Elizabeth II, The Queen

Change has come today

Many tributes shall be written about the woman born Elizabeth Alexandra Mary who became Queen Elizabeth II, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the other Commonwealth realms.

In a reign that spanned 7 decades and 7 months, many of us have known no other monarch, our anthem asked God to save the Queen, our coinage and postage stamps a side relief of her face through the times of her reign, our pound notes with her face beaming up at us, she represented constancy and stability that seemed would never end.

Records for the record

Her sense of duty continued to the very end even in her ever-increasing frailty, she did not flinch as other monarchs in continental Europe abdicated for their heirs in Spain, the Netherlands, and in Belgium. She represented an old-fashioned call to service and handling of responsibility that is rarely seen in leadership today.

It is with sadness that we mourn the passing of the longest-lived and longest reigning British monarch amongst other superlative records to list, the defining of the Second Elizabethan Age might well rival in consequence the First Elizabethan Age for how England changed and became a world power.

She becomes he

Maybe, there are times she should have intervened, but let history judge that, she lived above the fray of politics, asked 15 Prime Ministers to form a government and in her longevity gave perspective to the many who took office that their time was just a fraction in the consequential length of her reign.

Her death might well unite this divided nation in grief, but the machinations of her sometimes-calumnious governments has left the country in no greater shape than when she ascended the throne with the future looking quite bleak for citizenry and subjects, but things will turn, I believe.

As we usher in the reign of Charles III, we hope that it brings a new sense of hope and encouragement. The Queen has joined her ancestors and may she find eternal rest with the memory of her walk in life never fading.

Long Live the King. In an age where pronouns matter, she becomes he, her becomes his, and her becomes him, and the House of Windsor endures. May the reign of King Charles III and his Queen Consort, Camilla usher new prosperity in our nation. God Save the King.

A welcome but unprincely separation

A Prince unworthy

Obviously, one is saddened by the fact that the seeming royal romance between Prince William and Kate Middleton has come to an end.

Seeing the Prince leave a night club at 3:00AM in morning must have been instructive of the fact that the young man is more a man about town than one who really wants to "settle down" and become responsible to use the Nigerian euphemism of coercion to get married.

In these times, there are very few who do get married in their early 20s and the Prince being 24 means that he probably does not think he has played the field enough to accommodate the boring and restraining prospect of marital bliss.

From the reports emanating from anonymous close friends, unnamed palace sources and deluded royal experts, Prince William had been advised to make serious considerations about taking the relationship to a decent conclusion or aborting the affair so as not to have kept the young lady of 25 from prospects that would have been more willing and more appreciative of her.

In fact, this seems to the mirror the case of the Duchess of Cornwall who Prince Charles did not offer a proposal that she went on to marry another man - Anthony Parker Bowles; who now has the accolade of having given life and wife for king and country.

Aristocratic snobbery

Beyond this is the unsightly stuffiness of aristocracy with an inbred culture that is resistant to modern ways and the changing times or what might call the infiltration of the middle classes.

Kate Middleton is the daughter of self-made millionaires whose ancestry is not particularly distinguished and whose mother was once an air stewardess.

This should really have no bearing on the merits of Kate as an individual and partner who being quite well educated as a peer of the Prince, has been not only a close friend but confidant of the Prince throughout university.

However, it is generally the unspoken rule amongst aristocrats that only females in line for offices of state need be educated in formal settings, else, everyone else goes to finishing school learning to be supportive of their future husbands of blue blood in being baby-making machines providing heirs to keep the family name and titles extant and playing hostess to burnish the aristocratic mien of that lineage.

That is the career path of any lady who marries into aristocracy; to adopt any other focus like Diana, Princess of Wales did beyond mother and glamour clothes-horse was to be extending oneself into areas too cerebral for their calling.

This would have been the fate waiting to befall Kate Middleton and in some ways she has mercifully been delivered from that situation.

A stupid brood of idiots

What grates the more is the cretins who only become something by birth rather than by achievement that call themselves friends of the Prince who when Kate made an appearance whispered - Doors to manual - alluding to her mother's old profession as an air hostess; that the Prince could not defend the honour and integrity of his beau by outlawing such talk simply goes to show that Kate is better off with another man.

Maybe in 20 or 30 years time, after almost definitely an unsuitable bride is found to fulfill the aristocratic wife role of providing heirs and hospitality, Kate and William might end up in a Charles and Camilla encore; there is no telling, with royalty; history always seems to repeat itself again and again.

Sometimes, it takes a man time to really develop real respect for the lady who really matters to him. Meanwhile, I wish Kate Middleton well in all she puts her hand to do.