Well, you know what they say.
Never let a tragedy go to waste.
To be honest for the last couple years I’ve been thinking to myself “You know, I should
pre-make a video about Lizzie, just in case” but two things always stopped me.
First, I thought for sure she’d be writing a letter to herself in 2026 in congratulations
of her hundredth birthday.
And second, it’s really difficult to talk about Queen Elizabeth II as a person, and
that’s by design.
This woman spent a lifetime perfecting the art of living in the press, being as likeable
as possible while saying nothing.
So why make this video?
I mean other than a belated attempt at getting views, of course.
Well I’m not here to indulge in every tabloid headline of the last 96 years, that might
be interesting, but it would also take months of reading and hours of video.
I want to know: what it was like to live as the most prominent of the royals, what exactly
did she do, and most of all, what changed in both the role of the British monarchy and
Britain itself in the seven decades since she took the throne.
So strap in, let’s do some history.
[intro]
This video was brought to you by Masterworks.
More about them when you least expect it
Our dear Queen Elizabeth was born in 1926 to about the usual amount of fanfare for a
royal baby, which is to say she appeared on the cover of Time magazine by the time she
was three, but y’know I was Time’s 2006 person of the year, so Rackam one, Queen zero.
She wasn’t even supposed to be queen really.
The king at the time, known to Elizabeth as “Grandpa England” died in 1936 and left
the kingdom to her uncle Edward VIII.
But that turned out to be a problem.
Now, the British Monarchy has been impotent for longer than you might realize.
America likes to make a fuss about how the founding fathers rejected the tyranny of King
George III, but the last monarch to say no to literally anything passed by parliament
was Queen Anne in 1708.
However, as the King of the United Kingdom, you still have three basic jobs, and one of
these did not fly for King Edward.
Number One!
Say yes to whatever parliament does.
Open their sessions, approve all their laws, appoint whoever they tell you to be Prime
Minister.
Number Two!
Socialize with world leaders.
Don’t actually do any serious business with them, that’s what ambassadors are for, just
be kind of a… cultural ambassador, show them around Buckingham Palace and tell them
about what a swell place Britain is.
Number Three!
Lead the Church of England.
That may sound like a lot of responsibility, but in reality it’s a lot like job number
one, there’s a couple of guys in the house of lords who’ll tell you who you’re supposed
to appoint to different jobs.
The only difference is that you’ve got to be Anglican Christian, go to church every
now and then, don’t do any of the big no-nos.
Well in 1936 one of the big no-nos was divorce.
The Church of England, which was specifically created so that one guy could get out of his
marriage, was not big on the idea of second marriages in 1936, so when the king wanted
to marry an American commoner on her third marriage, he was not deemed kingly material
and pressured to abdicate.
Anyway that’s how Elizabeth’s dad gets to be king, so we’re in the middle of the
Great Depression, fascism starts to catch on in Europe, then Charlie Chaplin and Cursed
Mario take over Poland and we’ve got World War Two.
This is around the time Elizabeth starts addressing the public, went on her first radio broadcast
in 1940 to lift the nation’s spirits “We are trying to do all we can to help our gallant
sailors, soldiers, and airmen.
And we are trying, too, to bear our own share of the danger and sadness of war” Chin up,
God’s on our side and other generic well-wishes, you know the sort.
Weirdly, it’s probably her time as a princess that we’ve got the most personal insight
on, since her former nanny wrote a book about working with the royal family in 1950, but
even then it’s probably nothing you haven’t heard already.
Not too shocking too imagine that Elizabeth II was an upstanding young girl who struggled
with having her life publicly scrutinized.
As a matter of fact, so not a fan of having her life publicly scrutinized was the Queen
that when the book came out, the Royal Family ostracized the author for the rest of her
life.
The woman actually bought a house right outside of Balmoral Castle so that the royal family
would have to drive right past her front door; they didn’t call when her husband died or
when she tried to kill herself, she half-raised two girls and they didn’t even send a wreath
to her funeral.
But on the bright side, that’s how we got all the hot gos about Elizabeth’s husband!
I realize it’s difficult to picture a fairy-tale romance looking at this but it’s actually
kind of a sweet story.
They liked each other for a really long time but y’know in typical almost Disney-esque
fashion you musn’t so much as hint that you might be flirting with someone as a royal
teenager so they had a song that was special to them that they’d request at every party
they both attended and sort of give each other a knowing look at the ball while dancing with
somebody else.
Eventually the proper arrangements were made and they were married in an exquisite wedding
ceremony in 1947 and then in 1953, after inheriting the throne and becoming Time’s person of
the year Elizabeth was crowned in a magnificent coronation ceremony that cost roughly $50
million dollars in today’s money.
But as luck would have it she received a rather generous windfall after the death of her father.
At the time of her death, Elizabeth was worth something like 500 million dollars, which
is nothing to sneeze at but does put a few hundred of her subjects ahead of her in terms
of wealth, until you realize that’s just her personal portfolio.
The Crown Estate, which she didn’t own directly and could never sell, is according to CBS
news, worth over 34 billion.
And, uh, that number’s only getting bigger.
