People simply referred to “the Queen.” They usually didn’t say “Queen Elizabeth.” They didn’t need to. Neither her name nor those of the countries she ruled were necessary to identify her. There are other queens, of course, but none has remotely the same stature or instant recognition. Mention of them is likely to prompt the fugitive thought, “I’d forgotten that country had a queen.”
Why was there only one Queen?
Partly it was her brilliance in balancing warm accessibility and the awe-inspiring dignified distance that makes majesty. She was “Her Majesty” not just in title but in demeanor. She engendered love and delight among ordinary people because she had the common touch and she personified duty. But she never forgot the admonition of Walter Bagehot, the 19th century essayist, who said of monarchy, “We must not let daylight in upon magic.”
Queen Elizabeth II’s successor, her son, who is now King Charles III, and many other members of the royal family have not lived by that wisdom nearly as well as the Queen did. They often let the glaring light of publicity in upon their lives. It is for this reason rather than because monarchy is neither modern nor egalitarian that people occasionally wonder whether the institution can long survive the death of Elizabeth.
I suspect it will. Charles was unpopular as a middle-aged Prince of Wales, but he is wiser and more popular now, and the monarchy has enjoyed a rebound in public esteem. Charles can look forward to a further surge of support among his subjects. He will benefit from the cardinal fact that the throne elevates the monarch rather than the other way around.
But what are we to think of the Queen on this side of the Atlantic? She is respected here in America, perhaps even loved, because for many people she embodied qualities that, though they enhanced the monarchy, were not strictly monarchical. They were the best human qualities, admirable in anyone. She lived according to values traditionally prized in our republic and shared culture.
Among other things, the Queen observed and fulfilled her duties scrupulously; she loved and elevated her country; with few words and by her own example, she showed that she wanted high standards of behavior in public life; she practiced a quiet and humble Christian faith; she encouraged charitable work, communities, and local institutions.
These are qualities that good Americans fear are being lost or deliberately obliterated here at home. Thus, Queen Elizabeth II’s death — her disappearance from the world we live in — is a loss to all those who value dignity, tradition, honor, duty, patriotism, unity, and faith. These are not royal qualities. They are the highest qualities of civilized humanity.
Elizabeth represented many important things not just for the British she ruled, not just for the people of other countries, such as Canada and Australia, of which she was sovereign, but for billions of people around the world who saw in her an admirable and dazzling example. Her death ends something everyone shared, which made her not just a queen, but “the Queen.”
