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I realise she has just died and it's unbecoming to do anything but laud the person, but this is just moral obsequiousness. She claims fealty by right of blood,

I realise she has just died and it's unbecoming to do anything but laud the person, but this is just moral obsequiousness. She claims fealty by right of blood, reigned as the crown of an extraordinarily cruel empire, and frequently interceded in the democratic government of Britain to protect her private interests.

origin_path 4y ago
Given that most empires in history were pretty darn cruel, you might have to justify the idea that the British Empire was extraordinarily cruel, especially given that the Queen only reigned in its last years and that many of the former members of the Empire chose to stay on as part of the Commonwealth. Also the British Empire is unique (AFAIK?) in having wound itself up more or less peacefully at the end, rather than needing to be destroyed by a massive rebellion or war - the usual way empires usually die (well, except for the pesky Americas of course... but that was a bit before Liz's time!)
- samstave 4y ago
  - origin_path 4y ago
    The Queen was not responsible for the acts of her children once they became adults, whatever they may be, no more than any mother is. As for comments about what she was like in private, who can really say? But perhaps more to the point - does it matter? The Queen was The Queen and not Elizabeth Windsor because of the exceptionally strict and rigorous separation she kept between her private life and her public role. She had a very long life, yet rarely if ever did it become known what her personal or political views actually were. Undoubtably she had help in this from an establishment that tacitly agreed to uphold these conventions, but ultimately it was down to her. The Queen was, in some very real sense, not an individual with a personality and all the complexities individuals bring but an abstraction, a constitutional icon, that was created and maintained by a woman named Elizabeth Windsor through sheer force of will. This is easier to see when you contrast it with King Charles III of course, whose personal views and personal life is well documented. A big question mark is whether he will now adopt the conventions that his mother sustained and become that abstraction, or whether he will be a monarch of opinions. W.R.T. the Empire, this is probably not the thread for it, but it slowly became the Commonwealth over the period of Elizabeth's reign and it did so in a unique and largely peaceful manner. She was born just after World War 1, into a world that had been torn apart by war between empires. She died in a world where empires had long ago ceased to exist. Where there were exceptions to that peaceful transition, it wasn't because the Queen sent in her army to capture or recapture territory as it was for most of history. That's the reason she was the Queen and not merely a Queen: it's that legacy of peaceful transition that left her the notional reigning monarch over large parts of the world, even decades after the British Empire had ceased to exist. Even if that's a mere historical convention and not political reality, what other empires had such good relations with its old territories like that? Not many, and the Queen deserves a lot of credit for that outcome.
- toyg 4y ago
  > former members of the Empire chose to stay on as part of the Commonwealth Being in the Commonwealth doesn't mean "staying on" the British Empire - it just means belonging to a very, very loose trade block on which Britain temporarily exercised an outsized influence. Recent developments (like the inability of subsequent UK governments to replace Commonwealth leadership) have shown that even that influence has now gone. At this point the Commonwealth is little more than an administrative construct for trade-related issues.
dijit 4y ago
> reigned as the crown of an extraordinarily cruel empire Queen Elizabeth presided over its dismantlement. No famines occurred during her reign and no rebellions violently suppressed. The Empire was cruel, but it's unfair to wash her with the cloth of empire.
- JAlexoid 4y ago
  Have you heard of The Troubles?
  - dijit 4y ago
    Civil unrest is going to happen when you rule for 70 years. When you say "extraordinarily cruel" then maybe you refer to the 2,100,000 to 3,800,000 Bengals you starved to death The murder of 13 people (the inciting incident of the troubles) by the British army is not exactly comparable; even taking into consideration the total losses during that time of 3,500~, hardly comparable at all. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943
    - JAlexoid 4y ago
      The Troubles - was literally a rebellion violently suppressed... for 3 decades. Let alone all of the Unionists are staunch monarchists and were tightly linked to government institutions. I wasn't comparing anything to anything. You think that comparing The Troubles to bengal Famine, somehow excuses you from writing an obvious false sentence. PS: Civil Unrest isn't Civil Unrest, when the army is literally shooting.
      - dijit 4y ago
