rule britannia

I succeeded in getting up at 4:30am to watch Queen Elizabeth's funeral. Of course, this means I didn't succeed in doing much of anything else today. The first part of the funeral at Westminster Abbey, including the processions before and after, lasted a couple of hours, and then I took a nap before the second part of the ceremony at Windsor. It was all pretty moving, from the precision and pageantry that went into the whole day (and the ten days leading up to it), to the human grief behind the formalities.

I've lost some interest in the royals the last few years - partially because I haven't been writing romances, and so haven't been doing any research into British history, and partially because it's increasingly clear that the family is determined to continue repeating generational traumas and self-inflicted wounds that have been going on since George I showed up from Hanover in the early 1700s after (allegedly) murdering his wife's lover, (actually) imprisoning his wife for the rest of her life, and becoming estranged from his son, who would be George II. Whether they're Hanovers, Saxe-Coburg-Gothas, or Windsors, they've had a nearly unbroken chain of animosity, infidelity, and bad family decisions going back over three hundred years.

I suppose that drama makes for good tv / clickbait, and also I clearly know too much about it. But it will be interesting to see where the monarchy goes from here. Queen Elizabeth managed to stay above the fray of all of that, and her father was a hero during WWII, so it's been 80+ years since the monarch him/herself was a scandal. She managed to overcome all the messes with her children and grandchildren - but I don't know if Charles will be so lucky. And unfortunately for Charles, he's inheriting when he's 70+ years old and everyone has had seventy years to form an opinion about him; this is very different from Elizabeth inheriting at 25, and then being so silent in so many ways that the nation could project its idea of the monarchy upon her.

So...I'm less interested in the monarchy now, but I still watched the funeral, and I'm still glad I did. It's the end of an era, and it was interesting to see it live rather than catching the soundbites later.

After that, I took a couple of naps, ate some leftover chili, did some house tasks, etc. I also talked to Alyssa, who was in good form. And I got takeout pizza for dinner, since I don't have many groceries, which is a situation I shall rectify tomorrow.

And now, I need to catch up on the sleep I missed last night - goodnight!