For those who do not regard King Charles III as their liege lord, these have been a difficult few days, with the promise of more to come. One of the reasons that republican sentiment has been so absent from the media coverage of the death of Queen Elizabeth II is that the local republican movement has chosen not to comment until the official ten day period or mourning is over. In the absence of a lobby group to press for the republican option, the media has been unable/unwilling to kick off a debate on the desirability of maintaining the monarchy.

Quite the reverse, actually. Instead of treating the death of the sovereign as an opportunity to consider the options, the media has played a key role in cheerleading a seamless transition. The Queen is dead, long live the King! No doubt, Elizabeth II was a remarkable person. But if we are ever to have a mature debate about becoming a republic, the decision as to whether it is – or isn’t - a good idea to have a British monarch as our head of state shouldn’t come down to a popularity contest.

In the meantime, the official mourning period looks like being extended. Since Australia has already declared September 22 will be a one off public holiday of mourning, the Cabinet is bound to follow suit. Buckle up. Given the torrent of words – and emotions - that the death of Elizabeth Windsor has inspired, what else can be usefully said?

Whatever one thinks about the monarchy and Queen Elizabeth II’s role in perpetuating it, her death is being grieved in a very personal way by huge numbers of people, far and wide. In fact, one of the paradoxes of her long reign is that as Elizabeth II’s fame and soft power influence expanded and expanded (to the point where she has been described as having become a global monarch) the influence of the Britain she headed was contracting at an even faster rate. The handover of Hong Kong in 1997 was probably the last gasp of the Empire. Today, this is all that is left.

In a similar paradox the qualities so personally admired in Elizabeth II –she kept her head down, she got on with it, she displayed a stoic sense of duty and devotion to public service etc etc – diverged more and more from the increasingly unsavoury governments on which she bestowed the royal seal.

Obviously, Queen Elizabeth was not responsible for Brexit or for the rise of Boris Johnson and his mates. Yet the growing gap between the public devotion to the British sovereign and the public revulsion with the latest sequence of Tory governments, does pose a few management problems for the new team at the Palace. Can the virtues of continuity be entirely separated from the aura of legitimacy that regal ceremonial approval (and the Speech from the Throne etc) give to socially reprehensible policies that are doing wilful harm to so many of the sovereign’s loyal subjects?

That aside, it seems hardly accidental that a female sovereign is being praised to the skies for her lifetime of selfless dedication to others and for her unswerving sense of loyalty. But that question - loyalty to the Crown is loyalty to what, exactly? – leads into far murkier waters. What exactly is the nature of the institution that Elizabeth II has served so dutifully?

Long before Meghan Markle pointed it out to Oprah Winfrey, the Crown has been an institution riven with classism, sexism (e.g. the rule of male primogeniture) and racism, all of which are rooted in its bloody imperial history. Even in more recent times, the royal family’s main role has been to present an acceptable human face to an Establishment that has been rotting away from the inside, for decades.

To take one example, raised on the weekend by Al Jazeera. Famously, Elizabeth became Queen on the death of her father in early February 1952, while she was holidaying at a game park in Kenya. That same year saw the beginning of the Mau Mau uprising against British rule in Kenya. Over the course of the next eight years the Mau Mau revolt was brutally suppressed by Her Majesty’s armed forces. Between 10,000-25,000 Kenyans died amid horrible atrocities committed by both sides, and Britain executed some 1,039 Kenyans, mostly by hanging. Similar independence movements against British rule were quashed in Malaya, in Cyrus and in Aden during the first 15 years of Elizabeth’s reign.

I’m not suggesting that she was personally responsible for the policies – political or military – enacted in her name. Nor for the war in the Falklands abroad, or the crushing of the trade union movement at home under Margaret Thatcher. (There is some evidence Elizabeth may have tried to advise Thatcher that her austerity measures posed a threat to national order.) But surely, a head of state cannot be entirely absolved for the legitimacy that she (or he) confers on what the political arm of the state proceeds to do. In recent days, the media has been eager to cite the Queen’s subsequent “friendship” with Nelson Mandela. But we should also recall the resounding silence from the Palace during the 27 years of Mandela’s incarceration.

Sure enough, the monarchy has evolved somewhat, in order to survive. Yet not all of the problematic stuff is ancient history. For example: Under policies launched in 2012 by Home Secretary Theresa May, Britain chose to harass and deport Caribbean migrants who had been welcomed to live and work in Britain between 1948 and 1970, as part of the so-called “Windrush” generation. Under threat of fines, May required landlords, employers, the public health system, charities, NGOs and banks to carry out ID checks and to refuse services to individuals unable to prove they had legal residence in the UK. Many were deported back to a Caribbean they barely knew.

A subsequent inquiry in 2018 found the policy to have been inhumane and urged compensation, Yet reportedly, barely 5% of the victims have received it. Britain’s treatment of the Windrush generation became a factor in the decision taken by Barbados in 2020 to become a republic, and to remove the Queen as head of state.

