The second Elizabethan era is over. It is hard to imagine life without Elizabeth II because almost everyone alive today has experienced only life with her
She was also the first monarch of the modern media era. Her coronation in 1953 was the first to be televised; in 1976 she became Britain’s first monarch to send an email. Her subjects knew more about her than about any previous monarch. They knew that before her coronation she had worn her crown at breakfast, to accustom herself to its weight. They watched her crowned in her finery and knew that, beforehand, she had to strip to her shift to be anointed with holy oil.
Time and again Elizabeth was stripped to her shift by the media—and for a while neither crown nor subjects coped. Royal and remote, with her headscarves and clipped vowels, she seemed like a woman out of time. Each person is an anachronism in their own era, and monarchs more than most. Elizabeth’s uncle, the abdicating Edward VIII, wrote that he was “a Prince trained in the manners and maxims of the nineteenth century for a life that had all but disappeared by the end of his youth”.
As the media age became the social-media age, empathy mellowed harsh judgment. The mood towards her shifted. Her silence, which had seemed an unfashionable anachronism, started to seem prescient, even refreshing. As the currency that bore her profile declined, and as Britain became diminished, her stock stayed high. Donald Trump longed for a state visit; Michelle Obama put her arm around her.
The time-machine continued hurtling. Elizabeth II leaves a country, and Commonwealth, very different from those she inherited. When she acceded to the throne the vestiges of imperial power lingered; the afterglow of victory in the second world war was still warm. Now Britain is no more than a regional power in the North Atlantic; secession is threatened on all sides; the Commonwealth, unravelling already, looks likely to unravel still further without her.
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