Queen elizabeth ii

Their ranks may be dwindling, but Mr. and Mrs. Meghan Markle do have a few key supporters left on the other side of the Pond. What their fabulously rehearsed "fly-on-the-wall" documentary set in stone is who was gone for good: Wills and Kate. The poor Waleses were absolutely slandered. In fact, the only realistic thing about the whole show was the visceral hatred the Sussexes had for the pair. Harry despises his big brother almost as much as Jeremy Clarkson hates Meghan, and would certainly see him strung up in the streets, but of course, you can’t print that in Britain. Team Windsor may be pretty strong in numbers, but the "we-just-want-to-be-normal-but-don’t-you-dare-forget-the-title" team do have two major players: the Princesses of York.

Ladies and gentlemen, that’s a wrap. The last leg of Meghan and Harry’s docuseries aired Thursday, where we learned about institutionalized gaslighting, how terrified Harry is of big, bad Prince William and what Beyoncé thinks about the whole saga, obviously. The final three episodes, admittedly, were the bombshell some hoped for. Harry and Meghan’s usual approach of accusing nameless figures of terrible acts went out the window. Prince William was the villain, King Charles didn’t come off much better. Hell, they even threw in some sly digs at the late Queen. For many Brits, this is a cardinal sin. Apparently, we're done. All over. H tells us that finally: it’s time to move on.

“The Queen is dead, boys, and it’s so lonely on a limb.” So the ever-provocative Morrissey sang on the title track of the Smiths’ 1986 album. At the time, his wishes were regarded as little more than republican throat-clearing, shot through with satirical wit. In the same song, he imagined an unlikely encounter with the Queen, who remarks caustically, “Eh, I know you, and you cannot sing.” Some of his detractors might agree. But now, thirty-six years on, the Queen really is dead. Queen Elizabeth II, the longest-reigning monarch in British history, died on September 8, 2022 at the age of ninety-six. The second Elizabethan age — one that surpassed the first for both achievement and longevity — has come to an end.

As Alexander Larman writes, the passage of the Queen is not a tragedy. No life lived so well, so dutifully, and with such faith in so many things now lost to us can be considered a tragedy. But it is nonetheless very sad, even for those of us in America — a nation she loved in so many ways. Her death seems like another blow to another important institution of the West, undermined in recent decades by boomer proclivities and millennial narcissism, and likely to break into a thousand pieces in the absence of the old-world values Elizabeth represented. What is more tragic, and more offensive, is the degree to which the Queen's passing has been met by historical ignorance from the anti-Western left and its attendant useful idiots on the decadence-obsessed right.