in which i succeed in naming three (3) emotions
I’m sad she’s dead, for the usual human and parasocial reasons.
I’m genuinely curious if also worried about what comes next.
And I’m angry, I am so so angry, about the British empire.
As a white Australian I exist because of what Britain saw as surplus population it could send to administer its stolen wealth. The ways in which my life was predetermined, the ways in which I was raised and educated to be a colonial bureaucrat, were callous and calculating and fundamentally genocidal, and have left me traumatized.
The thing about Elizabeth. The thing! That I managed to grope towards just now, is that she was a human sacrifice to empire. She had no choice and no escape. She had to do her duty.
And she did her duty flawlessly. She was incredible at it. A genuinely awe-inspiring triumph of will.
And she shouldn’t have done that. For two reasons. One (the most important) is because the Empire is a death cult that murdered millions on her watch. The other is that her performance of that duty is and always will be forced on the rest of us as the standard we will inevitably fail to meet.
I admire her. But I will not seek to emulate her. Her indulgence of powerful men and her racism were ruinous even in her immediate family, and catastrophic for the world. What she did so amazingly well is a thing that should never have been done.
Which loops back to sorrow. Those glimpses of the woman she could’ve been: the 18yo ambulance driver, the rider galloping her own racehorse.
What a fucking waste and betrayal of all her strength and integrity, to pour it out in the service of maintaining a corrupt status quo.
What a waste of mine.
