Monarchy is just something you could not institute or invent, in 2022. For perfectly understandable reasons, it would be difficult to win support for the idea of placing a crown on the head of Michael D. Higgins, swearing allegiance to him for life, and pledging loyalty to the heirs and successors of his body.
For many people, the fact that it would be ridiculous to try and invent a new Monarchy in this day and age is evidence enough that Monarchy itself is an archaic thing, which should long have been abolished.
Add to that the various Irish sensitivities around history, and you end up with a country that openly regards the existence of the British Crown as a thing that is at best faintly ridiculous and at worst, evidence of that country’s alleged desire to stomp, like William the Conqueror, its neighbours into submission.
And yet, for all that, there will be many Irish people who feel sad today, many of them in ways that they cannot quite explain. Perhaps I cannot explain it either, but I will try.
Unlike any politician, for the vast majority of us, Elizabeth has been with us all our lives. She has been our neighbour. Because she wielded no political power, the drama and interest in her life came not from budgets or wars, but in family moments: Weddings and funerals and divorces and scandals and rows and births. She was an odd mix of the personal, and the political: Cited by our Orange neighbours in Northern Ireland as the owner of their highways, cited in the tabloids as the pitied mother of troublesome sons. She was both a figure athwart history, with her face on coins and stamps and so on, and a person living through it like the rest of us, who lost family members in the northern troubles and who had to patiently interact with, and put up with, every Pope and American President and British Prime Minister of the last 70 years, whatever she felt about them.
Monarchy is one of those ideas that is ridiculous, and yet works. As I write this, there is a grown man on the television standing in front of Buckingham Palace in tears, telling the interviewer that he feels as if he has lost a family member. That is why Monarchy works.
Michael D Higgins and his country will ever and always be two separate and distinct things – one can be loyal to one, and despise the other. In a Monarchy, the head of state and the state itself are indivisible. She was not just the Queen of the United Kingdom, but the personification of the Kingdom itself. It is easier to be loyal to a person than an idea. That is why Monarchy works. Because for all the objections to jewels and coaches and palaces, the Queen is just an ordinary person living her life without any real interest in politics or controversy. She doesn’t make the fuss: Her people make it about her.
But it helps when the Monarch is a good one.
When Elizabeth’s father, George VI, passed away in 1953, Eamon DeValera rose to his feet in the Dáil. He said:
In a constitutional monarchy the Sovereign, bound to act as his Ministers advise him, has but little opportunity for personal distinction in the open field of politics and statesmanship, though he may in private, by wise counsel and prudent persuasion, greatly influence the framing of State policy and its day-to-day execution.
His distinction has to be won otherwise: by the public example he gives and the standards which he sets, in his family life, in his devotion to duty, in the courage with which he faces the changing fortunes of life, in the extent to which he makes himself a worthy symbol of his people, a rallying point for them in times of danger, and a bond of union in times of adversity.
It was by such standards that the peoples of Britain had to judge their late Sovereign, and they never found him wanting. He grew accordingly in their affections as the years went by. They now mourn his loss. We wish to tender to them a neighbourly understanding, and a neighbourly sympathy.
There is much that is true there, and much to commend.
Elizabeth II was all of those things to her people, many of them on this island: Devoted to her duty, facing the changing fortunes of life with courage, making herself a worthy symbol, a rallying point in times of danger, and a bond of union in times of adversity. She was her father’s heir not just legally, but in how she lived and did her duty. Her life was not just about doing her job, but about making her father proud of her – something many of us aspire to about our own fathers, and mothers.
There are many of us Irish people who will feel an almost curious, inexplicable sadness in their bones at the passing of Elizabeth. And that is okay, and normal.
She has been a constant in all our lives for seventy long years. She was our neighbour, and insofar as her position – the nominal head of the British state, but not responsible for its decisions – made it possible, tried to be our friend.
Besides all of that, she has lived a life of decency, even when some of those around her, even within her own family, have not. She is perhaps the last living world figure whose whole life, we can say, has been devoted to duty rather than ambition.
She was British, not Irish, but I for one felt more affection for her, and trusted more in her integrity, than I ever will for whatever politician we elevate next to the Aras. And though we might deny it, there are many Irish people who will feel the same. That is why Monarchy works.
May she rest in peace. And for her sake, may her heir prove himself up to the task.