On my very first day in London 25 years ago, the tragic news broke that Princess Diana died in a car crash in Paris. The enormous public outpouring that followed showed how the monarchy is so often a focal point for the conversation about what it means to be British.
The death of Queen Elizabeth II is not wholly unexpected or tragic. But a quarter-century later, I’m more alive to its significance in my adopted country. Like so many of the major events she took part in during seven decades on the throne, her succession was meticulously prepared and will no doubt be flawlessly executed. And yet, as anyone who has lost a family member knows, no one is ever really prepared.
That applies on a grand scale here. From the moment the prime minister is told “London Bridge is down,” a whole series of plans is activated. The country will talk of little else for days ahead. But neither the royal family nor the country knows what it will be like to have a different monarch at the helm, or in what ways her passing will spark a period of wider change.
You can’t visit Britain without noticing you are in a kingdom. Stamps and paper currency bear the Queen’s portrait. Countless pubs are called The Queen’s Head or The Queen’s Arms; there’s the Royal Opera House, the Royal Borough of Kensington and so many other Royal places. Some 8,000 streets have the name Queen, King, Royal, Jubilee or some synonym. A Royal Warrant bestows a special cache on favored businesses and charities.
Even so, my younger self couldn’t grasp how one person with all that inherited wealth could come to embody a nation’s view of itself. For an American, it all sits oddly apart from modern notions of democracy. The hereditary principle was always anathema to the American sense of meritocracy (though the irony now is that so much wealth and opportunity in the U.S. is indeed inherited). So was the idea of a head of state who is also head of church.
And yet by the time this summer’s Jubilee celebrations rolled around, there I was, lump in throat, snapping a video of my TV as the queen stepped onto the balcony at Buckingham Palace in that perfectly choreographed set-piece appearance with her closest family members in a neat row. I WhatsApped the clip to family in the US.
“Queen looks pleased. Crowd truly happy to be there,” my octogenarian mother wrote. “Hard for me as an American to understand.”
I get it. Americans have different reactions to the monarchy. It’s easy to be enchanted and entertained; harder to feel real attachment. They can get just as wrapped up in the glitz of royal weddings or escape into the drama of royal bust-ups and scandal, of course. One study even found that more Americans were excited about the Jubilee than Brits.
But they can also find the fuss bewildering or even offensive. “Why should we celebrate the fact that one person has ruled without interruption for 70 years? And is a constitutional monarchy truly compatible with our democratic ideals?” wrote Steven Porter in USA Today about the Jubilee fuss.
Becoming British has meant working toward an understanding of things that come automatically for the native-born. The other lesson I gleaned from my early days living in the U.K. was that while the queen’s role is largely ceremonial, there is no neat dividing line between palace and politics. The queen may stay out of politics, but as the former U.S. ambassador to Britain, Raymond Seitz, a keen observer of Britain, wrote, “when that little arch of reservation rises on the royal brow, a silent shudder runs through Whitehall.” (Will the rather bushier brow of Charles get the same notice, I wonder.)
After Diana’s death, a young, new prime minister made a statement that perfectly captured the public mood, crowning her “the people’s princess.” Tony Blair’s popularity hit 93%, considered a record of a democratic politician. The Queen, by many accounts following his lead, opened up too, showing a monarchy that could adapt to a changing time.
The great British essayist Walter Bagehot warned that the light should not be allowed in on this rich tapestry of convention and ceremony. The trick of the monarchy is its mystique; its distance from ordinary people serves to bring elected government closer to them. The monarch’s role, he said, could be vaguely defined as “to warn, to encourage, to be consulted.” That kind of nuance, like the rule of law in the absence of a written constitution, may feel uncomfortable to the non-Brit.
What makes this succession so poignant, and its effect so unpredictable, is the combination of the former queen’s personal brand and the historic moment that Britain finds itself in. She may have inherited a crown, but the global admiration was earned. This arose from her relentless service (even blessing a new prime minister 48 hours earlier) but also the values she lived by — decency, duty, spiritual devotion, love of nature, loyalty to family and country.
Hers is an impossible act to follow for Charles, her heir and now king. He is happily remarried to Camilla, the woman who was at the heart of his marriage breakup with Diana. Those wounds at least have healed, but his family is still reeling from the very public falling out of his two sons, William and Harry, and the shame of his brother Andrew’s association with Jeffrey Epstein. With the queen gone, it will be on Charles to create a sense of stability and continuity, but just stopping the sense of decay would be a start. The scrutiny will be intense.
The queen’s death represents a moment of vulnerability but also opportunity. Although support for the monarchy is strong overall in Britain, with about 62% of Britons in favor, it’s weakest among young people; only a third of 18 to 24-year-olds see the point. “If the monarchy is to thrive, it must keep telling a story that engages people,” wrote the historian Alex von Tunzelmann in April. “This does not mean it should modernize. Its appeal may lie in reiterating that sense of tradition, benevolence and duty that the Queen has channeled so well.”
The royal succession will also be a test, perhaps in some ways a defining one, of another new prime minister, Liz Truss, whose handling of the response will be broadcast around the world. Days of remembrances and outpourings will dwarf talk of the country’s energy crisis, the flailing National Health Service, the war in Ukraine and pretty much all other news. But only temporarily. The queen leaves the world at a time when Britain’s fourth straight Conservative government is redefining its role in the world after Brexit, trying to hold a fraying union together and confronting the biggest economic crunch since the financial crisis. The pound, as if asking the question, is at its lowest level since 1985.
Some 2.5 billion people around the world watched Diana’s funeral. I suspect many more will follow this changing of the guard, whether they fully understand the implications or, like me after all these years later, are still piecing it together.
____
ABOUT THE WRITER
Therese Raphael is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion covering health care and British politics. Previously, she was editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal Europe.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
