[ClearCase_guy]

I’m not so sure that history will treat Elizabeth so well.

The Monarch has very limited political power. No one expected her to run parliament, make laws, conduct foreign affairs or management the actions of government. Those are not her roles.

The Monarch does have some responsibilities, and I think managing the royal family is one of them. Her sister was wayward, her son and heir were wayward, Diana was wayward, Andrew, Fergie, just about everyone fell short. And why? Prior to about 1953 the royal family was largely hidden away and private. Problems such as Edward VIII’s abdication could not be hidden, but much of the rest of the family business was all handled behind closed doors, prior to Elizabeth’s reign.

Elizabeth seems to have been the one who wanted everyone to be some sort of celebrity to make the royal family a popular attraction like a Disney ride. Well, the wheels came off that rollercoaster in all sorts of ways.

[Rockingham]

Walter Bagehot's 1867 work The English Constitution shrewdly warned of the British royal family that "Above all things our royalty is to be reverenced, and if you begin to poke about it you cannot reverence it... Its mystery is its life. We must not let in daylight upon magic." The dirty secret of all nobility and monarchies is that while they vary in quality as individual people, they are not as a group deserving of belief in them as superior people.