Hi readers. Thanks for coming by.
Back when she was still Princess Elizabeth the US magazines had a love affair with her. We kids in Portales, NM, saw pictures of her looking her best and didn’t think she looked all that great, for a princess. A bit horse-faced, we thought. And the kid, prince Charles with his snooty little spoiled brat look. We hated his guts.
Didn’t much care who knew it, either.
Law law law. The British still had themselves thinking maybe it was an empire in those days. Didn’t take a lot of the reign of Liz to put that thought out of the minds of anyone with an eye to see. No Victoria, our Liz.
So here she is today, maybe still alive and in the catbird seat. Been there longer than Victoria. Hasn’t been poisoned or strangled by either of her offspring. And actually managed to win one war during her watch.
That was the Falklands War. Whupped Argentina all by themselves, those British did. Still had a whisper of a navy in those days. Lots of fireworks and generally a fairly safe war without any danger of contagion carrying it out of the ocean and onto places with Argentina firebombing London or vicee versee.
Put Britain down on record as the only civilized country in the world to win a war after 1918. A clear win, no illusions with the losers popping up as economic giants taking over the world marketplaces.
Hell, Liz was there when most of the shooting stopped in Northern Ireland. Might still be there when Mr. Scotland thumbs his nose at who? Henry was it? And tells the rest of the island to go piss up a rope. [After thinking on it while I showered I’m thinking it was Longshanks, Lackland, wossname, maybe Henry II. They all run together these days.]
Anyway, I’m just glad little Prince Charles with his snooty little short pants never got to be king. That was worth the price of admission, having to know something about what the damned British monarchy did or didn’t do anytime in my life.
Old Jules
Afterthought: I recall sometime during the 1980s the other kid, Andrew, I think, had a girlfriend who was a porn star, which I applauded. If he’d gotten to be king I mightn’t have minded knowing about it. Randy Andy they dubbed him at the time. If the bard had been reincarnated to see that he might have written a good tragedy about it.
So Far From Heaven 
The Falklands/Malvinas war was a stupid, and criminal, attempt by the Argentine military junta to hold on to its then already failing power, but when is a war not stupid and criminal? However, despite the island’s residents loath to belong to a bloody regime other than the British Empire, Argentina does have a territorial claim over that speck of land, which will probably never be righted anyway. In any case, its Air Force was very close to cause real damage to the Royal Navy, despite all dismissals at that time, and the story of that, thankfully, failed adventure remains to be told, for all it’s worth. As for Elizabeth Regina, she’s a survivor, no question, and a clever one at that, while Charlie never amounted to more than a joke, which the ’empire’ ultimately is, nowadays. Good riddance. She did resemble my mother in their youth, though. Cheers old chap.
Hi Wesley: Probably as okay a means of being governed as most others anyone’s come up with and managed to sustain long. We humans evidently prefer aristocracies to order us around and keep us moral. Gracias, J