This week, Britain's new Prime Minister Liz Straas may be one of the most anxious national leaders: the prime minister's throne has not yet been hot, on the 7th a strike movement that swept the whole of Britain broke out, and a day later the bad news of Queen Elizabeth II followed.
On 8 September, the BBC reported that Elizabeth II was in dire health and that doctors had arrived at Balmoral Castle, a news confirmed by the British Royal Family. Subsequently, The royal family members such as Prince Charles and Prince William rushed to Scotland, and People from all walks of life in Britain, including Terrass, opposition leader Stammer and religious leaders, began to pray for the queen's safety. Eventually Buckingham Palace announced that Elizabeth II had died at Balmoral Castle at the age of 96. Prince Charles became the new monarch of The United Kingdom, Charles III.
Elizabeth II reigned for 70 years, and she has become the only monarch known to most Britons, and even one of the symbols of Britain. As the longest-reigning monarch in British history, Elizabeth II was successful, playing the role of a symbolic head of state under the constitutional monarchy so perfectly that people seem to have forgotten that the British Royal Family is one of the richest families in the world, and Elizabeth II is one of the most powerful women, but this authority has always been hidden in her shadow.
Behind the bloody repression, the queen's shadow looms
When Elizabeth II ascended the throne in 1953, the Times simultaneously published news of the first ascent of Mount Everest by Sherpasin Norgai and New Zealander Edmund Hillary, calling it "another harbinger of happiness and vitality in the Elizabethan era". Elizabeth II, however, could no longer be called "Empress" – the independence of India and Pakistan in 1947 stripped her of the title of "Emperor".
Nevertheless, Elizabeth II inherited and maintained the monarchy of the British Empire by serving as Head of the Commonwealth, and although Elizabeth II stated in her Christmas message in 1953 that the Commonwealth bore no resemblance to the empires of the past, history proved to be so.
For a long time, the Commonwealth stemmed from the racist and paternalistic notion that the British considered itself "obliged to guardianship and educate the colonies to take responsibility", yet this "guardianship and education" was often accompanied by apartheid and bloody repression.
Thus, although the British Commonwealth gave colonial autonomy status, this autonomy was a disguised preservation of the colonial empire, and the first members of the British Commonwealth were almost all white-dominated colonies, such as New Zealand, Australia and Canada, or india, the jewel of the Crown of the British Crown, and more Asian, African and Latin American "Dominions" were actually colonies.
The national liberation movement that swept the world after World War II and the dismemberment of the British and French colonial empires by the United States and the Soviet Union inspired the determination of the people of the British Colonies to fight against Britain, and even so, Britain was still unwilling to abandon the British Commonwealth, and behind the bloody suppression, the shadow of the British Queen loomed.
In 1952, the Governor-General of the Colonies of Kenya declared a state of emergency, british troops intervened to suppress the anti-colonial movement known as the Mao Mao Uprising, and between 1952 and 1960, tens of thousands of Kenyans were taken into concentration camps and brutally tortured by British troops. The same thing happened again in Cyprus in 1955 and in Aden, Yemen in 1963.
Of course, there were times when Britain, which was rampant in the colonies, encountered "hard bones". Ghana's independence in 1957 and subsequently closer to the Soviet Union, so the British government did not dare to publicly overthrow Ghanaian President Nkrumah, so Elizabeth II had to visit Ghana in person to appease Nkrumah to stay in the Commonwealth.
As Britain's influence waned, many former colonial countries saw the Commonwealth as a relic of the colonial era: in 2013 the Gambia announced its withdrawal from the Commonwealth and denounced the organization as a "neo-colonial club"; The Williams were protested by local residents while traveling in Jamaica, who demanded an apology from the British royal family for their colonial history; In 2020, Prime Minister Barbatos announced the abolition of the Crown's head of state status, severing Britain's colonial symbol.
Jasnov, a professor of history at Harvard University, has said we may never know whether the Queen acquiesced to the crimes committed by the British government, and that she will not convey her position in a public and obvious way, such as what few people know what the Queen says in her weekly private meetings with prime ministers.
