My reaction to the death of Queen Elizabeth II

Hi there guys, I was going to post something about my new job but when the Queen had passed away so I'm going to interrupt my usual schedule and do a post about it. I did write a very similar piece when Prince Philip died back in 2021 and yeah, my reaction is pretty much the same. I rolled my eyes when my Latin American colleagues sent me their condolences and I'm like, what? Yes I am British but it's not like a family member has died. "But Alex she is your queen isn't she?" Well I didn't choose for her to be my queen, she is not even someone I elected into parliament. The fact is ordinary people like me really don't have much of a connection to those who are that high up the food chain but many people pretend they have a real connection - why do they do that? It's a classic one way relationship in that they pledge their undying love and loyalty to someone like the Queen but expect nothing in return. It's the same way I adore the music of Kate Bush, I was delighted when Running Up That Hill got a new lease of life this year and topped the charts but I don't pretend for a moment that I know Kate Bush, or that I have any kind of personal connection with her. Thus I don't want to appear like a nasty monster by being totally cynical when someone dies, of course those like her immediate family would be now grieving her passing but for people who have never ever met her personally and are claiming some kind of one-way connection to someone as important as the Queen, I roll my eyes and say, "you're a nobody, you're a pathetic loser, you're trying to make yourself feel important by pretending there's some sort of personal association to the Queen when there really is none." My condolences to the royal family but as for the rest of you common folk who are shedding tears, you can cry as much as you want, but your so-called connection to the Queen is still totally one-way. 

You wanna know why I am so bitchy about this? Let me give you an example: as I scrolled through Facebook today, I have a Canadian friend who once "met" the Queen - when the Queen visited Canada in 2010, my friend worked as a journalist at one of the events in Ottawa. Given that she represented an important Canadian media outlet, she was one of the few official journalists given access to the Queen at that event and even exchanged a few words with the Queen then; so fair enough, she did get to meet the Queen, even if that interaction was very brief. Then one of her friends whom we shall call Mac (not his real name) also claimed to have 'met' the Queen and so my journalist friend naturally asked Mac how he met the Queen - it turns out it was at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow when he happened to have been in the stadium as the same time as the Queen. That's when I roll my eyes: look, I attended a Michael Jackson concert in Singapore in 1993 at the National Stadium. I am glad I got to experience a Michael Jackson concert but would I go as far as to claim that I met Michael Jackson at that concert? Of course not, that claim would be utterly ridiculous. Michael Jackson never met me, the same way the Queen never met Mac at the 2014 Commonwealth Games. Nonetheless, Mac believed that watching the Queen give a speech at the Commonwealth Games was the same as 'meeting' her. Oh for crying out aloud, just think of all the famous people I could claim to have 'met' if you're setting the bar that low. by that token, I've just had dinner with Kate Bush because I was listening to 'Running Up That Hill' as I ate my fried chicken. I heard her voice, I felt her presence, it was like she was in the same room with me, right across the dining table. This is why I get extremely  cynical when ordinary folks claim they feel connected to the Queen. 

When we have real relationships with people - be with it a family member or a colleague at work - we can feel let down when they don't live up to our expectations. Gosh, I remember an incident in my old job when a colleague was supposed to have helped me with a project, but instead he got drunk at the pub and left me in the lurch. In hindsight, I shouldn't have been surprised that he did that as he had a bad reputation about always drinking very heavily even whilst at work, but at that time, I felt angry and disappointed because I had these expectations. If my expectations were lowered, I might have just rolled my eyes but I wouldn't feel as disappointed when that happened. So take someone like the Queen for example, she is never going to remember my birthday, she is never going to offer to meet me after work and then forget all about it - that's the kind of crap that would happen with real friends but when you have a one-way relationship with someone like the Queen, you don't have such expectations at all. It is incredibly sad that many ordinary folks have terrible relationships with the real people in their lives they have to live and work with - instead of trying to fix those dysfunctional relationships or seek new friends who would treat them better, they find it far easier to have one-sided relationships with people like the Queen where they will never feel let down, disappointed or frustrated. I suppose that's why my mother wanted to become a Christian because her own husband is very cold towards her and she has a dysfunctional marriage - rather than get a divorce or try to fix her marriage, she simply replaces that void in her life with a one-sided relationship with this entity she calls 'god'. It is pathetic when people resort to this but a lot of people do it. 

