Cecil Beaton's breathtaking, dramatic portrait of the new Queen ....
I feel that I need to preface this by saying that I’ve never been addicted to gossip about the royals, never watched The Crown (tho I’ve always wanted to, just never got around to it), never been a particular fan of Diana, tho I admired her grit and determination, had strong opinions regarding Prince Andrew (who didn’t after the glaring, lubricious revelations about his connections with that slithering international pimp), vaguely liked Prince William, and admired Kate’s mostly successful efforts to live up to the role that would inevitably be eventually demanded of her.
But I was a fan of Queen Elizabeth. I admired her quiet, seemingly effortless strength, her optimism. I was grateful for her presence on the world stage.
Elizabeth II rose above all the swirling gossip, even when it was all around her, and often about her in both direct and tangential ways ….. above all the trivial and the shiny, glittery, trifling passing parade. She was the bulwark against every raging, rising tide, the stable rock in the huracanoes and lashing storms. The epitome of grace and unforced charm, with a waggish wit that was rarely seen publicly. The stabilizing influence in rumbling storms and upheavals both off-shore and on.
Her hand on the tiller of Britain was firm, but guided lightly and with enormous intelligence and genuine empathy. She straddled at least two worlds: the old world, in its last, gasping death throes when her father, King George VI, died and she ascended a thousand year old throne at an age when most women were settling into the comfortable routines of home and kids and nightly family dinners and packing school lunches or graduating from college, and the new world emerging, often limpingly in the UK, after WW II. And then, the newer and even less pleasant world emerging recently in chaos and tumult. Never missing a beat, faltering only on Diana’s death, and then only briefly.
This will be a passing bit of news in the US, a shattering loss in the UK, a destabilizing unhappiness in the Commonwealth, and an invisible line, perhaps not openly acknowledged, drawn between two ages, the way BC and AD (or BCE and CE if you absolutely must) separate ancient pre-Christian from Christian history in the Western world. The world has changed, suddenly and with little immediate warning, tho it was clear after Prince Phillip's death that the moment was coming. Stealthily, slowly, on little cat's feet.
The Queen is dead, long live the King. And may God bless and keep him, he’s got a hard road ahead ….
