As she celebrates her Diamond Jubilee, Her Majesty shows there’s more to the royal revival than stiff upper lips and silly hats
I’ve confessed a lot in this column: my inclination toward introversion, my forbearance for Justin Marshall, my woes for the world’s end, my nostalgia for notebooks and a few other things you probably don’t remember.
But this might be the most harmful to my reputation, the thing that makes me feel like an 80-year-old woman in 23-year-old’s body: I am an anglophile.
My wallet is decorated with a Union Jack, and not because it’s trendy. I think Cate Blanchet is the best Elizabeth I. I think London is the greatest city in the world. I love the rain and Coronation Street and trains and rolling hills.
So you can imagine how I felt Monday. It was Queen Elizabeth II’s 60th year as queen — her Diamond Jubilee (to be properly celebrated in June). The only other British monarch to reign as long was Queen Victoria. Congrats Liz.
I guess the saving grace in all of this is that, lately, it’s not just me and the ladies at quilting club. Thanks to Will and Kate and Downton Abbey, the western world is going through a royal revival.
Hallelujah?
It’s not really political or social, though it’s strange that a show like Downton Abbey and Will and Kate have become smashingly popular around the time the Occupy Movement sprung. If anyone screams one per cent, it’s the Queen.
And all this at a time when the middle class is slowly disappearing – as the gap between the rich and poor grows — the opposite of Downton’s story line.
The show has gained a near cult following in the UK and North America. Even my brother and two of his 20-something-year-old friends took time to watch some episodes recently.
It follows the slow decline of aristocracy through the lives of an Earl, his wife and three daughters in the early 20th century.
Servants dress them, make their food and answer their telephone while staying loyal to the family, who live a glamorous yet idle life. “What is a weekend?” the family matron, the Dowager Countess (Dame Maggie Smith) asks in the first episode.
But the First World War will gradually strip the nobility of their glamorous gowns and positions. As more than one character has remarked, life before the war seems like a dream.
And as the nobility fall, so does the fairyland image of princesses and perfection, of long afternoons and idle activities and all the pretense that went with it. After all, the royal house of Windsor is no fairytale perfect family.
Does anyone remember when Prince Harry dressed as a Nazi soldier and wore Swastikas? Or when Charles cheated on Diana with Camilla, or when Diana cheated on Charles with everyone — or was that after the divorce? Does it matter? It doesn’t quite ring noble bells. It doesn’t speak of honour and chivalry.
In Downton, it is often the servants who show greater nobility than the nobles; they seem to carry the noblesse oblige of the house. Nobility transcends class and breaks the barrier of blood.
And after 60 years where honour and civility can seem to only exist in a fading dream, Queen Elizabeth still personifies that feeling of nobility we don’t want to die quite yet. Maybe the reason so many are tuning in to watch the lives of a highborn family unfold is that nearly 100 years out of a class society, we still feel that little pea at the bottom of our beds. Or at least, we hope so.
Then again, maybe it’s just because the clothes are bloody smashing.
