In the News The Queen is Dead, Long Live the King

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-61585886

 

I'm honestly worried about all the "funny memes" that will spawn from this. I can 100% guarantee you that there's already an image of her in that "harambe heaven" meme
Oh well, RIP though

 

I mean she reigned for 70 years, so she was around for quite a lot. She was queen when Churchill was prime minister.

 

I'm British fyi

 

I'm an American, but I still want to say, RIP...
There's Discord servers I'm in where people actually celebrated her death... like, maybe she wasn't the greatest in everyone's eyes, but I still think celebrating nearly anyone's death is both absolutely sickening and cruel...

 

How can people get so worked up about her? Like, she is a figurehead who's entire job is being nice. Can anyone who didn't personally know the queen actually point to an issue with her?

 

Some people hate rich people for just being rich, while others hate her for being complacent with the British empire's less-than-nice qualities like colonialism. For the latter, you can argue that she couldn't do much anyway, but it's also true that she didn't do everything she could do.

I'm not saying that you should hate her per se. Just that those are the 2 main reasons why others do. That and for memes.

 

People don't need to have known her personally to be able to dislike her. What does it matter if you're nice to people if your actions speak otherwise? Being the head of a government that participates in colonialism and genocide is absolutely problematic. If you argue that she isn't personally responsible for either of those things, then the question remains why Britain still has an undemocratic head of state and why that title should be granted to anyone who apparently does not take responsibility for the actions of her country. Being "just a figurehead" doesn't get a pass if you're the figurehead of a horrible government and are given special privileges by said government.

Even in recent history it's hard to detach the queen from the British government. The fact remains that her enormous wealth wasn't acquired through "hard work" (like one could disingenuously argue for most other multi-millionaires), but either inherited, in which case it is wealth that came from a time when the monarchy did have political power and stole from its own people and its colonies, or publicly funded, i.e. tax money is taken from the British people and given to someone who is supposedly entitled to it by birthright. Additionally, she has a long history of lobbying the government to conceal and preserve her wealth. We'll probably never know the full extent of her wealth and offshore investments it's incredibly easy to see why she has time and time again come under intense scrutiny.

Furthermore, the royal family in its entirety has been known to be a cesspool of racism and abuse. Even if in many cases the queen was not the instigator, she was the head of the family and has done her part in enabling the actions of her family. Besides, she absolutely has done bad things personally as well. Notably, she opposed princess Diana's HIV/AIDS advocacy, and more damningly has funded the prince Andrew's sexual assault settlement. This isn't even scratching the surface when it comes to the royal family.

Any of these individual things are more than enough reason to dislike someone and cumulatively I think that the hatred of Elizabeth II is absolutely justified. I personally wouldn't want to be friends with the figurehead of a colonialist empire, a lobbying real estate magnate, or a sexual assault enabler. In fact, I completely understand that for people from many places of the world and many different backgrounds, her death is a cause for celebration, appended by the sobering thought that her funeral and the coronation of prince Charles, who will probably be just as bad, will cost millions...

 

I didn’t know about her opposition to Diane’s AIDS campaign and paying for Charles settlement, damn. I don’t know how I feel about just outright abolishing the monarchy though. It would kill a chunk of the tourism that they bring in. Not saying that they’d never have tourism again, but it wouldn’t feel the same.

 

From a pragmatic perspective I agree. Abolishing the monarchy would have a drastic and immediate impact on the British economy. My post was mainly about the matter at hand, which is of course the queen, and I think criticisms of the monarchy are also salient criticisms of her. I do think the existence of the British monarchy, or any monarchy, is bad as it stands and its abolition is a desirable end goal.

 

I haven't even internalized it yet. It's like, the Queen of England existing has been a constant in my life. Not that I care about her but she was there so the thought that she's gone now just feels so... surreal.