The Queen's jubilant triumph over disasters of the past

National Post, 05 June 2022

The Platinum Jubilee has consigned the Ruby Jubilee's annus horribilis to history

Seventy years as sovereign!

Victoria served 64 years. Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, 66 years as consort and then dowager. Elizabeth II at 70 — the Typhoons in the flypast at Buckingham Palace configured themselves into that number — is simply splendid.

My colleague William Watson ably showed why Westminster constitutional monarchy is, at the moment, the world’s superior governing arrangement. I would go further, saying that Canada’s constitutional monarchy is better even than that of the United Kingdom. A non-resident sovereign is maximally effective in deflating the conceit of those who would personify the state, whether it be the vainglorious American presidency or simply pretentious prime ministers here.

A jubilee though is about a person more than the institution. The latter does not have jubilees; it just endures — until it doesn’t, as the other great dynastic houses of Europe have discovered.

The Queen might think of her Platinum Jubilee as the definitive answer to, and triumph over, the disaster of her Ruby Jubilee in 1992.

It was at the Guildhall luncheon for the Ruby Jubilee that Her Majesty delivered the annus horribilis address, lamenting a year in which three of her four children saw their marriages dissolve, Windsor Castle was ravaged by fire, and Andrew Morton’s book Diana: Her True Story marked the opening of a frontal assault on the Royal Family by Diana and her courtiers.

Thirty years on, and the Queen now happily lives full-time at her beloved Windsor, though now as a widow without the companionship of the late Duke of Edinburgh. Her children have, in their old age, finally and belatedly, grown up. The one who refused to do so, Andrew, is now princeps non grata, having traded in the constrained but comfortable life of the second son for the creepy world of Jeffrey Epstein and Bill Clinton. No one misses him.

The next generation’s second son, Prince Harry, brought his second-tier Hollywood actress to London only to follow her back to Hollywood. The Queen, having learned from the Diana debacle, dispatched Harry and Meghan at the earliest opportunity. No one misses them either.

Serenity reigns on all fronts. Prince Charles formally proved last month that he could read the Queen’s Speech without interposing his own words, an apt metaphor for what will be required of him as king. He has finally, and again belatedly, come to realize that his opinions, whether brilliant or barmy, are to be kept to himself. No one will miss them.

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