Tanya Gold is a freelance journalist. This was not the funeral of the head of state of a middle power who had presided over managed decline since 1952: your guest list said so. It was something older, more magical and wild. Crowned heads and presidents of republics arrived by coach from the Royal Hospital in Chelsea — not actually west London, as some media outlets said, but let it go — to bid farewell to the only real remnant of the sacred monarchy: the Queen of the Upper Throne in the world. (Only Joe Biden seemed exempt from the wacky coach trip: American exceptionalism meets British exceptionalism. But America was British. So was France, but that was a long time ago, even by Windsor clocks). It was a spectacle: a theater of awe, with the simple first and then the quality. Elizabeth II was probably the last person who really believed in holy monarchy, and that’s why she was good at it: being arrogant or spoiled is not the same thing as thinking you’re holy. It is an idea we mourned, not a woman, and I suspect that those who say this are proving things in Britain wrong on the world stage: I saw pity and nostalgia, as much as awe. Excellence flowed with her like water. It’s exquisite, but it’s not real. The magnificence was expressly Imperial: the comedy. Obviously it’s gotten bigger, not smaller, since we were actually ruling an empire, but that makes sense. The Windsors are very adept at marketing. I imagine the young coffins were chosen for their wonderfully expressive faces: you could imagine them at Passchendaele or Agincourt. The armed forces practice all week, but it’s easy to capture your own capital. Absurd suits came out of dark closets and dusted off because, under the modern British state, that’s what still exists: the preachers. the drummers; the cavalry; the Duke of Norfolk in his bespectacled hat, exercising the rarest kind of English eccentricity. He looked too comfortable to be absurd, but the British aristocracy is the most resilient elite on earth, and he knows it. Age is what we now offer, and so we have offered the most exciting medicine available to any declining country: fashionable nationalism and a solid pedigree. In tribute, the BBC turned its back on journalism altogether and offered a soothing hum of hagiographic impulse, like harp music, but less melodic. I hope the people who have been calling them dangerous revolutionaries since the Brexit vote in 2016 — the BBC warned of the dangers of Brexit too much for Leavers’ comfort — will shut up. If you’re cynical, it all looked like a huge appeal to keep the license fee – the method by which it’s funded – at its current level. There was no detail beyond the whimsical and the sentimental: mention of the family’s vast wealth or mistakes—or any hard data of any kind—would be considered inappropriate. It’s strange: we bury her as a queen, but treat her as a woman in our living room. So they thought of the qualities of her smile. she spoke of her love of Scrabble and the pleasure she took in watching horses give birth, which I wish I had known more about, to be fair. reported winning awards for handling dog guns; allowed a colleague to call her “Queen of the World” without comment. Why would they do it? Their own presenter called the funeral “the biggest event to happen in the UK for decades”. Is he sure? We heard from some of the last people to attend the sunbed at Westminster Hall after waiting in line. Capitalized by popular consensus, The Queue was a gilded piece of masochism and spin: if you stayed out in the cold all night, you might get The Presence. A ticket could have been voted, but there would have been no pain. (Final numbers of those treated by The Queue have not yet been released. Whatever they are, it will be considered worthwhile). Mr. and Mrs. Barlow stood on a page of history, as if they were a piece of a puzzle waiting to be assembled. She took the opportunity to say that it was the best thing that had ever happened to her, including having children. A royal fan from Bristol told a tabloid newspaper that the Queen was always “happy”. But that’s what myth does: it forces you into other people’s desires and makes you unfamiliar with yourself. One child wondered if the Queen would see her on TV from heaven. A tweet from Paddington Bear – a fictional refugee – thanking the Queen “for everything” received 1 million likes. “I’m in London, but I feel like I’m in a completely different place,” said one woman, and she was right: she was. At funerals like this it’s easy to tell the people who love from the people who love power. It was clear at Margaret Thatcher’s funeral in St Paul’s Cathedral: only her daughter Carol and her press secretary Bernard Ingham seemed to care. The rest happy, without even bothering to hide their smile. It was the same here: the ladies of her household, dressed very much like her, as if looking like a mirror, which is touching—stern broad-brimmed hats, enormous purses—looked sad, but they knew Elizabeth Mountbatten as well as Elizabeth Regina. Prime Minister Elizabeth Truss smiled as she entered the cathedral – all the other prime ministers had preceded her. Then he read the lesson, mentioning God as you would an official he had not yet met, but still could, if there was room in the calendar. No one spoke well—the Archbishop of Canterbury’s sermon was barely prosaic—but that suited the occasion: no one would dare grace the funeral of a queen with anything but platitudes. This can be taken as a demonstration. Thus poetry remained in its appointed corner. Instead, there was choral music, which best expresses the wishes of monarchs and is best sung by young children, which is no accident. (One boy looked like a veteran: he was 12 at the most). People who like omens were also pleased: there was a spider on the queen’s coffin, which climbed over the king’s card: “With love and devoted memory.” Spiders are builders, and so was Charles III. The Imperial State Crown is removed from the coffin at the Committal Service for Queen Elizabeth II | Pool photo by Jonathan Brady/Getty Images Part of the fun is watching the family cope: it’s essentially a sadistic national sport played with bullets, not balls. If you turn people into gods, then what? It has successive cliff hangers: “Succession”, but the actors really suffer and sometimes die. Elizabeth II was loved because she seemed to survive it morally: will Charles III? He looked miserable, but his wife, the new queen, looked worse: she never pursued it when she flirted with Charles Windsor at polo matches in the 1970s. She looked around in fright, as if a crown was literally falling on her head at that moment. It wouldn’t feel so weird, not here. The Duke of Sussex was in the second row behind his father, radiating fury. What happens to the second sons? The Duke of York seemed to be sobbing at his teddy bears, which must be arranged in a certain way, like a company of soldiers, for eleven nights now. Part of the cruelty of monarchy is that: primogeniture, or winner takes all. At Buckingham Palace the maids stepped out in their flat shoes to see the coffin pass: later, at Windsor, the groomsmen did the same in black armbands. At Wellington Arch, as the Queen was seen at Windsor, it appeared that the King was the first to leave his salute. and the rest fell exhausted, like a deck of cards to be thrown away. On the way to Windsor, seeing the state hearse – a beautiful Jaguar Land Rover machine – people were holding their iPhones to make bad movies. I wish they didn’t. From a distance it looked like they were doing Hitler salutes in a car. But they finally gave way and were replaced by the surviving corgis, who seemed no more confused than most humans. The service at Windsor was shorter and more reserved: until the evening, when there is a private service for the family, she can, for a while, be a woman again. But for the rest of us Elizabeth II, like Thorin Oakenshield, passed into legend. This is the job.
