Elizabeth II, The Queen

Change has come today

Many tributes shall be written about the woman born Elizabeth Alexandra Mary who became Queen Elizabeth II, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the other Commonwealth realms.

In a reign that spanned 7 decades and 7 months, many of us have known no other monarch, our anthem asked God to save the Queen, our coinage and postage stamps a side relief of her face through the times of her reign, our pound notes with her face beaming up at us, she represented constancy and stability that seemed would never end.

Records for the record

Her sense of duty continued to the very end even in her ever-increasing frailty, she did not flinch as other monarchs in continental Europe abdicated for their heirs in Spain, the Netherlands, and in Belgium. She represented an old-fashioned call to service and handling of responsibility that is rarely seen in leadership today.

It is with sadness that we mourn the passing of the longest-lived and longest reigning British monarch amongst other superlative records to list, the defining of the Second Elizabethan Age might well rival in consequence the First Elizabethan Age for how England changed and became a world power.

She becomes he

Maybe, there are times she should have intervened, but let history judge that, she lived above the fray of politics, asked 15 Prime Ministers to form a government and in her longevity gave perspective to the many who took office that their time was just a fraction in the consequential length of her reign.

Her death might well unite this divided nation in grief, but the machinations of her sometimes-calumnious governments has left the country in no greater shape than when she ascended the throne with the future looking quite bleak for citizenry and subjects, but things will turn, I believe.

As we usher in the reign of Charles III, we hope that it brings a new sense of hope and encouragement. The Queen has joined her ancestors and may she find eternal rest with the memory of her walk in life never fading.

Long Live the King. In an age where pronouns matter, she becomes he, her becomes his, and her becomes him, and the House of Windsor endures. May the reign of King Charles III and his Queen Consort, Camilla usher new prosperity in our nation. God Save the King.