The End of the Fairy Tale of the British Monarchy
On September 8, 2022 came the cry: “The Queen is dead. Long live the King.” And so the wheel of history turned, and the Windsors (or should it be the Saxon-Coburg-Gothas or the Mountbattens?) continued to rule. Years ago, I watched Helen Mirren’s excellent performance as Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen. I don’t remember much about non-historical events in film except that the hunting of a beautiful stag was an important thematic element. One conversation stood out for me. As comfort, Queen Elizabeth’s mother told her that she was part of an unbroken family line that went back over a thousand years. That stuck with me: that events that happened that long ago had been threaded through family lineage and could be reverberating so tangibly even now. By way of example, the death of Elizabeth II and the ascendancy of King Charles III means The Bank of England and Royal Mint will have to recall banknotes and coins with the queen’s likeness, and design, produce and distribute currency featuring the new monarch, a lengthy two-to-four-year process. The coins alone may cost £600 million. That’s an immense sum and reveals something of the ever-churning machinery that shudders beneath the Windsor family and just how much money it takes to keep it all up and running.
Tap dancing around the Windsors’ and by extension Britain’s wealth and its sordid origins in conquest…
