ROGER KIMBALL: An American remembrance of the Queen.

I write as an American patriot who is also a confirmed Anglophile. So when I got the sad news this morning that the Queen’s health had taken so dangerous a turn that the palace had summoned her family to Balmoral, I steeled myself for bad news.

Alas, the bad news has now been confirmed. Queen Elizabeth II has died.

It says a lot that when I say “the Queen” even American readers know I can mean only one person. The 96-year-old had just celebrated her platinum anniversary this summer — seventy years on the throne, the longest of any English monarch.

Elizabeth was far and away the most admired head of state in the world. Her good sense, her generosity of spirit, her thoughtful but active reticence have made her one of the most successful monarchs in history. Her long tenure — she was on the throne beginning in the administration of Harry Truman — made her a symbol and a cynosure of stability.

In contrast: “There is reason to worry about the fate of the British monarchy after Elizabeth. Prince Charles is no Commodus to Elizabeth’s Marcus Aurelius. But he is a weak reed with which to support a venerable but also fragile institution.”

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