The Queen is Dead, Long Live Andrew?? In Every Camera Angle at This Funeral.
There he was behind the casket, with the corgis, sitting front row, and not hidden far, far away behind the tall guy. Reminding me there are no benevolent seats of power.
This morning I woke up early—an endeavor I hate—so I could watch the Queen’s funeral. I did this for the same reason, more than a decade ago, I showed up to the final book release of the Twilight saga: I love a spectacle. I like to be where people are passionate about a thing, so I can stand there and watch.
Let me backup: If there is a place I can easily get to, parking is ample, and I can leave when I want—then, yes, I will be there. If it requires actual effort on my part, I will be there in spirit.
When I set my alarm last night, I did it without expectation. There were a few things I knew for sure: king sausage fingers would be there, so too the crown with the jewels, mic boom hats would be in abundance; and the whole thing would be dripping with family intrigue.
So when I meandered my way down the steps at the hateful hour of six o’clock, like a gorilla coming out of its overnight cage, knuckles dragging and all, I did not anticipate the sheer magnitude of Prince Andrew on my screen.
Every shot of the Queen’s coffin, there he was bringing up the rear. Just out in the open, breathing non-sex offender air. Instead of, say, the most logical place, behind a horse’s ass.
I know I said I had no expectations, but I guess I did have one: hide the dead weight—and I don’t mean the corpse. Make people work if they want to find him. Like Waldo. I don’t care what he wears, just as long as the casual observer has to squint, spend a rather long time eyeing up the screen, questioning their sanity and then saying to themselves in frustration, “if only the traffickers were wearing candy cane jumpsuits” and then move on with their lives.
That was my low bar of an expectation: Epstein besties do not sit or stand front row.
Such a peasant response, innit?
I took one look at Harry and said to the TV, just get Harry out of there. He needs to be home. Here, in America, with all our big feelings and guns.
Then I said, because now my kid was awake, “Meghan must be seething with rage at her proximity.” Imagine if she let a heeled pump linger just a little too long in front of that bloated admiral in “civilian” clothes and he took a tumble.
I’m not particularly enamored or intelligent about the British monarchy. On the surface, Charles and Diana were married the same year I was born, and they have been background noise for my entire life. Likewise their two sons—Prince William and I are the same age.
Believe me, I understand that symbols mean a lot to people. Especially a living, breathing one who’s been around for 70 years. My husband, a person who has a real job, and a weekend car cleaning schedule to maintain or he gets all bent out of shape, is upset with Disney World in Florida.
Earlier this summer Disney World demolished a Twilight Zone Tower of Terror sign from the highway leading into the parks. The sign had been there since the ‘90s, but one day in July—and without announcement—in came the backhoe and down came the sign. My dude got misty, but also angry. If there was a nostalgia supervisor, he’d like to have a word. Did no one else remember the glory of 1995? Did he need to call Michael Eisner himself to confirm? Because he would. But most of all, IS NOTHING SACRED??!!
So, I get it, people hold onto things that give them a place in the world. What those anchors turn out to be, who am I to judge that personal weight.
But the Disney reference is kind of an important one, right? Because as I continued to watch there were so many trumpets during the service. I truly, at one point, thought, when do they announce the three fairies? “Here we have Flora. . . and Fauna . . . and Merryweather.”
And then the chubby, feisty one in blue from Sleeping Beauty would flitter and flutter over to the sex offender and rock him into some dragon’s breath.
It all seemed, as I watched, very medieval. Which it was. Despite how much television we consume, I think we forget how extraordinary it is. Never before has the peasantry been able to see inside a church during the funeral services of a reigning British monarch. This was a first, and it gave me a moment of physical pause and mental realization: no matter how much we watch, or read, or, for that matter, scroll; we’re not like them—even if they marry commoners or biracial divorcees. We can feel our feelings and they can “touch our hearts,” but they did steal those jewels and they did put the alleged sex offender front and center and that throne is a powerful representation of exploitation and plunder in India and the Caribbean, Africa, and the states.
If the monarchy can reach commoners like never before, so too can we bite back. With words and tweets and comments live on CNN.
One British woman, for instance, said she wasn’t the monarchy’s biggest fan to the stunned silence of a CNN correspondent mining for compliments. Or, how about the Carnegie Mellon professor who wished the queen “excruciating pain” in her final moments. Which had, of all people, multi-billionaire Jeff Bezos in a tizzy, despite the fact the professor’s family had fled Nigeria.
At university, one of my literature professors was South Asian and we read many works about British imperialism. He also happened to be my academic advisor. There are two interactions with him I think about all the time.
First, he told me, I should work for the Internal Revenue Service. That’s how good of a writer he thought I was—that I should do math. It motivates me, to this day, to prove him wrong.
At our introduction, though, he looked down at my name on the paper and then back at me and said, “Elizabeth. Henry. Those are the names of kings and queens.”
A fact I’d never considered.
The two of us, sitting in the same place, at the same moment in time, had two widely different experiences. Him with an English accent through the British colonization of India and me with all of my whiteness and royal names on scholarship. Both of us trying, in our own way, to move beyond the influence of these people we didn’t know making decisions that changed the trajectories and histories of the people we did, including ourselves.
Everything is connected, no seat of power is benevolent. Most symbols, in the long run, don’t really do us any good. But there sure are a lot of distracting costumes. And too many chances for powerful sons.
CURRENTLY
📖 Reading: Everything I Get From You: How Fangirls Created The Internet as We Know It
When you’re a girl, and a fan, it is an act of patriarchal resistance (and I will die on this hill. Regardless of the fandom.)
💰 Subscribing: Amber Petty teaches you how to write for publication
Sign up for her weekly writing jobs email, and then take a free class. I love her energy and her classes.
🐭 Watching: See How They Run
Yes, I go to the movies. Like, leave my house and shit, movies. This one had a fun frame all about an Agatha Christie play. We’re big Sam Rockwell fans in this house.
🎃 Hyping: The return of McDonald’s McBoo pails this Halloween
People (myself included) are losing their minds on Insta.
👗 Listening: Breakfast at Tiffany’s soundtrack
If you’re anything like me, listening to music with words is super distracting. This score, from the 1961 movie featuring Audrey Hepburn, is a classic for a reason.
If you like reading Flop Era, please tap on that heart button. It helps other people discover this lovely mess.
You forgot about the British occupation, oppression, subjugation, and murder of the Irish People for over 800 years. Also that they still occupy a sizeable portion of Ireland, and only "let" the rest of the country go free in 1922.
The Troubles and Bloody Sunday happened under Queen Elizabeth's reign. She did not condemn any of it.
I'm of Irish descent, my great-grandparents having emigrated to the US to escape abject poverty and oppression of the British Crown in 1896, only to find more poverty and bigotry here. They ended up in Philadelphia, where my great-grandfather died of TB, only 12 years after arriving in the US. My great-grandmother died ~14 years later, poor, longing for home, having birthed 15 babies between 2 husbands, not all of whom made it past infancy.
Irish Twitter was on fire after QEII's death. They definitely weren't holding back.
To describe them as salty would be an understatement. Centuries of oppression become generational trauma. This was a release of some of that, but obviously not all.
Black and Indigenous Twitter went hard, but Irish Twitter? Straight to hell they went, and no fucks given!
Sign me up on the petition to make Harry "America's Prince." He can trademark that shit and throw it back in their faces.