It is tough being a leader, especially a woman in a glass cage as was the recently demised Queen Elizabeth ll ;overseeing an immensely wealthy global empire. Particularly when such an incredibly remarkable woman is there leading not necessarily because she wants to but due to family tradition dating back hundreds of years .It was then Princess Elizabeth’s turn since there were no males left in the family lineup. Afterall, her uncle the King decided to abdicate for the sake of being in love leaving her father to become his reluctant successor . When her father died she served as she promised she would as her father did; that is , until her last breath no matter how long or how short it would be to come around.
It would be a 70 years journey we will never know very much about ; mostly , the public pomp and circumstance , the Queen’s gracious smiles and compassionate encouragements; her public decrees, and seemingly countless photo ops with the rich and famous and with conveniently posing commoners. And of course there is and will be the gossipy press and royal family biographers, as a lucrative cottage industry,making their matter of fact and sensational claims shooting in the dark most of the time since rarely do royal family members break the circling of secrecy wagons.
What she did as ultimate sacrifices as the supreme symbolic though profoundly influential State leader, the Queen, incarcerated in her crystal clear glass cage,was answering a family calling for public good service. To her, her family calling meant serving without partisan public opinion about anything or anyone .Her inclination was to say and do things hidden from public view to such an extent we are hard put to know how she really felt about major events and circumstances which came to define her era.
She inherited a family calling of leadership over an ancient rather archaic global and domestic patrimonial ,that is, ceremonial family State institution not made for the social media and otherwise digital era with its sense of lost of privacy and making family shortcomings and stumbles fodder for the tabloids ,prime time news, and reality shows. And neither did she allow herself to publicly blurt out her hurt about or defense of family members who went astray.
She is now transitioning to her grave with her lips sealed before she died for an eternity at least when it comes to the itching prying ears of the media driven public about her intimate family problems made so embarrassingly public .Never letting public outsiders know how much her favorite grandson Prince Harry hurt her so badly with his mother Princess Diana , her daughter-in-,law doing the same . And his father, now King Charles III, her eldest son,also deeply hurting her though finally reaching the throne by family tradition after her demise tarnished by an adulterous past the British and global public shall never forget as they look into his still guilt ridden eyes.She was a Mum afterall with family issues so common but just the same could not murmur a word and had to keep her tears in her heart because of the family calling making her wear that public stoic expression.
As the anti-colonial peanut gallery now is reminding us while coldly indifferent to decent space for a time of compassionate family and public mourning, her Majesty the Queen, accomplished her astounding family calling without once condemning publicly the sins which through the centuries the British Crown has done to millions in enslavement, genocide, stealing land, delegitimating indigenous cultures, and taking their natural wealth and material arts and declaring them as their own. Yet her’s was the kind of public leadership done in silence so you know what she believed not in what she said but what she did; by when she gets out of the way of things happening or by getting in the way. She could have allowed her son Prince Andrew to get away scot free of his alleged scandalous sexual behavior with a minor when instead he was by her authorization, ,stripped of most of his royal privileges with his settlement bill being paid for with or without public funds.She could have blocked now Princess Meghan from marrying Prince Harry but welcomed her into the fold and even gave her more than usual daughter in law privileges.
She could have refused to agree with Harold Wilson’s 1960 Winds of Change speech, one of her favorite Prime Ministers ,but did not. And certainly, she would not have bothered to visit the Crown’s first freed African country, Ghana the following year, let alone dance with President Kwane Nkrumah. Or why welcome President Nelson Mandela to Buckingham Palace over 30 years later?And she certainly could have denied her eldest son, now King Charles III ,permission to spend so much time focused on educational access to the disadvantaged and becoming an icon in the environmental justice movement. Actions speak louder than words and in fact ,are your words if due to policy or personal disposition you keep your views to yourself while just staying steady at the helm of your leadership job.
I am far from a royalist and am well versed enough in British colonial history to know how much over the centuries the Queen’s ancestors plundered to the highest degrees. Such grotesque crimes against humanity have allowed her and her family , both immediate and extended ,to live such splendid cloistered lives in the clutches indeed belly of such a sadistically cruel global and domestic sociopolitical and economic institution. It needs to be gotten rid of and as soon as possible. But it will take the sort of dedicated steady work ethic Queen Elizabeth ll possessed to do so. And it will demand much more than the 70 years she devoutely clocked in each day.
Do anti-monarchists and anti-colonialists in Britain and around the world have that level of stamina let alone stomach and backbone and more than that, the deepest depth of will to stand , speak , organize, and effectively act until the walls of empire come tumbling down in favor of genuine justice and peace for everyone? Or shall we merely look and comment after Queen Elizabeth ll is eulogized and buried next to her parents and sister and soon to be exhumed husband as much as we looked and commented before her demise to go spend eternity with her Jesus while doing nothing but barking criticisms, writing books, going to conferences, and making empty fancy sounding proclamations we know can’t really work?
Meanwhile as Queen Elizabeth ll enters into her well deserved eternal rest let us all no matter how we felt about her, give her credit where it is due in being such a remarkable lasting, steady leader tinkering with the system here and there. And those opposed to what she stood for, match and surpass her resilient decades of loyalty to her institution and change it to meet the calls for enduring justice and peace for all characterizing what this century is becoming all about. Even if it takes 70 plus more years to accomplish.
My deepest condolences and prayers to the family of Queen Elizabeth and to her subjects of Great Britain and those others around the world now in mourning. And may we be forever grateful for her remarkable steady, resilient leadership gifts and talents. We must more firmly employ what she taught us about what steady persistent discreet and not so discreet leadership is to bring about the needed changes to heal the wounds of injustice her beloved family institution has cruelly caused millions and bring them and their descendants the deserving enduring justice and peace only authentic wealth distributions and otherwise restorative justice long steps with reparations outcomes can render.
