The Daily Beast’s royal coverage is being partially outsourced these days. They’ve brought in some different people to talk more seriously about what’s going down in the House of Windsor. Late Friday night, the Daily Beast published a lengthy piece by Clive Irving, author of The Last Queen: Elizabeth II’s Seventy Year Battle to Save the House of Windsor. Irving’s thesis is that the Queen’s recent health issues reveal “how much the future of the shaky edifice of the House of Windsor still rests on the shoulders of the queen alone.” Meaning, in a sense, it’s become all about the 95-year-old Queen and how she’s clinging to her throne with both hands. Irving comes right out and says that this is because she’s loathe to hand anything over to Prince Charles:

… Perhaps mother, like many others, knows the truth, that although Charles was commendably early in warning of the consequences of climate change his deeds don’t match his words. Indeed, the queen’s determination to keep Charles in the wings for as long as possible while she remains center stage suggests that she fears that he falls well short of representing the kind of invigorating generational change the monarchy will need to prove equal to the stresses of the 21st century.

Also, she cannot be amused by the fact that some palace insiders have made clear that Charles intends, on becoming king, to make Camilla his queen, rather than princess consort, as his mother prefers.

There is a sense, though, that the queen’s determination to never let up on being a highly visible head of state is not just about the shortcomings of the Prince of Wales. It must have been galling to her, reading the empty platitudes of the speech handed to her as she opened parliament, that the body she was obliged to acknowledge as “my government” was that led by Boris Johnson, which is setting records for its mendacity and serial incompetence.

The queen has every reason to have developed an après moi, le deluge complex. At the end of this historic reign she can look back on the many pressures that have changed her nation in lasting ways—political, cultural, social and economic. She has not always found it easy to adapt, and has made mistakes of tone in responding to them. But now she appears to be the one stable and steady hand that helps the country to cohere.

[From The Daily Beast]

“Après moi, le deluge” means “after me, the flood,” meaning all hell will break loose once she’s gone but she’ll be gone so she doesn’t actually care. Which, again, reminds me of just how the monarchy is essentially a different animal altogether when she passes – it will still exist, just in a smaller, more parochial form. The Queen isn’t actually concerned about what happens after her, nor does she want to be around for the reign of her firstborn son, the son she never thought was adequate for the task. A good manager knows when to hand things over to their replacement, and a good manager knows how to delegate as well. The Queen has failed at those two fundamental managerial tasks because she’s been told all her life that she should rule until she dies.

Also, she loves stuff like this:

In Opinion

"When Queen Elizabeth dies, it’s doubtful that Prince Charles or Prince William, the next two in line to sit on the British throne, will ever fill her royal slippers. She may be the world’s last global monarch," Serge Schmemann writes.

— The New York Times (@nytimes) October 23, 2021

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.