Rick's b.log - entry 2022/09/09

EIIR - The Queen

You'll see it on any British newspaper, television station, or, well, pretty much anything British.

You'll join in our collective sorrow, and then in a week's time when we still haven't shut up you'll wonder if we're on something. But no, we're just getting started in adjusting to a completely different world. A world that lacks the carefully judged stability that she brought. A world where Britain has a King (I'm never going to get used to writing that). A world that may well decide to cast off the ancient colonial shackles. Will the Commonwealth start to crumble? A lot was held together out of respect for The Queen, but how many places with ever weaker ties to Britain these days are going to want King Charles III as their head of state? Especially if he tries something stupid like promoting Camilla to be a Queen.
But more than all of this, it could prove to be an existential situation for the Royals. More and more they come across as taxpayer funded pseudo celebs. The Queen was very different, and very likely the last great monarch that Britain will ever have. But the rest... are they necessary to a modern country?

These are all discussions that will be held soon, but for the moment, please allow British people the time to completely lose their shit. The Queen was such a part of normal life - from stamps to pillar boxes to banknotes. Proper British households even have a carefully packed special tea service "just in case the Queen visits", which as far as I know never actually happened, but it's there so if it should ever have happened, they would be prepared.

The Queen has reigned longer than most Brits have been alive. She's the only one they've ever known sitting on the throne. And now as the very country itself faces an uncertain future, we're going to be led and guided....by the guy that talks to plants.

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J.G.Harston, 9th September 2022, 00:21

Charles *can't* promote Camilla to Queen. She *IS* Queen, automatically, by virtue of being married to the King.

Rick, 9th September 2022, 00:38

She's actually currently Queen *Consort* because as it stands the throne is hereditary and not via marriage.  That's why it was always Prince Philip and not King Philip.

J.G.Harston, 9th September 2022, 11:34

16 hours in and so far there's no sign of the national freak-out that happened with Diana. All seems quiet and sombre. It's particularly weird as I'm the on-site on Fridays, and am the only person in a 30,000-sqft building.

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