Queen Elizabeth II was such a private person that she eschewed all public display of affection with Prince Philip for the entirety of their 70-year marriage. She was once filmed reuniting with a three-year-old Prince Charles after a tour abroad by shaking the toddler’s hand. If there’s one thing that unites the endless – endless! – tributes that have been published since the late monarch’s death last Thursday it’s reverence for her stoicism, her quintessentially British stiff upper lip. While Charles’s romantic life has been regularly reported on by tabloid newspapers, the Queen was admired for her ability to maintain an air of mystery, to be “serene, controlled“. Her supposedly self-deprecating humour was revealed only to her private secretaries and her corgis. In public, she was reserved. She had to be.
You have to wonder then, what the Queen would make of the increasingly bizarre tributes that have emerged over the past few days. At first it was understandable, albeit inconvenient: train announcements and departure gates were overtaken by black facades paying tribute to Her Majesty (hard to plan your journey, but you could manage). Heritage businesses followed suit, and again it was reasonable. Yes, Selfridges probably would close on Friday. Of course the British Fashion Council would scale back the planned festivities for London Fashion Week. But as the days went on and a culture of nervousness settled, the tributes became weirder, more performative. Domino’s turned its logo black and displayed a tribute in the windows of every branch. Boohoo, a fast-fashion company that in 2020 was found to pay some of its workers in Pakistan as little as 29p an hour, described her as “an unforgettable female force”. In Ibiza, Wayne Lineker organised a “touching tribute” that included dressing women up as sexy beefeaters and parading them through crowds of topless clubbers before playing God Save the Queen as they saluted on stage.
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