This sounds incredibly mean, but there are people who get treated like crap by their own families, they probably have a terrible working class job which they absolutely hate but they have no choice but to do in order to make ends meet. Thus amidst all that misery they need to take a figure like the Queen, create a one-sided relationship where they derive so much love, inspiration and comfort from the Queen whilst expecting nothing in return from the Queen. They put the Queen on a pedestal and whilst I don't doubt that sincerity of that adoration, I roll my eyes when I hear tributes like, "I will miss her terribly." Like are you for real? Let's put it the other way around, King Charles will miss her terribly because he has just lost his mother. But for a commoner who has never met the Queen to say that? Let's put this in perspective: if this commoner died today, would someone in the royal family say, "I will miss that commoner terribly?" No of course not, such is these nature of one-way relationships. That's why these one-way relationship indicate the lack of love and even basic friendship in these people's lives. Allow me to compare this to an example from one my friends: Christopher (not his real name) announced his engagement to Marie (not her real name) this summer, as Marie is from the Philippines, she returned to Manila and was supposed to travel onward to her hometown to tell her parents the good news. However when she was in Manila, she died suddenly and there was that mad scramble to try to establish how a young lady could just drop dead in a hotel room in Manila with no sign of forced entry; turns out she had a preexisting medical condition which led her to die in her sleep. Needless to say, Christopher was absolutely heartbroken - he was about to marry her and they were going to plan a wedding, now he has to plan a funeral instead, so it was incredibly tragic and sad. 

So imagine if Christopher had died instead of Marie under such circumstances, the reaction would have been the same. Marie would have been distraught and we would all be helping Marie to try to support her. Christopher and Marie loved each other, they were a young couple in love, about to get married. Now that is a real, proper two-way relationship with a lot of love. People like Christopher and Marie are lucky in having such relationships in their lives, compared to the losers who are so lonely and unloved that they have to resort to having these one-way relationships to fill that void in their lives. I've read quite a lot of pieces in the news of people remembering the moments they have met the Queen - such as that of a repairman in Scotland who was once summoned to Balmoral Castle to do some work and ran into the Queen for a few moments. And I'm like, great if that's the height of your achievement, ie. running into someone famous whilst doing a lowly paid job, then you ought to think about doing more with your life. But let me share with you another reason why people like these one-way relationships: even when Christopher and Marie were together, they had many good times but I knew there were times when Christopher did things to annoy Marie and vice versa. Imagine if you actually got to meet the Queen, what are the chances she would like you? Or that you could impress her? This great woman has met presidents, popes and prime ministers, you're just a nobody compared to all the people she has met - from Nelson Mandela to Winston Churchill to Barrack Obama she has met them all. No, she would probably be polite but deep down inside, you know you're never going to make an impression on her and that she would just dismiss you as a commoner. 

But if you continue with this one-way relationship with the Queen without never actually having met her, then there would be no judgment from her at all. That way you can imagine she actually doesn't mind all your faults when really, if she actually met you, she might instantly start judging you for how common, uncouth, poor and unsophisticated you are compared to the aristocratic elites she tends to spend her time with. Thus a one-way relationship might be a lot forgiving and pleasant if it is merely there to fill a gap, a void in one's life - when you actually get put in a position to meet someone important in real life, then holy shit a lot can go wrong. I briefly watched one of the ceremonies for the proclamation of King Charles' ascent to the throne on the BBC and I rolled my eyes in disapproval when one of the men who was in charge of the ceremonial duties wore inappropriate shirt to the event. I tutted, shook my head and said out aloud, "common, common, common, you're just common. Didn't anyone inspect what the hell you were wearing before they started the ceremonies? Were you actually hoping that no one would notice your mistake? Or are you totally oblivious to how common you come across?" And that's me passing judgment on someone who was clueless about the rules of decorum when it came to what was appropriate to wear for such a formal occasion. Either he was oblivious to the rules (which meant that he didn't belong in the right social circles, making him a commoner) or he was too poor to buy the right kind of shirt for the occasion (which again, by default, meant that he was too poor to belong to the right social circles, making him a commoner). Nonetheless, be it ignorance or poverty - it was still a huge social faux pas. I'm not even that posh or aristocratic, just an intelligent man who pays careful attention to detail when it comes to following the rules. 