        I just don’t see it as “extraordinarily cruel” when comparing to other cruelty committed. I see it as quite significantly reduced. I’m not saying she was perfect, but describing her reign as extraordinarily cruel is a real stretch. I really don’t want to talk about the troubles but if I’m going to be a dick I will mention that the IRA intentionally targeted civilians, I don’t think the military at that time are as black as they’re painted. It’s all villains I’m afraid.
whoooooo123 4y ago
Elizabeth II was the most decolonial monarch in history. Almost all our colonies gained their independence during her reign, and insofar as the empire was "extraordinary cruel", almost all of that cruelty occurred before her reign. By all means let's have a reasoned discussion about the legacy of the empire, but this is not the place.
drieddust 4y ago
She and her family is responsible for a lot of atrocities around the world. Yet a lot of people here are eulogizing as if she was a saint who taught art of living to the people. To me this is a demonstration of power of conditioning and media management.
- oceanplexian 4y ago
  My family is Argentine. The Queen’s son personally boarded a war ship to travel 7000km away to kill Argentines because they dared assert sovereignty against another country in a completely separate hemisphere of the Earth. The idea that the days of empire building are behind us is false.
  - simonh 4y ago
    Argentina itself is a creation of Spanish Imperialism, and British control of the islands dates to that same era, before Argentina became a nation. I don't see how either one can be claimed to be more or less creations of Imperialism than the other. The fact is the British foreign office had been trying to find ways to offload the islands on Argentina for ages. The British government felt they were an expensive nuisance that were an obstacle to better relations in the region. The Galtieri regime only invaded because they needed a boost in popularity. Negotiation is one thing, but military occupation quite another. There is (or could have been) a legitimate discussion to be had about the history of control of the islands. Sure. But those who resort to pre-emptive military force, when facing no threat to themselves, have no business complaining when the resulting conflict goes against them. Suez is a good example of us learning that lesson the hard way.
  - msla 4y ago
    An Argentine dictatorship was trying to build its empire by conquering a bunch of people who voted to remain British. That they can paint that as British Imperialism blows my mind.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
samstave 4y ago
Manuel_D 4y ago
> reigned as the crown of an extraordinarily cruel empire What are the empires you're comparing it against? To call it "extraordinary" makes the claim that its level of cruelty is substantially greater than the "ordinary" cruelty of other examples. Were the Russian, Japanese, Ottoman, and other 19th and early 20th century empires substantially less cruel than the British empire? Not to mention, as other commenters point out Elizabeth was coronated during a period of decolonization, with India departing the empire less than a decade earlier and most of its colonies in Africa and Asia following suit over the next couple decades.
- vinay_ys 4y ago
  In the last 200 years, definitely for sure.
dang 4y ago
I'm sure an account named Emma_Goldman comes by these sentiments honestly, but please don't take HN threads into generic ideological flamewar. We want curious conversation here, not tedious talking-point battle. You mostly do a pretty good job of avoiding that, for which we're grateful, but on the other hand, (a) we have had to warn you about this before, and (b) this subthread is a classic generic flamewar tangent—just what we want to avoid on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769470 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769470.
- hambes 4y ago
  > We want curious conversation here And the multiple hundreds of "oh so sad rip i'm not a royalist but..." posts above are _curious_ and don't need discouraging?
- Emma_Goldman 4y ago
  I appreciate the job you do and know it's hard. But I am not quite seeing this. How is a thread full of panegyrics to the Queen on the front page of HN curious and non-ideological, but me questioning whether - as one of many posters eulogized - that she was a 'moral authority' incurious and ideological? Maybe it did fan the flames of controversy to question the deification of the Queen, but the deification of the Queen is controversial. I live in Scotland, I know. Surely the right thing is to just ban threads like this in the first place if you don't like ideology.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
kwhitefoot 4y ago
> reigned as the crown of an extraordinarily cruel empire No she didn't, the empire was effectively over by the time she became queen.
- Emma_Goldman 4y ago
  I am not being mean but that is historically illiterate. Britain had over seventy overseas territories in 1952, including swathes of dependent colonies across Africa and the Middle East. The Labour government that had just left office had a full-throated vision of a recrudescent British Empire. Britain violently repressed independence movements in Malaysia, Kenya, Cyprus and Yemen while the Queen sat on the throne. South Africa had just entered into apartheid. The Suez Crisis was still to come.

