Because I avoid television and other news, I heard about an hour later than everyone else about the Queen’s death. When her father died, people burst spontaneously into tears. Others appear to have done this now. I cannot say the news took me so badly. Even so, I was shocked, and I spent the evening feeling empty.
I should hardly have surprised me. The woman had been growing visibly frail. As said, I avoid the television news, but I was aware of how small and thin she had grown. And she was 96. But I was shocked and felt empty. She was less of a monarch than I desired. When she came to the throne, this was a vastly powerful and relatively wealthy country. Its institutions were battered from the storms of the early and middle twentieth century, but all seemed intact. There appeared to be no fundamental reason why a policy of internal reform should not continue England’s run of greatness into the indefinite future, even if no longer as the supreme power in the world. By the end of her reign, all that had gone. When I was a boy, I could feel so proud and so happy to be English. I could fill my mind with the details of our glorious and fortunate history. I could look down on lesser nations. But look where we are today. That would require a litany of facts and complaints, so I will leave this point as stated. I doubt she could have stopped the slide, but she could have made the attempt. She could have been a little more flinty when her Prime Ministers came to her with their ludicrous ideas of improvement. Instead, she did nothing. She sat comfortable in the back of the national carriage, careless of whether the driver was drunk or insane, sure that she would survive any crash unscathed. I can be suspicious of the outpouring of official grief. The BBC and all the solid enemies of England are visibly putting on black arm bands and talking about “the sad passing of her Majesty the Queen.” This may be because they feel they have a duty to put on a show. It may be that they still have some residual patriotism. More likely, they realise that they have lost what became, after 1997, the essential fig leaf behind which they could work on their project of national destruction.
But she was the Queen, and that means a lot. More than this, she was the Queen for a very long time. The earliest memory I can date is when I was two, and sitting on the floor in my grandmother’s living room. There was an item on the television news about the tenth anniversary of the Queen’s accession. All through my life, she was there. I may not have approved of what she did or did not do while she was there. But she was there. In the howling storm that has torn England apart since the 1980s, she was always there. Now she is gone. All I see now is the wreckage over which she presided, but that she managed partly to conceal by her presence.
I expect nothing of Charles III. He is old and stupid and possibly malevolent. Nor do I expect anything of William V, assuming he is ever allowed to succeed. George V was unfortunate in his progeny, and its quality has been dropping ever since. If all else had been sound, monarchs of low intellectual quality might not have been a problem – though I suspect it would always have had damaging effects given that our constitution is monarchical and in need of some ability at the top. But they were stupid at a time when intelligent monarchs were an essential safeguard against a political class that, since about 1940, has never risen above the worthless.
And now she is gone, and we must go through the traditional motions of mourning her loss. The worse things grow for the rest of my life, the more she will be missed. Probably, she will be missed a lot.
I agree. Whatever her failings, she represented the last shreds of dignity and sanity in the public life of this country. Like you, when I was young I was so proud to be British – I was one of the ‘new Elizabethans’, born in the year she came to the throne. Now all that is gone, and the hideousness of modern Britain is untrammelled.
Back c.1917, in the depths of World War I, The Germans switched their bombing of south east England from Zeppelins to Gotha bombers. Some people noticed with alarm that the royal family had a similar name Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. King George V and his advisers got the wind up, noticing the Russian Revolution that year. They changed their name to Windsor, a safe archetypal English sounding name, and their cousins the Battenbers anglicised their name to Mountbatten. George V
had the opportunity to rescue his cousin Nicholas II Tsar of All The Russias and his Romanov family from Bolshevik bullets, but felt that too impolitic. These are examples of royal public relations par excellence. It also revealed the primary objective of the “Windsors” – to look good and keep their huge
wealth and privilege as the world’s premier royal dynasty.
80 years later in 1997 Diana Spencer, the divorced wife of Prince now King Charles III, died in a car crash in Paris, an event still cloaked in mystery. Initially Queen Elizabeth II and the royal family were silent, amid the clamour of apparent grief in the nation. Again the wind was up, might the royal family come crashing down under popular scorn? Again the royal response was self-preservation, and so the Queen walked about just outside Buckingham Palace looking at the flowers, and appeared on TV to read a contrived tribute to Di from the teleprompter. The royal family survived. Onward and upward,
‘keeping up with the times’ using the corgis, James Bond and Paddington Bear as PR accessories.
I was born in London in 1953 into a post-Victorian pro-royalist family, a few days after the EIIR Coronation, so all my life publicly it’s been “Long live the Queen”. I was an ardent royalist myself for decades. Then back in the 1990’s I paused a moment and thought if their was a job vacancy for sovereign, what would be the essential requirements?
1 To preserve the borders of the UK from invasion. Failed – there are over 10,000,000 immigrants and their descendants here, uninvited by native Britons, and the UK Border Force act as a taxi service for cross Channel asylum tourists.
2 To preserve common law and the 1689 Bill of Rights. Failed – she has signed into law a plethora of new laws that abrogate traditional rights like free speech and association including the Equality Act 2010, handgun ownership, fox hunting and the rights of freeholders. Muslim rape gangs and ‘Woke’
criminal damage go unpunished, even encouraged by the State, and those speaking against government multiculturalist policy are arrested or told by police ‘to check their thinking’.