There’s real estate and what have you, but then you’ve also got The Royal Collection,
which has something like 7,000 paintings, 30,000 watercolors, 500,000 prints.
Combine that with the Crown Jewels, you’re looking at about 10 billion pounds right there.
Now those aren’t just keepsakes; they’re working to keep the Crown’s money safe.
13 trillion’s been wiped from the stock market this year, and inflation’s sitting
around 10%, but how much do you think this Warhol is worth compared to when they bought
it in 2012?
The art market be crazy.
Contemporary art has outpaced even the S&P 500 by more than double for the last 26 years.
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There’s a quote by Frederick the Great of Prussia that I think describes what makes
Elizabeth stand out in my mind, and that’s the idea that the king, or in this case queen,
is the first servant of the state.
Now Frederick personally led a tiny kingdom through the bloodiest war of a century and
Elizabeth is best known for coddling fifteen generations of corgis, but even before taking
the throne, the way she talked about herself, or I suppose the way she and her speech writers
came up with to talk about herself, was with an emphasis on service, and on her platinum
jubilee this very year it was the same.
The opportunities to serve your people as a ceremonial head of state are an awful lot
smaller than as the head of government, but it seems like Lizzie was always on the lookout.
Even as a teenager she was putting on events to raise money for new military uniforms during
the war, then as queen she found a way to play a part in international relations, visiting
all kinds of places no British monarch had ever gone before - Australia, New Zealand,
China, Yugoslavia.
The Canadian Prime minister even credited her with having a behind the scenes role in
the ending of apartheid?
And who can forget her all-important role hosting people from around the world at her
home?
Like that time she hid in a bush to avoid the dictator of Romania, or the time some
random dude showed up in her bedroom one morning.
Nowadays her whole family seems to have one philanthropic pet project or another.
Of course there is that one grandson… we’ll get to him.
The end result is that Elizabeth was stupidly popular, definitely more popular than the
monarchy itself.
When Rhodesia declared independence in 1965, they refused to be part of the commonwealth…
but made their own monarchy just so that Elizabeth could be their queen.
Of course she wasn’t completely without controversy - for one thing, she came to the
throne with a lot of colonies, there’s a chunk of people out there who are decidedly
not grieving.
I personally struggle to feel too embittered towards a figurehead as opposed to someone
who affected real policy, but it’s a bit generous to say please direct only your pride
and well-wishes for Britain to the monarchy and reserve any and all sour feelings for
the politicians, if you’re the face of the British Empire in 1952 I guess you also get
some of the baggage that comes with that.
But speaking of decolonization, did you know that in 1956 as the British Empire was breaking
apart and this weird nebulous thing called the commonwealth was taking shape, there were
talks about France joining the commonwealth?
That didn’t go anywhere, but holy crap imagine France having a British head of state.
So anyway, all that travelling the world and rubbing elbows pretty much accounts for Elizabeth’s
life in the 50s, and the 60s, and then the 70s, and also the 80s.
By the time the 80s came around, there was already this sort of frenzied interest in
the royal family that effectively turned their lives into an international soap opera - every
piece of news about them was so secretive and based in rumour anyway that it became
very easy and very profitable to just make stuff up.
And then in the 90s some bad stuff actually did start happening and the world was ready
to eat it up.
A lot of it was just bad timing – in ‘92 her daughter got a divorce, part of Windsor
Castle caught on fire, Prince Charles and Diana got divorced, but there was the larger
issue - for the queen, anyway – that the British public were starting to ask questions
about the monarchy in larger numbers.
Questions like: Does the work that she does justify her insane wealth?
Even if it does, does the job have to be hereditary?
I mean the Carnegies and the Rockefellers rubbed elbows and got into philanthropy, but
the US didn’t enshrine them in the constitution for it.
The result came to be that their funding was reduced and Elizabeth would for the first
time have to pay an income tax.
Guess it’s true what they say about death and taxes.
Then of course there was Diana’s death, which spawned a whole set of conspiracy theories.
Other than that, though, same old same old.
More corgis.
So many corgis.
Jumped out of a helicopter in 2012, met Paddington Bear!
Things for the monarchy were back on track… for a while.
Support seems to have peaked around 2011 and been dropping recently, even before her untimely
end.
Maybe that has something to do with Harry and Meghan disowning themselves to live in
California, or with the victim of sex-trafficking who accused Jeffrey Epstein’s good friend
Prince Andrew of sexually assaulting her.
Could be.
It’s still about two-thirds of the British who’d rather keep the monarchy, and I mean
at this point the royal family are basically state-sponsored Kardashians, so if they bring
in more money to the UK than it costs to keep them around I say why not, but right now support
among young people is at just about an all time low, only 33% in ages 18-24.
Maybe King Charles is really gonna put on the charm and knock their socks off, but I
don’t know.
Call me rash, but I wouldn’t be too surprised if after a thousand years we were watching
the monarchy’s final decades.
Elizabeth felt like the world’s grandma, I’m not so sure about the rest of them.
Or they could just pick a new family by lottery every time the monarch dies, that would be
way more fun!