Is it normal for me to feel an emotion when I learn of the death of Queen Elizabeth II? It’s a legitimate and sincere question when you grew up in a sovereignist family that had little interest in the British monarchy. Elizabeth II was the queen of the “English”, not ours.
Posted at 6:00 a.m.
In any case, I don’t yet feel psychologically ready to see the face of Prince Charles – sorry, King Charles III now – on $20 bills. When I think that Lady Diana could have been at Charles’s side, rather than her rival Camilla Parker Bowles, that inevitably betrays my curiosity for the royal family, of which I followed all the adventures, like pretty much the rest of the planet . The “people” of today will never accote this royal family, with its documented gossip that goes far back in history.
How to explain the worldwide success of a series like The Crown on Netflix if not? The screenwriters had perhaps not expected such a twist, when the queen was still 96 years old. Because it seemed eternal.
When the news fell Thursday, in Quebec on social networks, the reactions were divided between tribute, exasperation and humor in front of this total media eclipse, which should last for days and shake up the provincial electoral campaign – François Legault paused and lowered the flags, to show that we know how to live, all the same.
I have the impression that Quebec will always feel like a dog in a game of bowling over the British monarchy, a kind of weird guest at celebrations and funerals, bored by protocol. Just the function of governor general, who represents the queen in Canada, has been gnashing teeth for ages and soaking the ink of chroniclers in gall.
The image that comes to mind right now is that of Théophile, father of the Plouffe family, in Gilles Carle’s film released in 1981. During King George VI’s visit to Quebec in 1939, he was the only one not decorate his house. “It’s ch’nu en accursed”, complain his neighbors, and the priest does not manage to make him change his mind, while his son Guillaume is arrested for throwing a ball over the couple’s car royal on the Chemin du Roy (a road that Charles de Gaulle would later take with a very different welcome politically).
My great-grandmother’s mother was still alive when Elizabeth II ascended the throne. Of course I am devastated by his disappearance, although when I hear God Save the Queenit’s much more the Sex Pistols song that comes to mind than the British national anthem. She’s not a human beingshouted Johnny Rotten. We must believe that yes, finally; God did not save her from the inevitable that awaits every human being, from the richest to the humblest.
What is intended to be eternal is the institution and the caste it embodies, a monarchy that has endured for more than a thousand years in England. She will have beaten in longevity the reign of Queen Victoria, who gave her name to an era, the Victorian.
It is also said that with the death of Elizabeth II, it is the end of an era. But it is much more than that, it may be the beginning of the end of one world, or perhaps the end of the beginning of another, to paraphrase Winston Churchill during the Second World War. The unfazed woman was chatting to him, as with all subsequent UK and Commonwealth prime ministers, probably until last week. Governments have passed, the royal family has remained, and it is only thanks to Elizabeth, in her superhuman abnegation for her office, imposed from birth. With her, the crown has survived all the changes, from the first televised coronation in history, when the eyes of the world were on her, to the memes that have flooded the internet since her death.
Fashion is what goes out of fashion, they say. Queen Elizabeth II had nothing to do with the ephemeral, she embodied continuity, a base in time that goes too fast, which had something reassuring through countless upheavals, and discouraging for those who believe to change. Politicians keep offering us this, change, election after election. We no longer believe in it.
Even a French-speaking anti-monarchist, in his corner of the province of a country, colony of an empire on which the sun never set, can only recognize the strength of this woman. And the void it will leave, which will be filled by who knows what.