3 To be an excellent orator. Failed – her speeches are relentlessly contrived and anodyne.
4 To dress tastefully. Failed – her clothes are uninspiring and her hats laughably modernist. She went through a brief spell of elegant dressing after the Queen Mother died, perhaps wearing her much more tasteful clothes, but it didn’t last.
5 For her family to be an example of faithfulness and stability. Failed – the royal family is disfunctional, replete with divorce, infidelity and ill judged marriages.
6 To preserve the Protestant religion. Failed – the State Church of England at the highest levels will conform to whatever cultural Marxists devise.
What good can I say of the royal family? Not much. They do pageantry bloody well. A regular succession of births, deaths, marriages, anniversaries lend themselves to quite remarkably colorful and splendid parades past historic buildings. They are in a league of their own, even the Americans and French pale by comparison. But then that is the work of the British armed forces, the royals are the star turns.
Politically I am a conservative libertarian, wanting as little government as possible, no laws beyond those protecting the realm and personal liberty, preventing common crime, and preserving the peerlessly rich achievements that our British ancestors have bequeathed us. I was brought up at a time when the royal family, the Church of England, the Conservative Party, the BBC, the police and armed forces at the highest levels and other prominent institutions were very conservative and government interfered less in our lives. They have collapsed morally in the cultural Marxist march through the institutions. We have had a leftist, multiculturalist queen who would do anything to keep in power. She had enormous success in her aim – to preserve the wealth and prestige of the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha-Windsor.
Incidentally, I noticed EIIR’s hearse in Scotland was a Mercedes Benz estate car, and her London outriders rode what looked to me like BMW R1200RT motorcycles, so at least the royal family are patriotic, sort of.
I endorse your comments. Compare the great country she inherited with the dire mess she leaves to her idiot son – who thinks we should all stop driving cars, stay home and eat insects ‘to save the planet’. Our late queen has broken her Coronation Oath on numerous occasions. Even as she was re-taking her Coronation vows on her fiftieth anniversary, she was preparing to betray her subjects by placing them further under the rule of ‘foreign princes, prelates and potentates’ by signing the Nice Treaty. Indeed she seems to have enthusiastically embraced each successive betrayal.
At two and a half years of age I was perched on my father’s shoulders watching the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in London. I was cold, wet and miserable, and I wanted to go home. My father told me this was a really important day and I should pay attention. I don’t remember his exact words, but they must have given me a jolt, as that scene has stayed with me ever since.
William will not be a total disaster – and we always have Kate, who is irreproachable – ironic as she is a commoner.
I think we can all agree Charles will be worse. His decision on September 1st to guest edit the black Voice newspaper in the days before he must have known his mother would day shows his hostility to the British nation.
I confess that I hoped she would get to 100, then we could have had an extra bank holiday!
But seriously. Silly Lizzie, as I have called her for some time, failed to do her duty; to point out to the politicians that what they were doing to the people was wrong, and would destroy the entire basis of their power. And I’m not enamoured of either Charlie or Willie. Anyone who supports the “climate change” nonscience has left the path of reason. If the succession rules could have been changed (as the Tories do at every vacancy!), Anne would have been by far the best choice.
I am reminded a little of William IV (in my opinion, the best king of England in over 1,000 years), who made sure that he lived just long enough that Victoria didn’t need a regent. Did Lizzie II keep her will to live just long enough to get rid of Boris Johnson?
And it would be interesting to know what words passed between the two Lizzies two days before she died. We shall see the results fairly soon, I expect.
Neil,
You’re the only one here who states it plainly. I think she was a terrible Monarch – perhaps this country’s worst ever.
It’s a thin selection, but I’ve always been of the view that Prince Edward, the dark horse of the family, is the best of the siblings and would be the most likely to cause a stir and object to legislation. I would prefer another family entirely, though. I think the House of Windsor has been our curse.
Let me put it more bluntly than the rest of you: I’m glad the treasonous old bat has finally snuffed it. I don’t wish Hell for her. May she Rest in Peace now, but she was quite probably this country’s worst ever Monarch. Part of it was malicious: she ignored the precepts and most essential duties of a Monarch in favour of preserving her own station; but, to be fair, part of the problem was the era during which she reigned. Dr. Gabb argues she probably could not have affected events. I’m undecided on that point. A stronger personality – ironically, somebody like her son, Charles – could have made waves. The only time she did so that we know about was when she openly objected to Thatcherism. I think she could have done more.
Her son is a very interesting man who, to give him credit, has not been backward at putting forward opinions that have often diverged or dissented from the governing orthodoxy. Yet I have the impression he gave in at some point. I don’t believe he is malevolent. I just think he is now too old to do anything. The Carolingian era would have been much more interesting had Charles ascended the throne in his 40s or 50s, as a mature and experienced man with strong reactionary/conservative views. Maybe this explains why the Queen clung on for so long, ensuring her son would be elderly and thus neutralised as a locus of dissent by the time he became King (if he ever did so)?
Anyway, Charlie Boy is now in charge. Princess Anne has probably already told him: “Get yourself on TV sharpish, yer daft sod. Look like you’re grieving. We need to keep the family firm going.”
[…] READ MORE […]
There’s no “possibly” about the malevolence of Charles III. He’s a major driver behind the WEF agenda. Old sausage fingers wants a lot of us gone.