zlacker

>>xd+(OP)
As a Brit I'm not a huge fan of the royal family on principle, but Queen Elizabeth has been such an excellent head of state for us you really can't fault her.

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.

>>kypro+Ph
> 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.

She wasn't doing it from the kindness of her heart. This was her job, she was obscenely rich off of taxpayer money and she could retire any second she wanted to. You make it sound like she was sentenced to sign paperwork for her entire life, when the reality is she consciously chose to do so every day and in exchange she and her family was granted an immense wealth. It's not even remotely something that would warrant complaint. I'm not saying this to be snarky, just pointing out that although maybe parts of her job was boring, stressful, and unfulfilling, this is what she signed up for. And her "compensation" was unimaginable amount of money and power in the form of interpersonal relations.

>>gnulin+Yy
You think she enjoyed the trappings of wealth? I never had that impression. And no, she didn't "sign up for it", she became Queen as a result of birth. Yes, she could have abdicated but the fact that she chose duty is to her credit. She was not faultless, but it's difficult to imagine another monarch doing a better job. I say all this as an anti-monarchist. I don't want one, but if we have to have one, she was the best.

>>chriss+HA
> Yes, she could have abdicated

If you can quit a job but you choose not to do so, in what sense did you not "sign up for it"? Her own uncle Edward VIII abdicated so he can marry Wallis Simpson without controversy. This has nothing to with anti-monarchism, I'm just pointing out that she was the queen only through her own free will.

>>gnulin+RE
There's a massive difference between signing up for your dream job and being handed a responsibility with the right to abdicate it if you don't mind causing a constitutional crisis and still being stuck with the media obsessing over you.

Technically, I can take drastic action to negate things I received as an accident of birth if I don't mind getting flak for doing it, but it makes no sense at all to claim that on that basis my parents, physical appearance or manhood were all stuff I signed up for of my own free will.

>>notaha+RY
If tomorrow some guy from a small remote and completely obscure island came to you and told you're the last in the royal bloodline and need to reign the SNBXIHWJ people, leave your life and everything you own to come to their survival island and sit on the throne, you'd probably give them the middle finger.

In our current world wealth and royalty is preserved by free will and is nothing comparable to your manhood (which you can also give up if you want to, people do)