Lament For the Hollow Crown

Elizabeth II’s empty legacy

At the turn of the first millenium, one of the last Anglo-Saxon kings, Æthelred of the House of Wessex, reigned over England. He came to the throne as a smooth-cheeked boy. By all accounts a man of pleasing aspect and courteous disposition, he might otherwise have made a fine king, and indeed he showed promise of living up to the meaning of his name, ‘noble counsel’, when he introduced the custom of jury trial by decreeing that matters of guilt or innocence should be decided by conveying a band of 12 thanes rather than relying on the decision of a single judge.

However, Æthelred had the poor fortune to preside during a time of renewed Danish raiding. To bring an end to the plunder and rape of the English countryside, he agreed to pay the Danegeld, handing over to the blonde beasts of Odin the sum of over ten thousand pounds of silver. This largess only encouraged them to return for more and larger bribes. Later, Æthelred foolishly undermined the tenuous and expensively leased peace by ordering the slaughter of a Danish settlement, thereby enraging the Danes. This led to renewed hostilities, which ultimately saw him chased from his lands by a Danish king, taking refuge in Normandy, and returning only after the Danish king had died, only to die himself shortly thereafter. His reign of 37 years was the longest reign of any Anglo-Saxon king, and the longest reign of any English king for some time thereafter.

History attached to Æthelred the moniker ‘the Unrede’, a play on his given name: ‘noble counsel, no counsel’, a dig at his series of disastrous diplomatic errors that arguably established the conditions for William’s conquest in 1066 and the end of the line of Anglo-Saxon kings. We know him today as Æthelred the Unready.

Say what you will about Æthelred. He may not have prevented the Danes from establishing themselves in the British Isles, and ultimately displacing the Anglo-Saxons as Albion’s aristocracy. But at least he tried. He recognized that this would be a bad thing, and he did what was in his power, as best as he knew how, to prevent it.

Some seven decades ago, a young woman, barely more than a girl, ascended to the throne of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, becoming the Protector of the Faith and the sovereign power over loyal colonies stretching around the planet. This beautiful, gracious young woman became monarch over a home island exhausted from the second of two disastrous wars with the European power of the age: its men dead and maimed in large numbers, its treasuries empty, its finances in a ruinous state due to the loans that had paid for the long, bloody struggle. Worse, the centuries-old empire was falling apart even as she claimed the crown, for the spent strength of her land was no longer capable of holding it against native peoples straining at the imperial yoke, and in any case it had been a condition of the decisive support of England’s prodigal son, the vigorous new empire on the American continent, that after the war the British would end the free trade policies that had knit their empire together into a global economic bloc. Without those policies, there was nothing but sentiment to hold the empire together, and mere feeling is weak glue.

It would be unfair to hold Elizabeth II to account for presiding over the dissipation of the empire her pirate queen namesake had first started to build centuries before, for the centrifugal forces at work were so far beyond her control that she’d as well have ordered the tide not to come in.

As to what happened after, however ... there we might be justified in critique.

The land Elizabeth II inherited was exhausted from the wars, it is true. However, in most other ways it was a vastly better land than the one that she left behind. Its demographic structure had remained essentially unchanged for thousands of years, with what incursions there were – the Angles, the Saxons, the Danes, the Normans – being cousin peoples whose blood and customs were not so dissimilar. The Church was strong, as was the family; the streets were safe; and the ancient liberties of the Englishman to property, to self-defense, and to speak his mind were honoured by law and custom. The same was true of England’s strong young daughter colonies in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand – while necessarily rougher around the edges than their more settled and genteel motherland, they had immense social capital, their people tough and confident, their institutions well-run and honest.

The contrast between the fair land she inherited, and the grimy dystopia of Loicense Island, are obvious and painful to behold.

Elizabeth sat placidly by as, one by one, the ancient rights of Englishmen were stripped from them. No longer may they bear arms, or even defend themselves should they be assaulted or their homes invaded. No longer may they speak their minds, for should they speak too plainly they risk a visit from the police, who may either arrest and charge them with hate speech for saying unflattering things about any of the myriad protected groups, or simply be hassled over ‘non-crime hate incidents’ should their blaspheming not quite cross the deliberately fuzzy legal boundary between that which is permitted and mandatory, and everything else.

