Photo Essay: The Queen of Modernity
After presiding over an evolving monarchy, even QEII's tributes reflected deep change
The announcement of Queen Elizabeth II’s death surrounded by flowers on the gates of Buckingham Palace, 9 Septmber 2022. Photo: Adrian Brune
Dear friends and fellow countrymen,
It was a day for which every element of the British government had prepared for decades, but for which no one ever felt ready to execute.
The bells of Westminster Abbey started to ring out across Central London around 9:15 am on Monday, 19 September, two hours after the last mourner, Christina Heerey, a Royal Air Force civilian employee, wrapped up four days of the state viewing in Westminster Hall. At some point during the 96 tolls — one for every year of Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor-Mountbatten’s life — televisions, laptop computers, iPads and smart phones around the world switched on to watch the live coverage of the woman who reigned over the United Kingdom for 70 years.
A homemade tribute to Queen Elizabeth graces the storefront of a wine shop in Loughborough, a Midlands town with university known for its sports programmes. Photo: Adrian Brune.
Broadcasters in the UK — most at least 20 years younger than Queen Elizabeth II — kept getting the terms and date of the last official state funeral confused. Initially, they said the government held one for Sir Winston Churchill, England’s WWII prime minister, on 30 January 1965. But as with all royal rules, debate often ensues. As Operation London Bridge Down unfolded over the previous 10 days, they realised King George VI, Elizabeth’s father, last occupied the gun carriage — and the designation — reserved for royalty. Not even the late Princess Diana, whose death invoked a similar outpouring of grief, had one, contrary to the initial beliefs of most.
Needless to say, the death, the mourning, the funeral and the procession was unprecedented — steeped in tradition, but no less a 21st century requiem befitting of any person who was born before the advent of television and lived through the coming of the Internet, social media, and yes, even Zoom.
A digital announcement announcing the death of Queen Elizabeth II on a repurposed internet phone booth (left). A close-up reveals the significance of her brooches: the faces of King George IV, her father, and King George V, her grandfather. Photo: Adrian Brune.
On Thursday, 8 September, the BBC reported that the Queen was “resting comfortably” — broadcast code for “deceased". By 6:30pm, when all members of the royal family had taken planes, trains and automobiles to Balmoral, two of Buckingham Palace’s stewards placed the announcement of her death on its gates. In less than five minutes, the news was around the world and crowds began gathering in Central London, Windsor and Aberdeenshire, where the Queen had spent the last month.
A photo pf Queen Elizabeth graces the window of a long boat in the Regents Canal near Islington. Canal boat dwellers have been in conflict with property developers and other entities over management of the canal on which many live for the past three years. Photo: Adrian Brune.
The next morning, as American friends debated the legitimacy of the monarchy on my Facebook, English pals posted photos of the flowers and tributes gathering at the London palaces. The Royal Family’s Instagram account — QE II made her first post four years ago — started showing a photo montage of Queen Elizabeth’s long, transformative life.
A digital billboard showing the initials of Queen Elizabeth at Euston station (left); another computer-generated digital compilation of Elizabeth through her years shown outside of Vodaphone mobile stores. Photo: Adrian Brune.
Did Queen Elizabeth own a mobile, a laptop, an iPad? We’ll never know. However, with the help of Princess Anne (and likely many aides), the Queen learned how to use Zoom — the day before she passed, Queen Elizabeth even cancelled a Privy Council meeting that was to take place over videoconference. In fact, he speed, various interfaces and circumstances in which the UK public interacted with its Queen prove that, even at 96, she was a contemporary monarch.
Digital signs expressed condolences over the death of Queen Elizabeth II: a real estate firm in Scotland, which posted her seal in lieu of its latest properties (below) and a local bookseller using the occasion to sell some more books in Kings Cross station (below).
To consider the change embraced during her lifetime think of the folllowing: when the Queen’s father, King George VI died of lung cancer in 1952, the news came to Fleet Street the next morning, with Elizabeth and Philip already headed back from Kenya. Instead of posting on their phones, newspaper sellers in central London chalked their boards with the words, “The King is Dead.” Parliament came to a halt and the BBC went off the air for five hours. Nine days after his death, the King’s funeral procession in front of 300,000 was led by horse carriage — photos of the event were printed in newspapers.
King George VI was progressive, however. He was the first reigning British monarch to visit the United States and South Africa. Plans for tours of Australia and New Zealand had to be postponed indefinitely, however, when George fell ill in 1949. Still, under QE’s father, the British Empire became the British Commonwealth and India, the first Commonwealth country to join in 1949 after it declared independence.
King George VI’s funeral procession, led by the horse carriage of his wife, Elizabeth.
Just over 45 years later, upon the death of the modern Princess Diana, 24/7 news operations, such as CNN, carried word within hours. Flower-bearing well-wishers took photographs with 35mm cameras. The funeral, which also took place at Westminster Abbey, was watched on TV by 32 million, with two billion people viewing worldwide. Also by 1997, 22 countries had been free of British rule for 30 years. Earlier that year, then-Prince Charles, had relinquished Hong Kong,
Pincess Diana’s hearse attempts to drive through London en route to her burial place, at Althorp Park, her family home.
Queen Elizabeth, indeed, never apologised for colonialism, a source of contention for many. To this day, she remained mum on many issues, including Diana, the People’s Princess, publicly saying only that she “admired and respected her. The Queen also met with several leaders that the world would eventually deem despots and mass murderers, including Presidents Mobuto Sese Seko of Zaire, Nicolae Ceausescu of Romania and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. Then, there is the fact that, according to Forbes, the crown (“Monarchy PLC”), holds nearly $28 billion in assets, including Buckingham Palace ($4.9 billion) and Balmoral ($592 million), during a time when many Britons will struggle to pay heating bills this winter.
Flowers in front of Buckingham Palace with a hand-painted portrait of Queen Elizabeth II. Photo: Adrian Brune.
Yet, walking through the capitol and then, Glasgow, for the Davis Cup over the weekend, spontaneous outpourings of gratitude and mourning were everywhere — yes, even in Scotland. During a time when the New York Times has put together a team of reporters to investigate the threat to American Democracy because of vows to invalidate elections, assassinate progressive Democrats, and reverse even more freedoms in the vein of Roe v. Wade, England seems remarkably stable. And indeed, under the Queen’s reign, abortion was legalised (1967), as was LGBT-marriage; divorce became accepted practice; more countries all over Africa and the Caribbean shed the cloak of the monarchy; and charitable causes expanded.
From her coronation — the first to ever be broadcast live on television — to the estimated three billion people tuning in on some device to watch her funeral, Elizabeth II was a contemporary Queen. One needed to only look at the selfies being taken in front of the palaces and the processions, the television specials on the BBC iPlayer, the home videos on YouTube, the debate on social media and the state of the UK versus other countries in its peerage to know that possibly no other monarch will preside over — and willingly so — as much progress. RIP QE II.
Ever yours,
Adrian
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Flowers in front of Buckingham Palace and in Glasgow with various drawn and printed tributes to Queen Elizabeth II. Photos: Adrian Brune.