The King is dead

Yesterday was the 69th anniversary of King George VI's death and Queen Elizabeth II's accession to the throne.

'The King is dead' are very powerful words. 

'The King' is much much more powerful than 'the Queen'.

Frederic Harrison said his first memory was of his father paying a very rare visit to the nursery and saying,

'Frederic, I am going to tell you something now that you will remember for the rest of your life. The King is dead.'

'I said, "Oh, papa, who will be King now?" and my father said, "We are not going to have a king. We are going to have a queen."

' I said, "So, it has come to that." '

Poor, painfully shy and very unintelligent King George VI died of lung cancer aged only 56. He was on 60 untipped Capstans a day, having been advised to take up smoking by his doctor to cure his stammer. 

Following the science did not do him any good.

I love the story Andrew Roberts tells of the King inspecting a platoon of WRAFs who had just landed in Sicily. He asked the first,

When did you arrive in Sicily?

He was told, 

This afternoon, sir.

Then he went down the rest of the line asking the same question and receiving the same answer.

The Queen is the longest reigning monarch in English (or Scottish) history by five years. She overtook Queen Victoria on 9 September 2015. 

On 23 May 2016 her reign surpassed the supposed reign of King James III, as he is known to Jacobites. He's James Stuart the "Old Pretender" to the vulgar.

As AJP Taylor once said, the monarchy always loses power when a queen is on the throne. It's true. Both the Marys, Elizabeth I and Anne. 

The present Queen chose the Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative party in 1955, 1957 and 1963.  She has less power now, though I am told has a lot of influence. I wonder what she has achieved with that influence. 

An awful lot of very bad things happened to her country in her reign, most of which the Queen's government caused or could have prevented, and a lot of very good things happened, things which her governments did not prevent.