The Queen has said and done so many impressive things but this one will live with me forever: she was recently at a cake-cutting ceremony, I think, and I remember her saying how she was not important. First, it showed the incredible down to earth level of the Queen, not to mention her remarkable modesty after serving in her role since 1952.
Of the legion of things that she said and did over decades, nothing will ever come close to that. Diana likely was for so many the People's Princess, as Blair correctly observed. But in the final analysis, the Queen outdid Diana and was the People's Queen. Not that that was ever her intention.
With her death, the 2nd Elizabethan Era comes to an end and many things will change forever in its wake: the Commonwealth, quite predictably, will shrink and not just a little. More nations will become republics. And with that will come lesser respect for the monarchy and dare I say it, less admiration. It will be a slow chipping away process under His Majesty The King. Try as he may and as earnestly as he will, the British monarchy will never be the same.
Put another way, the hole has finally made its way straight through the dike. If he's lucky, Charles III will not be the last. One remembers how Edward VII was truly beloved by his people. Charles would do well to go there and use that reign as a template for his own.
The only monarch I've ever known of is gone. It will take quite a while to wrap my head around that.
Fare-thee-well, Majestic Majesty.
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