It is rather sad and pathetic when people get extremely defensive over how huge an impact meeting a member of the royal family was - I remember this story when some commoner met Prince William for a brief moment, royals like Prince Williams are often visiting places like schools, universities, hospitals, factories etc and shaking hands with the commoners. So this person did have a fleeting exchange with Prince William and got to shake the Prince's hand for about two seconds - that was the highlight of his sad, pathetic life. Oh dear. This loser has achieved so little in his life that touching the hand of Prince William for a brief moment was the highlight of his life - I don't doubt that this encounter did leave this commoner with a very deep impression, so deep that it was the highlight of his entire life. On the other hand, Prince William has toured so many places like that he would have trouble remember what he did that year, never mind the actual faces of the people he had met. His personal assistant would simply say, "your highness, I'm afraid we have a rather early start today because we have to drive about two hours to visit a new power station in the Midlands, then thankfully we have a decent break for lunch but then we have to get back to London after that because you're due to meet the new French ambassador and his wife at a special reception in the French embassy in South Kensington later that afternoon and then this evening at 8:30 pm, you have that interview with BBC Radio 4, but don't worry about it Sir, it will be all fairly standard. I'll brief you about that later before we meet the Radio 4 team." So when someone like Prince William shakes your hand, he really doesn't care who you are, he isn't emotionally invested in that interaction at all even if that handshake may have been the highlight of your life and thus that is why I am rolling my eyes rather cynically. 

As for myself, well, I don't really have much of a reaction to it - I don't dislike the Queen, but I'm not exactly a massive fan of hers either. I kinda just shrugged my shoulders when I realized that she was dying as so many of my friends were talking about it on social media. I thought, didn't she just meet the new prime minister Liz Truss a few days ago? She's 96, she has had numerous health issues over the years so I wasn't surprised when she passed away. Contrast that to when Marie passed away in her mid-20s with no warning, now that took us all by shock and we had to go through that whole process of trying to get our heads around the fact that Marie is gone. But for the Queen, I suppose most of us knew at the back of our heads that her death was imminent, it was just a question of when with a woman of that age. I'm not being morbid or insensitive, it's just a function of being practical. In the last few years, I have unfortunately had to see a few friends younger than me die in their 20s and 30s; firstly, it makes me realize that I'm old when friends younger than me are passing away. Secondly, I do make that vital distinction between an old person passing away peacefully after having led a very good life and a young person passing away suddenly when they still have so much ahead of them - the circumstances are so different and I reserve my sadness for the latter. I don't have much reaction either to our new King, after all King Charles has been around all my life, it's not like he's some kind of new leader we have yet to get to know. There will be a sense of novelty when we see new currency issued with his face on it but apart from that, I'm just so focused on my new job this week that I didn't really react to this event. I don't want you to think the whole country has dropped everything has we're now mourning, some of us are quite busy with our lives; I've been so busy with work. 

So that's it from me on the passing of the Queen. I'm afraid the tone of this piece was indeed rather bitchy but I'm sure some of you might be sick and tired of reading tributes to the Queen and whilst her passing marks the end of an era and is historically significant, it is often the public reaction by these common folk who make my eyes roll. I'm sure my post has been insensitive, bitchy and offensive but I think my regular readers would have expected nothing less from me. So then, what do you think? What are you feelings on the passing of the Queen? And what do you think of the public reaction here in the UK as well as around the world?  As always guys, please leave a comment below and many thanks for reading.