Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh

In the years since I've started this blog, I've frequently written an in memoriam piece whenever a pop culture personality died, if they were relevant to me in some way. I talk about my experience of their work, and how it's changed as I've grown, or if there's some other theme that's relevant to them.

In the case of Prince Philip, it's a little different. Not only am I not a fan of the British royal family, but the Duke of Edinburgh himself is a figure that I had little thought for. To the extent that I knew anything about him, it was the line, oft-repeated by the comedy panel shows, that he was given to racist gaffes when speaking in public. I also encountered the storyline in season one of Netflix's the Crown, which implied he was unfaithful to Queen Elizabeth, but that's about it.

I don't have any relationship to Philip as a pop-culture figure, and my perception of him is roughly unchanged since I started paying attention to his existence in about 2002. So why am I writing about him? I suppose it's because it hit me that his death brings us closer to the day that Elizabeth herself passes away, and the undiscovered country that will be Britain after her death.

There was a time, back in elementary school, that I found the Windsors interesting. But otherwise, I've always sort of rolled my eyes at coverage of them in the press, especially here in the US. Particularly funny to me is the idea that the British royals are constantly up to some form of shenanigans - Americans think they're constantly partying and sleeping around but the House of Windsor is so media-savvy that they keep a tight lid on any whiff of scandal (Prince Harry dressing up as a Nazi in his early 20s aside).

That said, when you stop and think about it, Elizabeth has been on the throne since 1952, longer than my mother has been alive. She's been married to Philip since 1947, when my father wasn't even a year old. Her reign coincided with the rebuilding of Britain after the Second World War, the cultural reinvigoration of the 60s, the doldrums of the 70s, the Thatcher years, the end of the Cold War, the War on Terrorism, economic collapse (again), nationalism and Brexit. Or to put it another way, there are people who were born after Elizabeth and Philip married, and died of natural causes before he died on Friday. Her reign, and marriage, accounts for a very long slice of history, as these things go.

So I wonder what a post-Elizabeth Britain will look like. Bits and pieces have been coming off since the 1940s, and more are looking like they're about to come off now. Prince Charles doesn't really have the love of the British people that his mother, or first wife, command, though I've also heard some people say good things about his involvement in causes like the environment. There was a time when people talked about skipping over Charles to go straight to Prince William, but he seems less in the public eye (though I appreciate him as a fellow early-baldy).

I see the attraction of converting to a republic, but I also don't find the idea of the monarchy that offensive, since it's a cultural institution that helps tie together the British public and gives them a shared sense of community that's sorely missing here. Britain's politics may be as different now from when she took power as politics in America are from their place in 1952, but the vast majority of Britons alive today were born during her reign, so no matter who lives at Downing Street, that whole country has tuned in at Christmas to hear Elizabeth give the Queen's Speech. 

This continuity matters, even when you have divisions as deep as those between England and Scotland or Wales or Northern Ireland, or between London and the rest of England, or between the north and south of England. Scottish talk of independence aside, there's a feeling of community and shared vision in Britain that is sorely lacking here - given that the US looks to be splitting asunder on Democratic/progressive versus Republican/reactionary lines at any moment.

So I read a certain amount of the coverage on Philip last Friday, since it's a reminder that Queen Elizabeth II, this presence that we and our parents have grown up with, is still a mortal person and who one day won't be there anymore. He may have been awful or great, or somewhere in between, but it's a reminder that eventually even the longest reigns come to an end.