ANNUS MORTIS
17/50
8th September 2022
Calm on the seas, and silver sleep,
And waves that sway themselves in rest,
And dead calm in that noble breast
Which heaves but with the heaving deep.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson's In Memoriam
Some thought it would never happen. The chances of an asteroid wiping out all life on Earth seemed more likely. Lord Lucan showing up for a Cup of tea. Boris Johnson personally taking the blame for anything. Surely, like Tithonus on a dead planet, immortality would pull through, at the quiet limits of the world? But, no. Nary Tithonus but, like all Titans of history, eventually all are Ozymandias. Queen Elizabeth the Second, the corgi loving British head of state since 1952, has died, at the age of 96.
The Queen was born in 1926, eldest child of the decent but ordinary spare to the throne, Prince Albert. (It's a very common name for royals, in line with Queen Victoria's genuinely popular other half, but none of them have used it as their regnal name, again on her request.) The future Queen would be destined to live the life of Harry, with her uncle the King, until events in 1936. There, the King (George V) died, and his son Edward VIII, became King. Edward's deepest desire, when not bullying his disabled younger brother, was to marry his Hitler sympathising American divorcee wife, Wallis Simpson. The British establishment were shocked by this, with even then Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin - a man scared of his own shadow - pushing the King to pick his sex life or the monarchy. Edward promptly abdicated and was later shoved off to some island when he kept trying to make peace with the Nazis during World War Two.
This meant Prince Albert became the new King George VI, and Princess Elizabeth, at the age of 10, was suddenly heir to the throne. This meant her pre-planned life of Harry was the domain of her younger sister Margaret, who promptly travelled the world, shagged gangsters and was undefeated at bar room drinking contests. Instead, Elizabeth (after driving ambulances in WW2), married a childhood friend called Philip (you might remember him) and prepared for the eventual job of being Queen. It was during this time she learnt the attribute which would endear her to the public time and again, of showing up after war bombings and seemingly genuinely sympathetic and her ability to invoke an "we're all in this together" when Buckingham Palace was hit. This line was summed up by the Queen Mother, when asked to evacuate her children: "I won't eave London without the children, the children won't leave without their dad, the King will never leave..."
She became Queen in 1952, when her father, whose health had never been the greatest, died of cancer. Elizabeth (and her formidable mother) blamed the abdication for shortening her dad's life, and she was absolute in her belief she would reign until the Grim Reaper called full time. Over the next 70 years, she saw 15 Prime Ministers come and go, as well as 13 US Presidents,8 Russian Premiers, 7 Popes and 5 Sex Pistols. In the 1990s, all of her children got divorced, and Windsor Castle went up in flames in what she later referred to as her Annus Horriblis. Later in 1997, when a famous lady died by speeding in a car and not wearing a seatbelt, the press tried to turn the story of "doting grandmother looks after grieving grandsons" into one of "heartless Queen mocks nation's princess", but in her usual apt way, the Queen turned that all on its head, by appearing in public, looking sad and expressing her sympathy. (Look at the aftermath of Grenfell, in hardly the most royalist friendly territory in London, where the Queen showing up to express sympathy was compared with Theresa May's handling of the disaster.)
She got on with most of her Prime Ministers, especially the great war leader Winston Churchill and the great reformer Harold Wilson, the latter of whom she held special affection for. Her quarrels with Margaret Thatcher were also legendary, through secondary sources, with Andrew Neil claiming Thatcher said the problem with Her Majesty was she was a "bloody social democrat"! But, the thing about the Queen is, she was very discrete. Prime Ministers will go on record saying how invaluable she was, but are unable to give examples. Maybe she pushed Wilson to decriminilizing homosexuality with Wilson, maybe she was braying for the Iraq War with Blair, we're unlikely to ever know. Unless you are inherently unfit for Office and leak to the press that the Queen was a Remainer in 2014.
Why is it that when we think of incompetence, David Cameron always comes up?
The main legacy of her tenure is the swift decolonisation of the British Empire, which had started under her father but gained significant pace in the 1950s and 1960s. Numerous gay celebrities cited being defended by the Queen when government ministers tried to censor them in the 1950s (but on the flipside, we know there were employment issues for non-whites at the Palace too). We do know, thanks to leaky governments, that she was pro-sanctions on South Africa, that she was opposed to the state visit of the Ceaucescus (bet she loved hosting Donald Trump then), and that she thought Princess Diana was a bit of a tit. Oh, and she bloody loved dogs. Given her role in history, and the vast number of people she'd met and discussed events with, the Queen would have written the most fascinating memoirs. But then she wouldn't have been the Queen.
Of those who aren't ardent royalists, most have taken a respectful stance, bar your odd drunken Celtic fans or boisterous American Meghan drama lovers. We'll be taking the same stance here. By the standards of monarchs, Elizabeth II was one of the better ones. By the standards of nearly all of her predecessors in the role as British, England and Scotland monarchs, she was a class apart. But more than that, she was a living signpost of British society, an ever present to most of the population. Her popularity ratings made even people like Blair and Thatcher seem like Jeremy Corbyn by comparison. Millions are gutted today, understandably so, and for some of us, there is a melancholy in the symbolism that all hopes for Titanic immortality are as much as myth as Tithonus was, and our elder family members are getting up in age, also.
We'll remember her final act as Queen, grimly holding onto life so she could outlast Boris Johnson's Premiership.
