Member-only story
There Was a Queen But Now She’s Gone
There was no king but now there’s one. Change is confusing
For the vast majority of the population of England, all we have ever known has been a Queen of this country.
Even for the anti-royalists or the plain just-ignore-the-royals type, it was impossible to ever get that far from hearing news of the Queen and the goings on at one or other of their places of residence.
And the Queen? She was like the grandma I never met, holding all of her subjects in the lap we never really sat in.
She kept going on.
The first jubilee I remember was her Golden Jubilee in 2002, marking 50 years on the throne. Then there was her Diamond Jubilee in 2012. That was commemorating 60 years.
And then, this year, she reached a milestone that no other monarch had reached. 70 years — her Platinum Jubilee.
As I said, she kept going on, and she seemed like she would continue going on forever.
Until today, when she proved us wrong. She showed us that even she, Queen Elizabeth II, could not go on forever, after all.
