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Queen Elizabeth II has died

(www.bbc.com)
2827 points xd | 1 comments | 08 Sep 22 17:33 UTC | HN request time: 0.229s | source
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saberience ◴[08 Sep 22 17:52 UTC] No.32769157[source]▶
It's weird, I've never considered myself a "royalist" but this news has affected me quite strongly. I just burst into tears unexpectedly on hearing this news and I don't quite understand why I feel so very sad. I guess I have grown up and lived my whole life (as a Brit) seeing and hearing the Queen, singing "God save the Queen" etc, and this news made me suddenly feel very old, very nostalgic, with the sense that all things pass in time, which makes my heart ache deeply.
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1. supernova87a ◴[08 Sep 22 20:40 UTC] No.32771782[source]▶
I find this super interesting, and I have a hunch it has to do with how much the Queen/monarchy has been revealed as human to us through media, movies, entire Netflix shows, etc.

I mean, the Queen could just as well have been a made up figure to you or me, given the vanishing possibility she would affect any of our lives directly. Yet after watching those stories about her life, the monarchy, it manipulates your neurons to actually have a person to mourn. Funny, isn't it? And the length of her life certainly gave enough material to feel some story.

I imagine that before QE2, much state/people mourning of the sovereign was just symbolic, and though perhaps somewhat heartfelt (I daresay, but more for loss of the symbol), not deep. For all their quirks and personality problems revealed to us on TV, it actually caused them to mean more to us.