Once, when Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain was modeling for the Italian painter Pietro Annigoni, she told of the many hours she had spent as a child in the same salon at Buckingham Palace. Then she had sat in the window and looked down The Mall, the great parade street leading up to the palace; watched all the cars driving up and down and the people hurrying by. “They seemed so busy, all of them,” she told Annigoni. “I used to wonder what they were doing and where they were going, and what they were thinking outside the castle.” 1947: A photo taken a few days before the then Princess Elizabeth’s 21st birthday. Photo: – / AFP Throughout her life, Elizabeth was watched by a large audience all over the world. Sometimes she was regarded with reverence, sometimes with skepticism, sometimes with hungry curiosity. But at no point in her life did she get to experience what it meant to be anonymous. Now she has passed away. A figure that has been a permanent part of the scenes throughout the lives of the vast majority of us, has disappeared. In the coming days, it is reverence that characterizes the descriptions of the queen, and admiration, and sadness at the time that passes and passes. When she is remembered this way, it has a lot to do with how she has withstood the greedy gaze of the world. 2012: Queen Elizabeth became the longest-serving monarch in British history. Photo: Alastair Grant / AP In gales, sunny days and British downpours, she has stood there, steadfast, dutiful, a monochrome pillar with her hat in place and an angular bag over her arm. She has followed her mother’s teaching – “Never complain, never explain” – to the letter, which made her increasingly rare as the public became more and more oriented to confessions and personal stories. The public has been eternally curious about what the woman with the hat was really thinking, but the respect for her has been all the greater because she has kept her mouth shut. It has also helped to maintain the position of the monarchy in Great Britain. The monarchy is a strange animal: muscular but slow, powerful and vulnerable at the same time. It is a deeply conservative institution, which is expected both to be a link to what has been, and to keep up with the times. During Queen Elizabeth’s lifetime, she managed to meet strongly conflicting demands and expectations. 1960: The Queen with her family outside Balmoral, the castle in Scotland where she spent her last days. Photo: – / AFP When she was young, she was reprimanded by her grandmother, Queen Mary, when she talked excitedly about all the people who were looking forward to meeting her. It was beneath the dignity of a princess to be excited by the thought of an audience. A few decades later, the British monarchy found itself in one of its greatest existential crises. It was when Princess Diana died suddenly in a traffic accident in 1997. Then the tabloid media led a campaign against the queen and her alleged insensitivity towards the dead princess – and thus towards the many who felt connected to her. At first she felt too much, according to her grandmother. Then she felt too little, according to the people and the tabloid newspapers. But in the long run, the queen’s restraint was probably one of the reasons why she maintained a strong position. By not saying too much about her own inner self, Elizabeth II remained a figure into which others could project their own expectations. She also observed the course of history from the orchestra seat. When she was born, Britain was very much an empire. When she died, it was a small country in Europe, searching for a new path after withdrawing from the European Union. She managed to meet 15 British prime ministers. The first, Winston Churchill, regarded his young queen with a kind of chivalrous care, regarding her as a symbol of the new island kingdom emerging from the trauma of World War II. 1950: The then Princess Elizabeth greets Winston Churchill during a dinner. Photo: AP The latest, Liz Truss, takes over a Britain in financial trouble, which is still in the middle of an identity crisis after the break with the EU. In these challenging recent years, the Queen’s position has been very strong. It has often been like this. In the most difficult periods for the country, such as the Second World War, the economic crises of the seventies, the Queen’s position has been strong. Many have seen her as something stable in a chaotic world, a symbol of stability and a link to the past as the country slides towards an unknown future. Elizabeth herself was an introverted lady in an extroverted job. She liked life in the country, surrounded by horses and dogs, better than life in the big city. She was an obedient and dutiful daughter, who broke with her parents on perhaps the most important issue of her life: when she insisted on marrying Philip of Greece, a handsome and charismatic but poor prince whom the king and queen thought was just a little too headstrong. 1959: The Queen and Prince Philip during a visit to Canada. Photo: Anonymous / AP She had a healthy sense of humor and liked to highlight the absurdity of her own work. And she was curious about those who lived different lives than herself. When Elizabeth was a 19-year-old princess, she was briefly sent into military service. The war was then in its final phase, and the initiative was largely a PR stunt from Buckingham Palace, to show that the royal family took part in the people’s trials at all levels. The princess stood in a row with eleven other young women, and learned at the same time as them how to fix a car and drive in rough terrain. One of the other women, Eileen Heron, noticed young Elizabeth scrutinizing each one of them carefully. “She is very curious about us,” she wrote in her diary. More than twenty years later, the Queen was to tell Labor politician Barbara Castle that the three weeks in uniform were the only time in her life she had been able to compare herself to her peers, and measure her skills against theirs on an equal footing. For an heir to the throne, and later monarch, such references are very little present. You have little basis for comparison for your life, and the choices you make mostly only have precedents from other times and other countries. You are superior to your siblings and your spouse. Even an apparently robust person like Elizabeth II will necessarily have been more lonely than many of us. 2018: Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. Photo: ALASTAIR GRANT / AFP She lived in a bubble where no one else could really get in. The closest was Prince Philip, who often treated his wife with a lack of reverence she apparently appreciated. But last year he disappeared from her side, shortly before he himself would have turned one hundred. The queen continued to work. She continued to sit in photographs with family members and military regiments, always in the center, always in a color that would set her apart, make her easy to spot. She was always on show. And now she is no longer. We knew so much about her, and yet so little.
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Lonely majesty – Utterance
