“Konigin Elisabeth II. gestorben,” declared the front page of the Frankfurter Allgemeine. In Brazil, Folha de S.Paulo‘s splash said “Morre Elizabeth 2a, rainha pro 70 anos”. “British Icon and an institution”: The New Indian Express. La Repubblica: “L’Ultima Regina”:
The news of the Queen’s death, according to the Press Gazette, “hit front pages across the United States, Canada, France, Germany, South Africa, Pakistan, Israel, Switzerland, Malaysia, Spain, Mexico, India, Brazil and beyond.”
One of aspects of British exceptionalism is a certain view of our place in the world – buttressed by the fact that so much of it speaks English.
But if you think about it, there is no automatic reason why the death of a British monarch should command the front pages of El Pais, HaYom or the Gulf Daily News. I won’t even begin to try recording the reaction of TV, social media or radio. It is hard to think of comparable reaction worldwide.
One friend with a long memory cited the death of J.F.Kennedy, but he was young and he was murdered. Perhaps the passing of Winston Churchill.
Roman Catholics have a specific reason to mourn the death of Popes, but not all of these command attention worldwide. John Paul II’s did. So did John XXIII’s. (He was the pontiff who ordered the Second Vatican Council.) Perhaps the best recent parallel was the passing of Nelson Mandela.
Why the worldwide impact, sorrow and respect? One of the reasons is hiding in plain sight – the media itself. Queen Elizabeth was the first British monarch to make full use of it.
Her grandfather made the first royal broadcast. But the Queen was able to utilise the power of television on a worldwide scale. The reach of the Commonwealth helped. Writing a few days ago, I quoted part of her famous address from South Africa on her twenty-first birthday, economising for reasons for space.
“I declare before you all that my whole life whether it be long or short shall be devoted to your service, and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong,” she said, the italicised words being those I omitted.
Queen Elizabeth will have taken that commitment no less seriously than she will her Coronation Oath – and that the Empire morphed into the Commonwealth will have made no difference. Indeed, her devotion to the latter was a source of tension between the Palace, if not quite the monarch, and Margaret Thatcher over South Africa and sanctions in the mid-1980s.
But America (“A pillar of duty and devotion”: The Washington Post) wasn’t part of the Commonwealth when I last looked. Though it offers another part of the explanation for the worldwide reaction to Queen Elizabeth’s death.
Namely, a factor I touched upon earlier: the knowledge and use of English worldwide. But it doesn’t help us get to grips with El Pais (“Muere Isabel II”) or Liberation (“La Peine d’Angleterre”).
Talking of France, Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to the Queen in a manner that conveyed both a very French sense of our neighbour as the repository of civilisation (he spoke fluently in English) and his own capacity to get to the heart of an issue: “to you, she was your Queen. To us, she was the Queen.”
Macron will have been very conscious that the office he holds has struggled for legitimacy in the past in way that our monarchy has not – at least, not since the civil war of the 1640s.
Obviously, it has gone through sticky patches: consider Queen Victoria’s unpopularity during part of her reign – or, more momentously, Edward VIII’s abdication. But neither compares with the restoration of the Bourbons, 1848, the Second Empire and the uncertainties that came with the start of the Third Republic.
Some will see constitutional monarchies as inherently more stable than republics, and William Atkinson will write about the arguments to and fro on this site later this week.
Certainly, monarchy evokes some kind of primal impulse, since most human societies, over time, have been headed by a single ruler – at least those which leave their mark on history, for better or worse. Hence the Bagehotism: “above all things our royalty is to be reverenced, and if you begin to poke about it you cannot reverence it…its mystery is its life”.
But Macron wasn’t making a general point about monarchy. Indeed, as the President of France he is just about the last person to have done so.
He was too tactful spell it out, but part of the point he was making is that although other countries have other queens, none of them have quite the profile worldwide that Queen Elizabeth had. I think there is more to the reasons why than media projection, the Commonwealth or even the English language.
The explanation also lies in a combination of three other factors: the length of her reign, British soft power, and her own personal qualities – plus her sex. (For a Queen, it is difficult for there not to be a touch of Burke on Marie Antoinette.)
There are different soft power rankings, but they tend to put Britain near the top – “despite Brexit”, as we like to say here (second in one assessment, the same in another – and they didn’t agree on which country comes first). Our history of empire, trade and exploration serves us well for the projection of soft power – “the ability to co-opt rather than co-erce”, as the cliche has it.
So, more broadly, does culture: think of British contribution to pop music or to sport. Without Britain’s capacity for projection, Queen Elizabeth’s age and virtue would have made little impression worldwide.
But that point can be turned on its head. Without virtue and age, all the awareness of her in the world would not have commanded the respect, affection and love than she inspired. And, again, that the two came together makes the crucial difference.
A virtuous monarch who didn’t live long would be unlikely to enjoy a reputation beyond their kingdom. One who reigned for a long time but held a bad reputation wouldn’t be mourned anywhere.
The Royal Family’s recent story has not been a bad one, an important part of Prince Andrew’s excepted, but it has often been a sad one, as the new King knows from experience. It is part of the Queen’s achievement, won hard and painfully, that she seldom showed it. She packed up her troubles in her old kit bag.
If her spirit is whispering in anyone’s ear, as they write appreciations or claim that Macron had it right, it may be to say: “don’t forget my husband, as you scribble away”.
For to reapply Theresa May, Prince Philip was the ultimate “citizen of nowhere” – before becoming, as it were, Queen Elizabeth’s First Subject. He was sort of Greek and kind of Danish and educated in France and then in Germany. His influence on his wife and vice-versa was inestimable.