Monarchies are silly, regressive, antiquated, and expensive. Still, I confess to having a soft spot for Queen Elizabeth. As we see this weekend, she was a reassuring figure in the lives of millions.
My Irish-Catholic mother grew up cutting out pictures of Elizabeth and her sister, Margaret, from LIFE Magazine during WWII. And I remember interviewing a nutmeg farmer named Boise Richardson during the invasion of Grenada, whose eyes watered as he told of how a military coup sent tanks into his town. “Who will our dear Queen send to help us?”
I recall the speech Elizabeth gave when she came to America to mark the Bicentennial in 1976 (which, after all, marked independence from her family’s rule).
“Independence Day should be celebrated as much in Britain as in America,” she told a crowd outside Independence Hall. “We learnt to respect the right of others to govern themselves in their own ways. Without that great act in the cause of liberty, performed in Independence Hall two hundred years ago, we could never have transformed an Empire into a Commonwealth” — which is a voluntary association in a way the empire never was.
British historian Simon Schama said this week on Twitter, “The loss of empire often breeds demons — witness the end of Imperial Germany and Putin’s obsession with imperial resurrection: there were terrible things as British empire crumbled but that it didn’t breed fascism was in some degree due to the Queen’s belief in the Commonwealth.”
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Before you go
Travel South Dakota
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