Speaking to a grieving nation, 73-year-old King Charles II, formerly Prince of Wales, tried to console himself and the British people, still reeling from 96-year-old Queen Elizabeth Sept. 8 death. Ailing for months with some unknown illness, there’s no doubt when the royal family was called to Balmoral Castle, Scotland, the queen was most likely on hospice, a humanistic-controlled end of life program using a morphine drip. But however the end came for Queen Elizabeth II, it leaves Britain in a vacuum because of her 70 years on the world stage. King Charles II will do his best to comfort a grieving nation but there’s only so much he can do, requiring only time to get back to a sense of normalcy. Queen Elixabeth II’s death actually buys 47-year-old newly minted Prime Minister Liz Truss some time, with the U.K. reeling from double-digit inflation, crashed pound sterling and recession.
British monarchy has played only a ceremonial role in the British government, with No. 10 Downing Street and Westminster calling the shots. Whatever the crisis, the monarchy was the one constant for the British people, something that doesn’t change over time, a time-honored tradition of opulence in an otherwise proletarian society, where a middle classes struggles to make ends meet. Critics of the monarchy complain about imperial Britain, pillaging-and-plundering countries to line the British monarch’s crowns-and-tiaras, a fact of life in British history. Despite all the misgivings about the monarchy, the British people wouldn’t trade it for the American system of government, that fought a bloody Revolutionary War with King George for the right to live independently without paying a King’s ransom in taxes to the crown. Charles II now steps up to console a grieving nation.
Queen Elizabeth II had the indignity of burring her husband of 73-years Prince Philip April 9, 2021, a real blow to anyone, even with the Queen’s stiff-upper-lip. “She’s a person we’ve always looked up to,” said weeping retiree Christine West, outside a large crowd at London’s Windsor Castle. “It’s a sad day for us all,” expressing the collective grief by many British citizens, especially those that follow the royals like a soap opera. “We mourn profoundly the passing of a cherished Sovereign and a much-love mother. I know her loss will be deeply felt throughout the country, the Realms and the Commonwealth, and by countless people around the world,” said 73-year-old King Charles II. If Charles’ words are any sign of how he plans to rule, the British public an expect a stiff-upper-lip, not the kind of sentimentality sometimes seen by Queen Elizabeth II in recent years.
Charles knows all too well what it’s like to be under the British tabloid microscope with his tumultuous divorce from Princess Diana Spencer Feb. 29, 1996, but years before, his ongoing affair with 75-year-old Camila Parker Bowles, now carrying the title, Queen Consort. So when it comes to King Charles II, the British public didn’t like his treatment of Diana, who died Aug. 31, 1997 in an unexplained car accident in Paris. Whatever the history, the British public has no choice when it comes to its sovereign. Charles waited in the wings for years while his mother enjoyed the fruits of a long life, dying yesterday at 96. Calling her condition “episodic mobility problems,” explains nothing about what finally killed Queen Elizabeth.. More than likely, she died of heart failure, not “episodic mobility problems.” But however the end came, King Charles II has a tough act to follow.
Prime Minister Truss said all the right words, doubling-down with King Charles II message today about the profound grief in the royal family and around the British Commonwealth. “The death of her Majesty the Queen is a huge shock to the nation and to the world,” Truss said outside No. 10 Downing Street, ordering the British Union Jack at half-staff in all government buildings. “through thick and thin, Queen Elizabeth II provided us with the stability and the strength that we needed. She was the very spirit of Great Britain—and that spirit will endure,” Truss said, hoping she can buy some time before the pressure mounts on her newly minted government. Truss begins office with a weak governing coalition in the Tory Party, not certain what to do to turn the flagging economy around. Unlike her predecessor Boris Johnson, Truss has some big decisions to make on the Ukraine War.
Whatever grief the royal family and country goes through, Truss won’t get that much latitude before there’s a hue-and-cry for her ouster. Johnson rubber-stamped President Joe Biden’s Ukraine War policy, that has the EU and U.K. boycotting Russian energy at the expense of both countries. Both the euro and pound sterling have crashed under the current transatlantic policy of a Russian oil embargo. With Biden fueling a proxy war against the Russian Federation, there’s no end in sight to the war, but, more importantly, to the economic fallout that’s brought the U.K. and EU to its knees. At some point, Truss will have to stand up to Biden, telling the White House that the Ukraine War must end, even if Ukraine loses territory to the Kremlin. All the grief in the world for Queen Elizabeth II doesn’t change Britain’s horrific economy all because Biden demands the U.K. and EU follow the U.S.
About the Author
John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.
