Who would want to die as British monarch? King George V was euthanised with lethal doses of morphine and cocaine in 1936 so that he would pass before the midnight newspaper print deadline. 24 hour news spared the Queen from the lethal injection, yet in some ways that fate would’ve been merciful. 

There was something deeply inhumane about the protracted media frenzy surrounding the Queen’s death. From the macabre murmurings around parliament in the morning to having close-up analysis of glum-looking royals as they drove through the gates of Balmoral in the afternoon to the final announcement of her death in the evening, the entire spectacle was like watching a goldfish flounder and drown in a murky fish bowl. 

I doubt the Queen was aware of the entire eerie charade and I hope for her sake she wasn’t. Seeing people wildly speculate about one’s health on national television or attribute one’s illness to some inane family dispute as you lay your last hours on your deathbed would be tragically violating for anyone. 

And so the Queen ended her reign just as she began it: on television. 

There is an irony here: the mediatization of monarchy that defined the Queen’s reign was a product of her own creation. Against Winston Churchill’s explicit advice, she allowed her coronation in 1953 to be televised. It became a watershed moment, with many people having their first ever experience with television. This was still in an era before live TV and tape recordings of the event had to be raced across the Atlantic to Canada with the assistance of RAF jet bombers. 

Against Churchill’s advice, she allowed her coronation to be televised 

The choice to televise her coronation was the defining decision of her life. It spawned the media monster which torments the royal family, but equally, the new intimacy the Queen had with the public made the monarchy the unshakably popular institution that it was under her reign. 

From her first radio broadcast during the second world war to her afternoon tea with Paddington Bear, the Queen has had a rare knack for public charm. And she, perhaps more than any public figure of the 20th century, understood that the medium is the message, eagerly embracing new technology to cultivate her relationship with the public. 

The great irony of the Elizabethan monarchy is that, just as us British subjects are ruled over by these vestiges of classist and imperial tradition, most of the royal family is tyrannised by modern media. No family is more surveilled, gossiped about, or scrutinised.

And there’s no clear way out of this human zoo either. Those that have tried have only found themselves placed under an even larger microscope. First Diana, pursued to her death by paparazzi, and now Meghan and Harry.

The Queen was made for her role in this public drama. Personable, charming and possessing a dry British wit, she was the perfect protagonist for the Windsors. But Charles is different. Unlike his mother, the limelight will not suit a gaffe-prone and interventionist king. He’s got opinions, causes, interests. He doesn’t just watch from the sidelines. 

And so Elizabeth II’s greatest achievement was also her greatest failure. She radically reshaped the monarchy to suit her exceptional strengths, but in doing so she has created a system which is reliant on an exceptional monarch.