Colonial officials destroyed many records, and the minister in charge of colonial affairs said the archives would embarrass the Queen and the government. The documents that have not been destroyed are still classified to this day, for example, until the archives of the "Mao Mao Uprising" in 2011 were not disclosed, and the world did not learn of the atrocities committed by the British army in Kenya.
An alternative "empire" of the British royal family
As bloody, brutal colonial violence and apartheid were lost in history, the british empire was weakening, and the British royal family began to find another way to achieve a "global Britain", a commercial empire under royal control and spread all over the world.
In consumer culture, the commercialization of the British royal family is particularly prominent. Although the few remaining monarchies on the european continent have royal-related goods and tourism industries, few have produced as much influence as the British royal family, such as when Prince Charles divorced Princess Diana in 1996, when British businessmen launched a souvenir plate to satirize the event, with the couple's heads printed on it and a huge black crack in the middle.
Since 2000, Elizabeth II has traveled on a tour almost every year, and the influence of the British royal family has also been brought to various countries: there is a statue of her in Brisbane, Australia; There is a garden in Manhattan named after her; Even in Russia and Antarctica, things related to Elizabeth II can be seen.
Royal castles and aristocratic activities were also open to commoners, and while there were still barriers to class interaction, the distance between classes and the mystery of the royal family faded away. From 2012 to 2014, many royal venues in the UK were open to visitors, such as Buckingham Palace, Kensington Palace and Westminster Abbey, while tickets can also be purchased for major sporting events such as wimbledon and the Royal Jockey Club.
And how much money does the royal family make through these industries?
According to statistics, the royal family's land, castles and other assets alone exceed 40 billion US dollars, and the annual real estate income is as high as 700 million US dollars, while the royal family tourism brings 2.7 billion US dollars of income to the Windsor family every year. In addition, the British royal family also grants royal authorizations to high-end luxury goods, which can increase the income of holders by 10%, so British luxury companies including Burberry and Johnnie Changa will provide huge sums of money to the royal family every year in exchange for royal authorizations.
The BBC has commented that royal tourism has become a sign of attracting foreign tourists to the UNITED Kingdom, with thousands of tourists visiting the Uk every year because they are interested in the Royal Family, and the monarchy has made a new contribution to the UK.
However, with the death of Elizabeth II, the afterglow of the British Empire finally dissipated: when Elizabeth II was born, Britain and France were still the hegemons of the world, the Soviet Union was trying to achieve industrialization, the United States enjoyed the prosperity brought by the economy, and China was still fragmented and divided by warlords;
When she ascended the throne, the United States and the Soviet Union became the polar poles of the world, the Iron Curtain dividing East and West had fallen, de Gaulle was running around for a comeback, China was rebuilding the country, and the wave of independence in the Third World was brewing.
Elizabeth II reigned for seven decades, and she held handover ceremonies for 15 prime ministers; Witnessed the British Empire's descent from sun to disintegration; Witnessed the rise from the collapse of the Soviet Union, the decline of U.S. hegemony to the rise of China; Witnessed from the founding of the European Union to Brexit... She witnessed the history of the twentieth century, seemed to have done a lot, and seemed to have done nothing, only to watch England gradually slide into the abyss from a high throne.
Elizabeth II has become one of the symbols of British culture, and it can be said that generations of Britons have grown up under her rule, and many Britons have seen her as a part of life.
Now that the United Kingdom is facing a double economic and political crisis, Prince Charles will take over the power of the Queen, but whether he has political wisdom and whether he can maintain the unity of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland like the Queen, at this delicate moment, will inevitably be strictly scrutinized by the British people.
And after the death of one of the longest-reigning monarchs in British history and so much influence on modern Britain, the British people will also wonder if a new symbolic monarch is needed.
In any case, with The entry of elist Elizabeth II, Gorbachev and other familiar figures into the history books, the twentieth century will finally come to an end, a new era will begin, and countless popular figures will appear on the world stage.