Monarchy’s future after Elizabeth uncertain
End of cherished Queen’s reign may pose king-sized problem
LONDON – When Britons sing God Save the Queen over four days of celebrations to mark Elizabeth II’s 60 years on the throne, monarchists may have cause to roar the line “long to reign over us” more heartily than ever.
Polls show the much-loved 86-year-old sovereign remains enormously popular and cherished by Britons, but questions linger about the future of the monarchy when she is gone and her already 63-year-old son Charles becomes king.
Republicans, royal watchers and even those with strong sympathies for the monarchy say that the future may pose a king-sized problem for an institution which relies on personal public appeal to stay relevant in the modern world.
“Monarchy is only as good as the people doing the job,” said royal biographer Robert Lacey.
“The British have cut off the head of their king, the British have lived as a republic for 11 years under Oliver Cromwell. We could do it again.”
Elizabeth became Queen aged 25 on Feb. 6, 1952, on the death of her father George VI, while on tour in Kenya with her husband Prince Philip.
She inherited the throne from an enormously popular king, whose reputation for steadfast duty helped the Royal Family overcome the scandal of Edward VIII’s abdication for the love of a divorced American.
During her 60 years on the throne, Britain has undergone dramatic change, from the austere postwar 1950s through the swinging ’60s, the greed is good ’80s and former prime minister Tony Blair’s threeterm New Labour era.
Over time, Britain has evolved into a more egalitarian society, where the ruling class has had to make way for a burgeoning middle class, where places at Oxford and Cambridge are no longer reserved for aristocrats and the majority of hereditary peers have lost their seats in the House of Lords.
Despite her auspicious beginnings, Elizabeth’s reign has not been all smooth sailing.
She has spent a large majority of her time saying farewell to the British Empire amassed by her forebears from Kenya to Hong Kong, although she remains head of state for 16 countries and head of the Commonwealth.
Her own marriage to a Greek prince stayed rock solid, but her sister, daughter and two of her sons have very publicly not been quite so lucky in love.
The 40th anniversary of her accession was a year she famously described as an “annus horribilis” after three of her four children’s marriages failed and there was a fire at her Windsor Castle royal residence.
The death of Princess Diana, the divorced wife of Elizabeth’s son and heir-to-thethrone Prince Charles, in 1997 did even more damage to the family’s public prestige.
But while her children and other royals have at times blundered in and out of headlines with their marital woes, Elizabeth has remained dignified and dependable.
Shifting attitudes in society and occasional embarrassments have not really provided any serious challenges to a royal line that traces its origins back to William the Conqueror in 1066.
Backed by a far more professional and sophisticated media operation, the royal family’s reputation has not only been restored from dark days of the 1990s but lifted to new heights.
The triumph of last year’s wedding of Charles’s eldest son Prince William to Kate Middleton, which pulled in an estimated two billion viewers around the world, was testament to that.
A poll published by the leftleaning Guardian newspaper last week showed support for the monarchy was at its highest level since the survey was first initiated in 1997.
Almost 70 per cent of Britons said the country would be worse off without the monarchy, compared to 22 per cent who felt it would be better off. Only 10 per cent backed an elected head of state.
Ironically the Queen only became sovereign because of a quirk of history after her uncle Edward VIII abdicated the throne because of his love for American divorcee Wallace Simpson and the crown passed to her father.
Royal watchers say part of the Queen’s appeal is her modesty, derived from the fact she never expected to be monarch.
During the Second World War she learned to be a driver and a mechanic, and her love of the outdoors and her dogs, especially Corgis, is well documented.
During much of her reign she was often upstaged for attention by three flamboyant women — her mother, Elizabeth the Queen Mother, her younger sister Margaret and Princess Diana.
Ironically, the personal sorrow of losing her mother and sister, who died within weeks of each other in her Golden Jubilee year of 2002, and the trauma caused by Diana’s death in 1997, have given her a boost in the last decade, said Lacey, author of a new book A Brief Life of the Queen.
“Those three competitive female icons have vanished and that leaves the Queen very clearly established as the principal mother figure of the monarchy and of the nation,” he said.
Robert Hardman, another biographer of the Queen, says she personifies Britain itself.
“She is the living incarnation of a set of values and a period of history,” he explains.
“In Britain, she is Tower Bridge and a red-double decker bus on two legs, not to mention Big Ben, afternoon tea, village fetes and sheep-flecked hills in the pouring rain.”