origin_path 4y ago

Given that most empires in history were pretty darn cruel, you might have to justify the idea that the British Empire was extraordinarily cruel, especially given that the Queen only reigned in its last years and that many of the former members of the Empire chose to stay on as part of the Commonwealth. Also the British Empire is unique (AFAIK?) in having wound itself up more or less peacefully at the end, rather than needing to be destroyed by a massive rebellion or war - the usual way empires usually die (well, except for the pesky Americas of course... but that was a bit before Liz's time!)

samstave 4y ago
- origin_path 4y ago
  The Queen was not responsible for the acts of her children once they became adults, whatever they may be, no more than any mother is. As for comments about what she was like in private, who can really say? But perhaps more to the point - does it matter? The Queen was The Queen and not Elizabeth Windsor because of the exceptionally strict and rigorous separation she kept between her private life and her public role. She had a very long life, yet rarely if ever did it become known what her personal or political views actually were. Undoubtably she had help in this from an establishment that tacitly agreed to uphold these conventions, but ultimately it was down to her. The Queen was, in some very real sense, not an individual with a personality and all the complexities individuals bring but an abstraction, a constitutional icon, that was created and maintained by a woman named Elizabeth Windsor through sheer force of will. This is easier to see when you contrast it with King Charles III of course, whose personal views and personal life is well documented. A big question mark is whether he will now adopt the conventions that his mother sustained and become that abstraction, or whether he will be a monarch of opinions. W.R.T. the Empire, this is probably not the thread for it, but it slowly became the Commonwealth over the period of Elizabeth's reign and it did so in a unique and largely peaceful manner. She was born just after World War 1, into a world that had been torn apart by war between empires. She died in a world where empires had long ago ceased to exist. Where there were exceptions to that peaceful transition, it wasn't because the Queen sent in her army to capture or recapture territory as it was for most of history. That's the reason she was the Queen and not merely a Queen: it's that legacy of peaceful transition that left her the notional reigning monarch over large parts of the world, even decades after the British Empire had ceased to exist. Even if that's a mere historical convention and not political reality, what other empires had such good relations with its old territories like that? Not many, and the Queen deserves a lot of credit for that outcome.
toyg 4y ago
> former members of the Empire chose to stay on as part of the Commonwealth Being in the Commonwealth doesn't mean "staying on" the British Empire - it just means belonging to a very, very loose trade block on which Britain temporarily exercised an outsized influence. Recent developments (like the inability of subsequent UK governments to replace Commonwealth leadership) have shown that even that influence has now gone. At this point the Commonwealth is little more than an administrative construct for trade-related issues.

dijit 4y ago

> reigned as the crown of an extraordinarily cruel empire Queen Elizabeth presided over its dismantlement. No famines occurred during her reign and no rebellions violently suppressed. The Empire was cruel, but it's unfair to wash her with the cloth of empire.

JAlexoid 4y ago
Have you heard of The Troubles?
- dijit 4y ago
  Civil unrest is going to happen when you rule for 70 years. When you say "extraordinarily cruel" then maybe you refer to the 2,100,000 to 3,800,000 Bengals you starved to death The murder of 13 people (the inciting incident of the troubles) by the British army is not exactly comparable; even taking into consideration the total losses during that time of 3,500~, hardly comparable at all. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943
  - JAlexoid 4y ago
    The Troubles - was literally a rebellion violently suppressed... for 3 decades. Let alone all of the Unionists are staunch monarchists and were tightly linked to government institutions. I wasn't comparing anything to anything. You think that comparing The Troubles to bengal Famine, somehow excuses you from writing an obvious false sentence. PS: Civil Unrest isn't Civil Unrest, when the army is literally shooting.
    - dijit 4y ago
      I just don’t see it as “extraordinarily cruel” when comparing to other cruelty committed. I see it as quite significantly reduced. I’m not saying she was perfect, but describing her reign as extraordinarily cruel is a real stretch. I really don’t want to talk about the troubles but if I’m going to be a dick I will mention that the IRA intentionally targeted civilians, I don’t think the military at that time are as black as they’re painted. It’s all villains I’m afraid.