Worse, and possibly irreparable, has been the violent demographic shift that has taken place. The United Kingdom was 99.5% white when Elizabeth became Elizabeth II; now, it is around 87% white, and rapidly declining. The Church having fallen into apostasy, its pews empty, its support of the family gone, the birth rate of the indigenous population has cratered to far below replacement. Meanwhile, the trickle of immigrants from Commonwealth countries – Jamaica, India, Pakistan, and so on – that began when Elizabeth was crowned, has over the last two decades become a relentless flood. London is no longer a recognizably English city, and the same is true across much of the rest of the land.

The native population are now treated like second-class chattel in the land of their fathers. Outrages such as Rotherham, in which Pakistani grooming gangs feel at liberty to groom pre-pubescent girls with addictive drugs in order to then use them as rape toys and rent them out as disposable cum rags to their friends, are enabled by authorities who refuse to investigate or prosecute lest they be perceived as racist. The hate speech laws that have gutted freedom of speech are largely in place to protect the newcomers from any criticism. The prohibitions on self-defense largely serve to criminalize the native population when they try to protect their persons and property from predation by the New British. Diversity hiring policies openly discriminate against the indigenous population, while the New British are increasingly to be found dominating the upper reaches of commercial, cultural, and political influence. The national broadcaster makes historical dramas in which British monarchs and heroes are replaced with Indian and black actors, retconning history so that the youth will begin to subconsciously believe that Britain was always ‘diverse’. Periodically the newcomers, not content with the riches and favours showered upon them by the British establishment, will riot, tearing down statues that have been accused of racism ... in some cases for some real connection to the slave trade, in others simply for depicting a white man.

It has not only been the people of the United Kingdom that have suffered these humiliations. The same drama plays out in all of her daughter colonies.

Many argue that Elizabeth Windsor could not have done anything to stop any of this, for she was a mere figurehead. As a constitutional rather than an absolute monarch, she lacked the divine right of kings, and her political powers were limited to veto over parliamentary bills, the ability to dismiss the prime minister, and the ability to dissolve parliament. She could not introduce laws herself; ruling by decree was not permitted her. Furthermore, what limited powers she did possess were tightly circumscribed by the weight of custom. No British monarch has vetoed a bill since the early 18th century, and it is generally understood that the Crown will hold itself above politics, leaving the running of the land to the politicians who represent the will of the people. Given this, the best she could have done was to hold her head high, keep a stiff upper lip, and carry out the duties of ritual and formality that befit a symbolic head of state.

There’s much to be said for this, and to give Elizabeth Windsor her due, she carried out these formal duties admirably. She was the very embodiment of dignity and grace, providing for the public the appearance, at least, of an immovable rock in the midst of the chaotic whirl of the late 20th century.

That she was the rock on which modern Britain was built, however, is to damn her with faint praise.

Elizabeth’s political powers were limited by custom, it is true. And yet, what should this matter, when the political elites of Great Britain and her daughter colonies have themselves so thoroughly broken with those restraints? As with so much else in the British system, this is an unspoken, unwritten constitutional order, a societal contract in which it is generally understood that certain parties refrain from certain actions in expectation that other parties likewise refrain from commensurable actions. For example, the Crown avoids dropping its weight upon politicians, in the understanding that the politicians (with allowances for understandable levels of ordinary graft) will generally pursue policies that strengthen the nation and benefit the people. Similarly, the state avoids making its governance too onerous, and respects the everyday liberties of the populace, in the understanding that the people will not violently rebel against its rule. The governments of Britain and her daughter colonies have long since become tyrannical to their peoples, whilst insisting on extractive policies that render the lands entrusted to them sickly and weak. Given that, the people need no longer honour the unspoken contract at the heart of the British system; the same applies to the Crown.

The monarch is meant to be the champion of the people, a sort of hereditary tribune of the plebs who serves as a counterbalance to the economic and political weight of the aristocracy. The arrangement is mutually beneficial: alone against the oligarchy, the Crown is easily neutralized; similarly, the leaderless and disunited people are powerless against the oligarchy ... but when the Crown becomes a magnetic pole around which the iron filings of the peasantry self-organize, the combination is unstoppable. The Crown is the trump card against the excesses of the nobility.

