She claims fealty by right of blood, reigned as the crown of an extraordinarily cruel empire, and frequently interceded in the democratic government of Britain to protect her private interests.
Queen Elizabeth presided over its dismantlement. No famines occurred during her reign and no rebellions violently suppressed.
The Empire was cruel, but it's unfair to wash her with the cloth of empire.
By all means let's have a reasoned discussion about the legacy of the empire, but this is not the place.
To me this is a demonstration of power of conditioning and media management.
What are the empires you're comparing it against? To call it "extraordinary" makes the claim that its level of cruelty is substantially greater than the "ordinary" cruelty of other examples. Were the Russian, Japanese, Ottoman, and other 19th and early 20th century empires substantially less cruel than the British empire?
Not to mention, as other commenters point out Elizabeth was coronated during a period of decolonization, with India departing the empire less than a decade earlier and most of its colonies in Africa and Asia following suit over the next couple decades.
When you say "extraordinarily cruel" then maybe you refer to the 2,100,000 to 3,800,000 Bengals you starved to death
The murder of 13 people (the inciting incident of the troubles) by the British army is not exactly comparable; even taking into consideration the total losses during that time of 3,500~, hardly comparable at all.
European colonial power would have never left if they hadn't got into war of attrition with Hitlar.
British left their biggest colony India only when Indian soldiers revolted and they were too weak to crush it post WW2. It was simply not possible to rule after this incident.
There are lots of notable figures that have died recently (Gorbachev alone may have saved the world as we know it), that don’t get the same, almost pathological level of admiration. It’s not normal to break down crying because a person you never met died at age 97.. that’s hundreds of years of indoctrination, social, and religious manipulation at work.
Being in the Commonwealth doesn't mean "staying on" the British Empire - it just means belonging to a very, very loose trade block on which Britain temporarily exercised an outsized influence. Recent developments (like the inability of subsequent UK governments to replace Commonwealth leadership) have shown that even that influence has now gone. At this point the Commonwealth is little more than an administrative construct for trade-related issues.
Yes, the Queen took the throne at the twilight of the British Empire. But it was in the midst of the Malayan emergency, the Mau Mau uprising, the Suez crisis was on the horizon, and South Africa had just launched the apartheid regime. Those were all, in different ways, attempts to stamp out democratic independence. Britain didn't relinquish its sub-Saharan African and Caribbean territories until the 1960s. You cannot cleanly separate the Queen from the empire which she crowned.
You mostly do a pretty good job of avoiding that, for which we're grateful, but on the other hand, (a) we have had to warn you about this before, and (b) this subthread is a classic generic flamewar tangent—just what we want to avoid on HN.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769470.
The fact is the British foreign office had been trying to find ways to offload the islands on Argentina for ages. The British government felt they were an expensive nuisance that were an obstacle to better relations in the region. The Galtieri regime only invaded because they needed a boost in popularity. Negotiation is one thing, but military occupation quite another.
There is (or could have been) a legitimate discussion to be had about the history of control of the islands. Sure. But those who resort to pre-emptive military force, when facing no threat to themselves, have no business complaining when the resulting conflict goes against them. Suez is a good example of us learning that lesson the hard way.
That they can paint that as British Imperialism blows my mind.
Let alone all of the Unionists are staunch monarchists and were tightly linked to government institutions.
I wasn't comparing anything to anything. You think that comparing The Troubles to bengal Famine, somehow excuses you from writing an obvious false sentence.
PS: Civil Unrest isn't Civil Unrest, when the army is literally shooting.
Scots, welsh, the entire north of England, the working class all don’t feel that way.
If fact there’s probably only a small percentage of traditional elites who feel that way.
I’m not saying she was perfect, but describing her reign as extraordinarily cruel is a real stretch.
I really don’t want to talk about the troubles but if I’m going to be a dick I will mention that the IRA intentionally targeted civilians, I don’t think the military at that time are as black as they’re painted. It’s all villains I’m afraid.