whoooooo123 4y ago

Elizabeth II was the most decolonial monarch in history. Almost all our colonies gained their independence during her reign, and insofar as the empire was "extraordinary cruel", almost all of that cruelty occurred before her reign. By all means let's have a reasoned discussion about the legacy of the empire, but this is not the place.

drieddust 4y ago

She and her family is responsible for a lot of atrocities around the world. Yet a lot of people here are eulogizing as if she was a saint who taught art of living to the people. To me this is a demonstration of power of conditioning and media management.

oceanplexian 4y ago
My family is Argentine. The Queen’s son personally boarded a war ship to travel 7000km away to kill Argentines because they dared assert sovereignty against another country in a completely separate hemisphere of the Earth. The idea that the days of empire building are behind us is false.
- simonh 4y ago
  Argentina itself is a creation of Spanish Imperialism, and British control of the islands dates to that same era, before Argentina became a nation. I don't see how either one can be claimed to be more or less creations of Imperialism than the other. The fact is the British foreign office had been trying to find ways to offload the islands on Argentina for ages. The British government felt they were an expensive nuisance that were an obstacle to better relations in the region. The Galtieri regime only invaded because they needed a boost in popularity. Negotiation is one thing, but military occupation quite another. There is (or could have been) a legitimate discussion to be had about the history of control of the islands. Sure. But those who resort to pre-emptive military force, when facing no threat to themselves, have no business complaining when the resulting conflict goes against them. Suez is a good example of us learning that lesson the hard way.
- msla 4y ago
  An Argentine dictatorship was trying to build its empire by conquering a bunch of people who voted to remain British. That they can paint that as British Imperialism blows my mind.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]

samstave 4y ago

Manuel_D 4y ago

> reigned as the crown of an extraordinarily cruel empire What are the empires you're comparing it against? To call it "extraordinary" makes the claim that its level of cruelty is substantially greater than the "ordinary" cruelty of other examples. Were the Russian, Japanese, Ottoman, and other 19th and early 20th century empires substantially less cruel than the British empire? Not to mention, as other commenters point out Elizabeth was coronated during a period of decolonization, with India departing the empire less than a decade earlier and most of its colonies in Africa and Asia following suit over the next couple decades.

vinay_ys 4y ago
In the last 200 years, definitely for sure.

dang 4y ago

I'm sure an account named Emma_Goldman comes by these sentiments honestly, but please don't take HN threads into generic ideological flamewar. We want curious conversation here, not tedious talking-point battle. You mostly do a pretty good job of avoiding that, for which we're grateful, but on the other hand, (a) we have had to warn you about this before, and (b) this subthread is a classic generic flamewar tangent—just what we want to avoid on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769470 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769470.

hambes 4y ago
> We want curious conversation here And the multiple hundreds of "oh so sad rip i'm not a royalist but..." posts above are _curious_ and don't need discouraging?
Emma_Goldman 4y ago
I appreciate the job you do and know it's hard. But I am not quite seeing this. How is a thread full of panegyrics to the Queen on the front page of HN curious and non-ideological, but me questioning whether - as one of many posters eulogized - that she was a 'moral authority' incurious and ideological? Maybe it did fan the flames of controversy to question the deification of the Queen, but the deification of the Queen is controversial. I live in Scotland, I know. Surely the right thing is to just ban threads like this in the first place if you don't like ideology.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

kwhitefoot 4y ago

> reigned as the crown of an extraordinarily cruel empire No she didn't, the empire was effectively over by the time she became queen.

Emma_Goldman 4y ago
I am not being mean but that is historically illiterate. Britain had over seventy overseas territories in 1952, including swathes of dependent colonies across Africa and the Middle East. The Labour government that had just left office had a full-throated vision of a recrudescent British Empire. Britain violently repressed independence movements in Malaysia, Kenya, Cyprus and Yemen while the Queen sat on the throne. South Africa had just entered into apartheid. The Suez Crisis was still to come.