The queen

Queen Elizabeth II died. She seemed to be a lovely old-money-tax-funded rich lady, who died at 96 after an eventful life. I didn’t know her personally, but I did start paying attention to her family for the past 15 years or so.

She had a husband who liked to make off-colour comments about race and women; one of her sons cheated on the princess and another settled for £12m a court case accusing him of having sex with an underage girl; her grandson dressed as a Nazi for laughs, the other one enjoys taking trips abroad empire-style. But that’s just some of the bad stuff, there was good too.

She seemed to read out things the Government has written for her very well, and to take being lied to by politicians quite forgivingly. She didn’t intervene, even when things were quite dire for her loving subjects, like with the consequences of Brexit and the cost of living crisis. She played the role and did what she was told; a convenient Monarch.

Of course she was born into the job that has no other required talents or qualifications, so I’m somewhat sympathetic. Time will tell if her successor descendants could command the level of respect and admiration she managed to receive domestically and abroad. Perhaps less so, and then we’d start to finally see the decline of such silliness as The Royals.