The "I'm not a racist, but" speech.
You're also missing a few words in your rant here.
Also, three paragraphs do not a rant make. Nice try though.
> In one instance the Queen completely vetoed the Military Actions Against Iraq Bill in 1999, a private member's bill that sought to transfer the power to authorise military strikes against Iraq from the monarch to parliament.
A wise move indeed, if Blair's record is to be taken into account.
And the multiple hundreds of "oh so sad rip i'm not a royalist but..." posts above are _curious_ and don't need discouraging?
> there’s probably only a small percentage of traditional elites who feel that way.
The way Ireland was publicly handled after 2016 shows that "small percentage" is still firmly in power, and winning solid majorities.
Maybe it did fan the flames of controversy to question the deification of the Queen, but the deification of the Queen is controversial. I live in Scotland, I know. Surely the right thing is to just ban threads like this in the first place if you don't like ideology.
No she didn't, the empire was effectively over by the time she became queen.
> The way Ireland was publicly handled after 2016
Do you mean Northern Ireland? Northern Ireland is a different country from Ireland, and as far as I'm aware the reason it's still part of the UK is because a solid majority of its citizens want to be part of the UK, not because it's been imposed on them from outside.
The post-Brexit discourse in the UK regularly featured threats to Irish sovereignty of various kinds, including from prominent Tories, which makes it sufficiently mainstream to matter. I'd recommend you have a read over what Fintan O'Toole and Tony Connelly have written on Brexit over the past few years.
Do I think such opinions are representative of most Britons? No. But they have been a major part of the mainstream discourse peddled by people with prominent voices and in positions of power. There is some part of the English psyche that sees Ireland as a wayward province and not a real sovereign state: witness the moaning and complaining when the UK became a third country about Irish people using the EU lane in airports that we were being "treated specially" - that kind of thinking assumes that Ireland is not its own sovereign state.
Also, the "solid majority" in NI isn't so solid anymore. Unionism is on the decline, nationalism is gaining more of a foothold, and the broad apathetic middle is growing. There's a reason why Sinn Féin is now the largest party there.
[1] Let's leave out the multiple levels of historical irony in what she said, and just focus on the fact that Ireland can feed itself five times over even though agriculture is now a tiny part of the economy, but the UK doesn't produce enough food to feed itself.
I think you're choosing to couple the British monarchy with the Empire.
The Queen willingly became head of a Commonwealth that included dependent colonies, and a British state that was actively repressing several independence movements. That the head of the Commonwealth is coupled with it is obvious, not my 'choice'.
That's my point, yes.
I've never heard anyone talk about annexing Ireland or making Ireland part of the UK again (aren't those two things synonymous?). I have heard Brits complaining about having to use non-EU lanes at airports, but that has nothing to do with Ireland - it's a completely predictable and negative consequence for Britons of a very divisive and unpopular political decision. I promise you that few people in England care either way what happens to Ireland, or at least no more than we care about, say, Sweden or any other near-neighbour who we're not at war with.
Hell, even Northern Ireland doesn't get much attention here, and that's part of our country. Most young Brits today are completely uneducated about the Troubles (although they've heard of it) and probably can't name a single Northern Irish politician. Brexit was a welcome reminder to the rest of us that Northern Ireland exists; our current dilemma is caused by the necessity of reconciling two utterly incompatible goals - keeping Northern Ireland within the same system as the UK while maintaining an open land border with an EU country. (The irreconcilability of these goals was pointed out by many people before the referendum, so I guess we can't say we weren't warned.)
> the "solid majority" in NI isn't so solid anymore.
Yep, I'm aware of that, and Brexit has definitely eroded that majority. Irish unification (as foretold by Star Trek) within my lifetime seems increasingly likely. Good for them - it's for the people of Northern Ireland to decide for themselves and I truly don't care which way they decide.