Of Cabbages and Kings

 I am mourning for a woman I never met.

And yet I felt a connection to her, and I don't think I'm alone in that.  We were distantly related, some would say so distantly that it is irrelevant, but it made a difference to me.  Elizabeth Regina, Second of Her Name...  and yes some of my ancestry traces back to the Plantagenets so I was serious about being "family" in a sense.  An intelligent woman.  A woman of class and probity.  A woman who held great power but was delicate in the use of power.  A woman with a lively sense of humor and an abiding love for animals.  A brave woman who served in wartime, driving ambulances.  A woman with an incredibly difficult job and an increasingly disrupted family who nevertheless managed to handle the situation with class.  Yes, we all know those things, and we all know who she was and what she did, but why does her passing leave us feeling a bit empty?

Perhaps it's because she has always just BEEN there.  To have managed 96 years in itself, for the year she was born, seems almost a miracle.  It shouldn't have been a shock, but it still managed to shake some of us in ways we never expected or were prepared for.  For me, the Anglophile I am, I'm willing to give King Charles a chance.  I certianly think I'm in a small minority there.  Most, I feel, wrote him off years ago, even before then entire Diana fiasco.  Frankly, I'm in the minority there as well because I don't dump all the blame on him for that.  Honestly, and I know this is another unpopular opinion, I think she was a nutter, a complete whack job.  Regardless, Charles Rex,Third of His Name, has an uphill battle ahead and it may prove insurmountable.  I wish him luck.

I think the monarchy is in the final decline to becoming completely irrelevant to the British, the Commonwealth, and to the people at large.  I dont see Charles ressurecting it.  Or William for that matter.  The only one I would see as having a snowballs chance in Hell of preserving the monarchy is Harry.  He has the charisma and the wit to do it.  He also has the stones, as he has proven time and again.  Unfortunately, that will never happen.

My sympathies to the family, and to the subjects who mourn her.  I stand with them in spirit, which is ironic because if I do raise a glass it's almost always Scoth or Irish Whiskey.  Still, it's the thought that counts.