluted somewhat by the fact that you can stream whatever you want whenever you want; the group no longer holds as much power over the individual.
It’s this ideological and psychological component that I actually think is an argument in favour of Republics or at least reforming the monarchy to enforce retirement at a certain age. Is it really fair to expect someone to dedicate their entire life in service of the people? Elizabeth did it from 25 to 96. She was literally performing duties 48 hours before her death. It’s an almost superhuman level of public service, like Frodo carrying the ring, and we shouldn’t really be asking anyone to do it for their entire lives. Even Sam had to carry it the final distance through Mordor. The woman deserved a rest. But then she loved doing it which is what made her such a great queen.