None of this complicity in rank injustice will matter of course, to many of the monarchy’s subjects, who have little interest or awareness of the ceremonial role that the sovereign plays in enshrining and legitimising some policies that are known to promote social inequality and injustice. Over the course of 70 years, Elizabeth II’s reign became an end in itself, and a receptacle of public memory. In mourning the Queen, people have been mourning the loss of her constant presence in their lives.

It is why the same people now want Charles to provide more of the same. Like his mother though, Charles will change, but primarily so that everything can remain the same.

Footnote One : One way the monarchy (aka The Firm) will change is that – reportedly – Charles has an interest in trimming the royal family tree, in order to minimise the post-Covid drain on royal finances. The mini-furore over whether Harry and Meghan’s children would be titled “Prince” and “Princess” arose because of that same austerity drive. It was resolved in the children’s favour, after Meghan adroitly painted it as a distinction based on race. Faced with that accusation, the Palace caved.

For those with an interest in the royal finances, the most readable account I’ve seen has been this detailed analysis by Forbes magazine, which (in 2020) assessed the royal family to be a $28 billion annual business.

The Firm—also known as “Monarchy PLC”—are the public faces of a $28 billion empire that pumps hundreds of millions of pounds into the United Kingdom’s economy every year. The lavish televised weddings… buzzy tours of Commonwealth countries and public displays of pomp and circumstance generate massive interest—and profits—for a global business enterprise that spans from prime real estate in central London to remote farmlands in Scotland.

As Forbes explained, some royals enjoy separate income streams (eg, via the Duchy of Cornwall, the Duchy of Lancaster) that exceed the amounts available to family members under the official Sovereign Grant, whose workings (and tax details) are explained here. Harry for instance, continues to receive significant annual sums via his inheritance from Diana’s estate.

Footnote Two: Amid the general co-dependence that exists between the royal family and the corporate world, the Firm’s relationship with the media is of special note. Much as staunch royalists may dislike Meghan Markle, there’s one sense in which she continues to be a valuable team player. The televising of her marriage to Prince Harry, Forbes estimated, pumped some $1.5 billion into the British economy.

Even three years before that wedding, Brand Finance, a U.K.-based brand valuation firm, estimated The Firm’s contributions to the media industry at nearly $70 million. That figure, Forbes estimated, now seems to be seriously under-stated, given that alone, Harry and Meghan’s interview with Oprah was broadcast in more than 60 countries.

The media’s co-dependent relationship with the royals evidently goes back a long way.

As he lay comatose on his deathbed in 1936, King George V was injected with fatal doses of morphine and cocaine to assure him a painless death in time, according to his physician's notes, for the announcement to be carried ''in the morning papers rather than the less appropriate evening journals.''

Footnote Three: In recent days, as GQ magazine has pointed out, many corporates have tried valiantly to align their brands with the outpouring of public grief:

Domino's Pizza, KFC, McDonald's, Screwfix, Funky Pigeon, Heinz, Greggs, the British Kebab Awards, Crazy Frog and Shrek's Adventure! have all weighed in with tributes, which have been promptly and roundly mocked.

Other companies have gone further. Second-hand goods retailer Cash Converters UK has “Ceased posting until further notice”. On Friday morning, fitness chain Crossfit shared a workout on Instagram called “Queen Elizabeth II”, a combination of jumping lunges, muscle ups and med ball cleans broken up with a “1 min rest in silence”.

Footnote Four: The media’s concern that Britain’s heart is broken, and that the nation may (as the BBC put it) be feeling “unmoored” could be misplaced. When Prince Philip died, the BBC was deluged with complaints about the extent of the coverage, and programmes not offering wall to wall Philip coverage reportedly enjoyed a surge in ratings. Coverage of Queen Elizabeth’s funeral, given that she is/was a less polarising figure than her late husband, might not trigger the same backlash.

Footnote Five: An elected head of state need not be the end of the world. As Werewolf has previously mentioned, Ireland gets by pretty well.

Footnote Six: Yes it is sad that Queen Elizabeth has died. (I’m not being snide. I’m saying that as someone who bought in big time to the collective grief over the death of Diana.) Plainly though, some celebrity deaths mean more to the public (and to the media) than others. After Elvis Presley died, it took days for the media elite to realise the scale and the intensity of public grief. (The King is Dead !) They then rushed to cover it, and to plumb its social meanings.

For the record though… Around the world, an estimated 65 million people die every year, which breaks down to 178,000 every day, and 7,425 every hour. So if it takes 5 minutes to read this column, 600 people will have died somewhere between the time you started it, and when you finished it. Does this minimise in any way the death announced last Thursday morning (NZ time) of Queen Elizabeth II? You be the judge.

Rebel, rebel

The monarchy is so very British that when the Sex Pistols chose to kick back against the Establishment, only one suitable target fitted the bill. England’s dreaming. There is no future. He means it, man:

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