These long-lived and long-lived female monarchs each ascended the throne very young in life and carried time with them. They outlived their subjects, their favorites, their enemies, and their younger family members. In the cases of Elizabeth I and Victoria, who lived at a time when life expectancy was much shorter than it is now, they must have seemed to be sustained by a magical or divine presence. Elizabeth’s first quasi-goddess in later life, Gloriana of England, owed much to her astonishing longevity. She was the Virgin Mary eternally renewed. Gun salute for the Queen – video Our Queen has been ‘old’ for 25 years – she has been grandmother to a generation, many of whom are bored with royalty and would call themselves republicans, not monarchists. Yet to them too the Queen was ‘her witch’, affectionately nicknamed, as was the other Elizabeth – Gloriana, certainly, but also ‘good Queen Bess’. Much loved and a lamp in the best sense of the word. The outpouring of grief and mourning over the Queen’s death cuts across age, class, politics, race and gender. Black taxis in their hundreds, neatly lined up in the mall after the news, were a spontaneous and moving tribute, as were the thousands of ordinary people, old and young, who will stand through the night to pay their respects at her funeral casket drop by. This is honest, and much more of a litmus test of emotion than the usual words from the usual suspects. Like the two great queens before her, Elizabeth II transcended her limited coordinates. There she was, an upper-class woman with a goofy accent, who loved horses and dogs, never went to school or had a job, but found herself representing her country for 70 years. The tribute to taxis on the Mall, London, on Thursday. Photo: Guy Bell/Rex/Shutterstock It was an image, and it doesn’t matter how much of it was projection. That is the point and purpose of an icon – it is a representative symbol, and its symbolic value is far greater and more complex than any intrinsic value. This is why there is nothing to be gained from studying what the Queen was or was not on her own. Was it progressive? Was she racist? Was she a good mother? What were her views on Brexit? Why didn’t he help Diana? We could go on forever – and people do. But what do we learn? In my opinion, nothing. Her private self was irrelevant to her understanding of symbolism. The continuity that Elizabeth II brought to this country was more than a long life spanning so many changes. it was the embodiment of our connection to history – history as a lived and living past, a rope hanging in time. Theresa May recalls throwing cheese in front of Queen Elizabeth at Balmoral – video It is curious that the second Elizabethan era began, almost 400 years after the first, facing the same problem: national identity. Both Elizabeths ascended the throne at the age of 25, the first in 1553, the second in 1952. Britain after the second world war would be a very different Britain to the great power of its imperial past. Queen Victoria’s Britain, the Britain of the Empire, was falling apart, however much the machinery of state worked to prove otherwise. In any case, after two world wars in such quick succession, people wanted a brave new world – fairer, more equal, with access to health care, to education, to opportunity. The old hierarchies had had their day. We needed a social contract. Ours was a Britain that would have to rethink itself. The other Elizabeth, 400 years earlier, became queen of a country torn apart by religious strife: her father, Henry VIII, had broken with Rome – its power and its faith – and declared himself CEO of a newly founded religious institution – the Church of England. Elizabeth’s new-to-history roles as head of church and head of state required sheer determination and political acumen. Civil war was a real fear, as was invasion by hostile forces supported by the church of Rome. It was after the defeat of the Spanish armada that Elizabeth was transformed from young queen to national icon – the moment of Gloriana. Her job was to be the stable point in the turmoil. To persuade England to cure the national migraine caused by its dual vision of a Catholic past and a Protestant present, and to focus on itself as a healthy new nation forging a strong new identity. Elizabeth I c 1588 … ‘never grew old’. Photo: Print Collector/Getty Images The Church of England and Shakespeare – what could be more British, in all the world? And yet what seems to be the timeless fabric of this country’s physical and mental landscapes – our village churches, our prayers and worship, our learning, our letters, our arts, our common language, begins here – phenomena, because this is held together in the face of a young woman when women had no position and no power. Fast forward four centuries, and another young woman, also named Elizabeth, faces her destiny in what Shakespeare called “the gulf of time.” Time, however, is only superficially linear. History repeats itself, perhaps because we cannot imagine ourselves again. What is the balance between tradition and innovation? Is custom superstition? Is custom just the way we’ve always done things because we’re afraid to do things differently? The wrecking ball of revolution, big or small, smashes what we loved as well as paves the way for something new. New does not always mean better – as the exhausting disruption and acceleration of our age makes clear. And yet, nations and their peoples must rethink themselves. Our Elizabeth was born in 1926, two years before all women could vote on equal terms with men. Raised in a house in Piccadilly, overlooking Green Park, she did not expect to be queen and was disappointed to become queen so young. This meant leaving behind the usual pleasures of a happy marriage, away from the public eye. But, as she said in a remarkable speech in 1947, when she turned 21: “My whole life, whether short or long, will be devoted to your service.” Did it make a difference not wanting to be queen? We are used to witnessing the unseemly polemics of greasy politics, where ambition is the name of the game and public service is a string of empty words. We are used to vindicating, too, those whose backgrounds and privileges lead them to believe in their own right to rule. The British Empire whitewashed its rapacity and brutality, missionary coercion and robber-baron raids as the “white man’s burden” and “servitude.” The reign of Victoria saw this concept of service reach cult-like levels of self-righteousness. Public service, overseas, military service, missionary service, the ubiquity of home service, all wrapped up in a word that suggested selflessness and self-sacrifice – a word that reached its peak in the slaughterhouse of the first world war, and never did not regain its luster. However, Elizabeth II believed in service as a religious and moral imperative. It is duty, yes, but duty with humility. In theory at least. And this explains why, as a monarch, she was impatient and frustrated when others in her family did not recognize the duty of service. Queen Elizabeth II, photographed by Jane Bowen. Photo: Jane Bowen/The Guardian That we can serve a purpose higher than ourselves is anathema to a modern society based on neoliberal anti-values, where money and power are all that matter, and where society either does not exist (Thatcher) or is a commodity which must be stripped. Liz Truss’s first act as Prime Minister was to decide that the UK must take on even more debt to manage the energy crisis – borrowing from the future rather than taxing today’s profit from fossil fuel companies. What a sad sight it was to see the Queen, whose first Prime Minister was Winston Churchill, salute Truss, the Prime Minister who nobody voted for except about 80,000 old Tories. The instability imposed on Britain since 2016 and Brexit has been limited – somewhat – to the face of the Queen. Certainly, if he was still there, we were still there, a permanent presence on the world stage, part James Bond, part Paddington Bear, icons of both, and how fondly we imagine ourselves – daring and successful, recognized and loved, wacky, yes they do things our way, world class, but sitting down with a sandwich and a pot of tea. It was testament to the Queen’s knowledge that she made these two short films, one with Bond and one with the bear. Fictional characters both. British inventions, like herself, played a real role. Real living fictions exist simultaneously in three-dimensional and psychological space. In national mythology. The Queen has always understood the power of the radio – the voice – since she broadcast during the war, but she began to understand the power of the image when she agreed to have the BBC televising her coronation in 1953. That alone marked her as a new monarch for a new era. Queen Victoria was a photophile, an early adopter of the camera, thrilled by this 19th century innovation. Her first photographs date back to the 1840s, but were kept private. By the 1860s, with the empire in full swing, she was ready to issue images of herself to a willing audience around the world. Most of us have a picture of her in our heads – bigger, fatter, a rotund figure in black bombazine, as unsmiling as that other modern Victoria, Posh Spice. Queen Victoria, an early adopter of the camera. Photo: Pictorial Press…
