Till her last day, she did her job with a sense of duty of the kind that many, even beyond her own realm, have grown fondly nostalgic about. When she took up her responsibility as monarch in 1952, the world was a very different place.
It was still the post-World War 2 world order with Winston Churchill and Jawaharlal Nehru as prime ministers, decolonisation a living, thrilling project, the Cold War yet to heat up, and the Beatles still a decade away.
Elizabeth was the steady hand that not just waved from the Buckingham Palace balcony or from carriages, but also that gave a sense of stability in a skidding world.
Her life of 96 years itself has been a yardstick of our times. While she changed with the times – with as much grace as anyone who has seen four years short of a century go by under her watch – her job did not. She was a people’s monarch bringing a connection to different peoples, including to her subjects, that formed an integral part of Britain’s soft power, which, along with Bond movies et al, allowed the country to punch well above its diminished weight.
The duration of her reign itself defined the job she undertook for 70 years. To say ‘queen’, one thinks of Elizabeth; to not have her as queen seems not in the order of things. After her passing, monarchy in the UK seems to have served its purpose. If ‘Charles III‘ and ‘monarchy’ suddenly sounds anachronistic, perhaps there is a valid reason for this. To her immense credit, Elizabeth II never made her position seem dated.