This dynamic between Crown and pleb is rarely articulated but instinctively felt, and is why the monarchy inspires such passionate devotion. Peasant revolts are rarely against the king, but more often in the name of the king, against those intermediary powers whom they consider to have perverted the positions granted to them by the king. They revolt not to rid themselves of the king, but to get the king’s attention, that the king might set things right.

The Crown’s formal political power may be limited, it is true, but it is not non-existent. Further, the Crown’s social power is immense. What should have been the reaction, one wonders, had Elizabeth II spoken publicly about the unfortunate events in Rotherham? To ask the question is to answer it: public opinion would have united behind her, and the authorities would have scrambled to set things right. Better: what might have happened if, decades ago, Elizabeth had voiced even a mild criticism of the replacement immigration policies of Tony Blair? A political crisis would have ensued, to be sure. Nativist sentiment would have united behind her and become an indomitable political force. It may have led to an effort to remove her as monarch, yes; but on the other hand, it would have been possible for her to indicate that Blair and his coven were themselves morally illegitimate, to have then dissolved his government, called a new election, and if Blair had resisted (as well he might), well ... the armed forces of the United Kingdom make their oaths of service not to Parliament, but to the Crown. Military men take their oaths seriously. And they were no fans of Blair.

One might ask the same question about the ruinous energy policies brought about by the cult of the Green Death; the ceding of sovereignty to the European Union; or the pointless, cruel, and destructive lockdowns of the Corona regime.

Obviously, there would have been risks to her had she taken any such action. What of it? An accident of birth delivered her into a position of almost unparalleled wealth and prestige. Much is expected from those to whom much has been given. Certainly more should be expected of a monarch than cutting ribbons and waving from a carriage. On occasion, a monarch must take risks. They must lead from the front. Time was, kings would lead their forces into battle, and sometimes they would die in battle. It is not asking so much, I think, that a monarch might say something unpopular with the political and chattering classes. A tongue-lashing in the pages of the Guardian is surely less frightening than a barrage of arrows.

The truth is, Elizabeth did not hold herself entirely aloof from politics throughout her long and otherwise passive reign. There were two occasions of which I am aware on which she intervened, and both are revealing.

The first was during the Rhodesian Bush War. Rhodesia was once the breadbasket of Africa, a remarkably productive colony that fed half the continent. Obtaining Rhodesian citizenship was no easy thing: one was required to demonstrate strength, intelligence, and virtue far above the norm in order to be considered. In consequence Rhodesians were never numerous, but were of extraordinarily high quality. An outpost of the empire, the Rhodesian government secured from the Crown an agreement that they should be given home rule in exchange for their service during the Second World War. They served, by all accounts admirably, and at the conclusion requested their independence; this was to be granted on the same terms as held by Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, in other words a parliamentary system cloned from the British system, with the Crown remaining the head of state.

Unfortunately for Rhodesia, the British government had changed its mind. Rhodesia was informed that for them to be granted home rule, they must first agree to change their constitution to allow majority rule. Since the overwhelming majority of the populace were black, this would mean black rule. Rhodesia objected, on the grounds that the black population, so recently having come out of the neolithic, were simply not ready to administer a modern industrial state, and that majority rule would therefore mean disaster. The British government did not care that the Rhodesians might know the facts on the ground better than they; ideology triumphed, and Rhodesia was ordered to do what was fashionable, consequences and previous agreements be damned. One thing led to another, and Rhodesia declared its independence unilaterally, enraging the British government and personally insulting the Queen. Before long Rhodesia was defending itself against a black Marxist military that outnumbered them hundreds to one, their own country subjected to international sanctions while their opponents were supported by the British and the Soviets.

By the late 1970s, the Rhodesians were winning the war regardless – they were just that good. Margaret Thatcher, then the prime minister, was in the process of negotiating a peace that would normalize relationships with Rhodesia. It was at this moment that Elizabeth brought the full weight of the crown crushing down on Thatcher’s head, preventing any such peace from taking place. The end result was that Rhodesia became Zimbabwe.

