Queen Elizabeth II

 This is weird. More upsetting than this quasi-republican had expected. And more momentous and consequential to so many more people than I can appreciate.

The world isn’t divided nearly into royalists and republicans. There are lots of people, like me, who are less neatly defined. If a republican starts making points about why monarchy shouldn’t exist I’ll probably nod and say “yep” at every point until they’ve finished. Then I’d quietly ask them whether they thought our current generation of politicians were sufficiently honourable and sagacious to be entrusted with major rewrites to the Constitution.

That’s the point, really. Republicanism is fine in the abstract, but we don’t live in the abstract. We are not the Thirteen Colonies between 1783 and 1787. The world just won’t leave us alone for a few years while some Enlightenment intellectuals write us a constitution. The known is imperfect. But we cannot be sure that that the unknown will be better in our imperfect world.

We are where we are. The monarchy exists. The job of monarch exists. And Elizabeth II did it bloody well. For someone who has always avoided royal gossip like the plague, I’ll miss her, and I’m finding this strangely upsetting.