It is weird to have a King

[purplecat]

In general, I'm not really in favour of monarchy, but in the priority ordered list of things I think ought to changed about UK society it ranks fairly low so, if asked, I always said I didn't care enough to have much of an opinion about it.

Still, it's weird to have a King.

Comments

[vivdunstan]

It feels very weird. Like most people in the UK I’ve only ever known a Queen. It’s very very weird having a bloke in the role and hearing the word King! Even if as a historian it’s hardly a surprise ;)

I’m also very much not a royalist, so I’m finding the whole automatic God Save The King response from some people very weird and feeling wrong so soon after the Queen died.

I think she did a grand job though. Still not a royalist!

Here in Dundee the cortège is going through the city tomorrow afternoon on its way to Edinburgh. All the main city buses are shutting down for 2 hours. The council and university have been looking for volunteer stewards. It’s all rather bizarre.

[purplecat]

I'm finding some of the twitter discourse a bit discombobulating and I can't quite decide if I'm very naive about the extent to which the royal family has any real power, or if many twitter commentators - particularly from overseas, vastly over-estimate their power. A little from column A and a little form column B, I suspect. They have a lot of influence even if not much practically useable power.

I'm sad at the level of its sad when someone dies, and someone I'd been aware of all my life. I find it hard to assess how good a job she did. Keeping one's opinions to oneself in public is a much under-rated skill, as is managing not to significantly rock the boat for 70 years but there's a sense in which she merely kept the tides of history at bay without finding a way for the monarchy to go forward once her time passed. Apres moi le deluge and all that.