We all saw how Zimbabwe turned out. One might almost suspect the Rhodesians were right.

The second time was during the late 1980s, when the Queen gave her support to sanctions on South Africa due to Apartheid. The Apartheid system, it should be noted, had been enacted as much to prevent the fractious African tribes (all of whom had arrived long after the Boers, who are by all rights more indigenous than the Zulu or any other South African nation aside from the Bushmen) from slaughtering one another, as it was to maintain ‘white supremacy’. No matter; it looked like Jim Crow, racism bad, etc., so it had to go. Afro-Marxists led by a terrorist took over, and a country that had been a nuclear power with a space program rapidly degenerated into a third-world failed state with rolling blackouts, one of the highest violent crime rates on the planet, one of the most corrupt governments to be found anywhere, open anti-white racial discrimination, and a large political party whose leader regularly sings the genocidal anthem ‘Kill The Boer’ even as his followers go out into the countryside and viciously murder and rape Boers.

Once is an accident; twice starts to look like a pattern. The only times that Elizabeth II publicly intervened in politics, accepting the risks to her position that this violation of custom and decorum implied, she did so to help non-whites at the expense of whites. Conversely, she has not once raised the merest murmur against the dispossession of her own people as a matter of state policy, nor a single syllable of protest against the systematic stripping of their hereditary and sacred liberties.

It’s possible, of course, that she was merely sheltered. One doubts, for instance, that she was more than dimly aware of the plight of the underclass white girls being taken as sex slaves in Rotherham. It’s easy not to notice such things when ensconced in your palace, LARPing as though it’s still the Edwardian era. Perhaps she had a brief intimation of what she’d permitted when her emasculated grandson invited the venal harpy Meagan Markle to use the royal platform to inject her racial venom into their public appearances.

Yet the fact that she intervened in Rhodesia over 40 years ago, and in South Africa some 30 years ago, suggests that she was far from naive about racial politics and the implications of racial strife for social stability, just as it indicates that her supposedly entirely ceremonial status is not the entire truth. From this, the only possible inference is that she did not intervene in the destruction of Britain and her colonies because she could not, but because she chose not to. She lacked the inclination.

That doesn’t mean that she was hostile to her own people. I doubt that very much. Rather, I think it’s just the usual, peculiar pathology of the elders of our time, who go to great lengths to express concern for the Other, and who bend over backwards to do everything in their power to help the Other ... but say little and do less to assist their own, whom they neglect at best, actively hinder and undermine at worst.

And it’s for that reason that, upon hearing of the death of a woman who had reigned as my liege since long before I was born, I felt ... nothing. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not happy she’s dead. I take no pleasure in it. I’m simply indifferent, and in many ways that’s worse than the ghoulish delight being expressed by so many leftists, and a few of the edgier rightists. I feel like I should feel something. I should be sad to see her go, I should feel like I’ve lost a dear, beloved member of my own family. Instead, to continue with the familial analogy, it’s as though a distant, rich aunt, whom neither I nor anyone in my immediate family had ever gotten so much as a Christmas card from, had died, leaving her fortune not to her blood relatives but to UNICEF. She never did anything to actively hurt us, but neither did she do anything to actively help us; and so, her passing is an emotional blank spot, a simple registering of a neutral fact about reality. Given the long and intimate ties between the institution of monarchy and my people, an intertwined history that disappears into the mists of the Northern European bronze age, the echoing nothing of this yawning indifference is a more scathing commentary on the fallen state of our dying civilization than any merely political outrage.

I mourn, not the Queen who was, but the Queen who should have been.

All you had to do, my Queen, was say something. Had you but done that, had you once spoken up for us, it would all have been so very different. It might not have changed things, but we’d have known that you cared.

But it’s too late now.

Æthelred was not named the Unrede until long after his death, when the full implications of his reign had come into focus for a people recently conquered. Elizabeth has presided over an invasion more catastrophic by far than anything Æthelred dealt with. Unlike Æthelred, she did nothing to try and stop it, not even that little that was in her power to do.

What, I wonder, shall history decide to call her?

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