Long Live the Queen

Flint Dignan, Student Writer

Much to everyone’s surprise, after 96 years of blessing the world with her presence, Queen Elizabeth II died. As of September 8, 2022, the United Kingdom was no longer under the reign of its longest reigning monarch, Queen Elizabeth II. For how long she reigned, it’s no wonder their agriculture is doing well!

The question on everyone’s mind has been, why did the Queen die? If you look almost anywhere on the internet, you’ll see memes about people killing her. But like so many other things on the internet, they’re just jokes and have no proof behind them. As far as we know her cause of death is just natural causes, and to be honest, with catching COVID in February and her husband dying last year, it makes sense. The Queen’s successor, King Charles III, is 73 years old, which is almost three times how old Elizabeth II was when she became Queen!

There wasn’t anything special about the day she died, it began as just another day. It ended with a lot of bewildered people. People are very different, since people are so different from one another there’s many ways people cope with death. Some responded to the news of Queen Elizabeth II’s passing with condolences, some with jokes, and some with theories. One of the most popular theories was that she had been reincarnated as Trisha Paytas’s child. Trisha denied those rumors saying that she was “still VERY much pregnant” in an Instagram post. On the 14th of September she did give birth, so maybe the universe decided to give the Queen a break for a week before coming back to the world.

Many people, like myself, didn’t know much about the Queen or sometimes even who she was. When she was born, she didn’t have much of a chance of becoming Queen because her father wasn’t the eldest son of King George V. That all changed when George VI’s older brother Edward VIII, abdicated to George VI. Suddenly Elizabeth II was the next in line! She became the Queen on June 6th, 1952. Then, in 1965 she went on the first official British Royal trip to West Germany since 1913. She was also the first British Monarch since Queen Victoria to celebrate a Golden Jubilee (50 reigning years) in 2002 and traveled more than 40,000 miles that year. Although, when she reigned there were some storm clouds. At first, when Princess Diana died the Queen refused to lower the flag at and stayed at her estate in Balmoral, Scotland. Then, due to the urging of her advisors she changed her stance on the flag and went to London to address the mourning nation. That wasn’t the only time during her reign where things got a little stormy, but when ruling that long it’s to be expected.

In conclusion, Elizabeth II’s death was a shock to everyone. She definitely wasn’t perfect, but perfection is an opinion. We’ll just have to wait and see how the new King Charles III does, and as Scar from The Lion King would say, “Long live the King.”