The Queen sits on her throne as she makes
her speech in the House of Lords for the State Opening of Parliament.
PA
The Queen pictured in 1989 watches intently
as the Duke of Edinburgh tackles the marathon section of the Harrods
International Grand Prix at the Royal Windsor Horse Show.
Raised to be an Empress in an era of deference, she has held on for 50 tumultuous years. Her country is about to throw a party. Is her reign something to celebrate?
So what's a queen for anyway? as the crowds
cheer and beacons light and rock stars gyrate next week to celebrate
Elizabeth II's 50 years on the British throne, the question sounds
churlish, even impertinent — Off with his head, one of her predecessors
might have answered. Surely we should let the country have its fun,
let the 76-year-old monarch — soul of probity and hard work
and dutiful service, as close as the nearest postage stamp and remote
as a vestal virgin — have her reward for a life sentence to
grand ceremonies and banal conversations, without laboring to figure
out why, in the 21st century, she ought to exist.
But the question would not sound strange to Elizabeth herself. She
has been grappling with it her whole life. And, in her implacable
way, answering it, because after all, there she still is, waving and
smiling, opening hospitals and granting knighthoods, still standing
after an eventful half-century. There we are too — and not just
the people who call her Queen, which means Australians, Canadians
and many others as well as Brits — smiling and waving back,
glued to TV programs about the Windsors, buying magazines with her
face on the cover, playing our own role in the strange social chemistry
that convinces millions of people that someone we have never met and
did not choose to rule, is nevertheless "our" queen. Six months ago,
officials at Buckingham Palace feared that the celebrations of her
Golden Jubilee would turn out lifeless and sour. The climb back from
Princess Diana's death in 1997, when Elizabeth's wooden initial response
provoked public fury, has been arduous. Her offspring have continued
to provide embarrassing fodder for the tabloids, from Edward and Sophie
trying to trade their lineage for gain to Prince Harry's dabbling
in drugs. Courtiers have spun down expectations of a national outpouring
of gratitude — maybe a deliberate ploy to soften up reporters.
But it turns out the gratitude is flowing. The crowds greeting the
Queen in her recent tours of the country are big and kind: 20,000
in Falmouth, 30,000 in Newcastle (including a streaker with "Rude
Britannia" painted on his pale buttocks). Partly this is sympathy
for a woman who has just lost her sister Princess Margaret, who died
at age 71 in February, and mother, who died Easter weekend at 101.
Perhaps, after the throngs that lined London's streets for the Queen
Mother's funeral, it also represents a surprised rediscovery that
the royal family — not just charismatic black sheep Diana, but
its dutiful core — has something to offer. But most of all it
is respect for Elizabeth, as someone who has fulfilled every task
expected of her.
As Buckingham Palace has the statistics to prove, she has shirked
not one iota of the peculiar duties that have been her lot. In 50
years, she has undertaken 251 official overseas visits to 128 different
countries, launched 17 ships, sat for 120 portraits, conferred 380,630
honors and awards (and owned more than 30 Corgis). Over a million
people have attended her garden parties. She has churned through countless
red boxes of state papers and met each week with her Prime Minister,
starting with Winston Churchill; the 10th, Tony Blair, wasn't born
when she became Queen. Asked to rank the job she's doing on a scale
of 1-10 for the polling group MORI, the public rates her 7.31 (Charles,
the first in line to succeed her, gets 6.0); 86% of people give her
between 5 and 10. She has no intention of abdicating, which she made
clear again to Parliament in April. That would contradict the promise
she made at age 21 "that my whole life, whether it be long or short,
shall be devoted to your service." If she lives as long as her mother,
she will be Queen until 2027, when Charles will be 79.
"I've always been a republican," says Stephen Haseler, a professor
of government at London Guildhall University and chair of the campaign
group Republic, which seeks to reform the monarchy, then abolish it.
"The country needs to grow up. It's a national scandal that not everyone
can aspire to be head of state." He argues that the monarchy, as the
apex of a series of hidebound institutions like the House of Lords
and the established Church of England, reinforces "a very class-conscious
society" and provides a rallying point for those afraid of Europe
and the modern world. He thinks an elected head of state would generate
more pride and unity. "There's a limit to which an unelected person
from a very unrepresentative family can connect with people," he says.
Mark Leonard, co-author of the pamphlet "Modernising the Monarchy,"
argues that "there is a perfectly rational case for simple abolition."
Indeed. The Queen's formal powers, which include picking the Prime
Minister and dissolving Parliament, are flagrantly undemocratic. Though
intended to be a symbol of national unity, she heads a church (technically
appointing all its bishops) to which only 30% of people in Britain
profess allegiance and only 3% regularly attend. She exists as Sovereign
on a separate legal plane incompatible with modern notions of human
rights and the rule of law. Only in 1992 did she agree to pay income
tax; in return she arranged with the government that her mother's
bequest to her (at least $70 million), and hers to Charles, would
be free of the death duties everyone else must pay. A slimmed-down,
Scandinavian-style "bicycle monarchy" has never been the British way.
But resentment of the monarch's privilege is always simmering. When
John Major's government announced it would repair the fire damage
at Windsor Castle in 1992 out of public funds, the reaction was bilious.
"While the castle stands, it is theirs," fumed Janet Daley in the
Times. "But when it burns down, it is ours." In the end, most of the
$53 million needed came from admission fees to Buckingham Palace,
which the government owns but the Queen had never before opened to
the public. But 68% of Britons think the royals are out of touch with
ordinary people, according to the same MORI poll. Two-thirds believe
there will be a monarchy in 25 years; only 39% think it will last
50 years.
It is tricky to reinforce a thousand-year monarchy if sands of public
opinion are shifting away. But that is not the only imponderable built
into the Queen's role. She keeps her job only if she doesn't exercise
any of its powers. She believes she received her calling from God,
yet must measure her success through tabloids and pollsters. She stands
at the social pinnacle, but her most crucial attribute, to put it
crudely, is her performance as a brood mare. Her family started out
a paragon and ended up a trashy soap opera, invoked as a model not
of domestic virtue but of dysfunction. Three of her four children
have been divorced. An elderly white aristocrat raised to believe
in empire, she is expected to embody a whole multicultural nation
now grappling with complex questions of what it means to be British
— and English, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish. Constantly
photographed, choreographed, surrounded by dutiful aides, she remains
what her biographer Ben Pimlott calls "an ethnic minority of one,
a Sovereign not a subject," unavoidably solitary. She personifies
tradition, respectability, continuity, but she briskly informed Parliament
in April that "change has become a constant; managing it has become
an expanding discipline. The way we embrace it defines our future."
Though hard to believe of a woman with her taste in hats, Elizabeth
is a pile of conundrums, a walking paradox.
