Above, mourners at Buckingham Palace after the death of Queen Elizabeth II, September 2022.
Below, mourners at the same place in August 1997.
How long did it last?
Why?
Studies have shown that for most people, the worst symptoms of grief — depression, sleeplessness, loss of appetite — peak at six months. As the first year continues, you may find these feelings ebb.
https://beyond.life/help-centre/grief-loss-bereavement/how-long-does-grief-last/
Talking-up Scotland 
“Everything peaks at 6months”.
Except the Brit Nat mejah have np off switch.
They will milk this funeral till the end of time, with the BEEB leading the slavering pack.
But the Royals, without Betty to keep them in check, will revert to type.
Randy Andy/Harry will be targeted.
There are younger Royals coming along, and the press Wolfpack will gleefully hunt them down.
Kids with hormones? No hiding place.
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Lot of agreement with that Gavin. The “framing” of the last week and a bit has been most telling – “the nation united in grief” for instance. Well the nation is not necessarily united in grief for one thing as the arrests of a number of (rather insensitive) republicans points to that. The boy in Edinburgh who got arrested was to some extent arrested for his own safety, but did he really have to be charged? What happened to “freedom of speech”? Given that the place was likely to be full of somewhat emotional royalists what he did was monumentally stupid, but was it a crime? In today’s environment quite possibly it was – upsetting others, and so causing breach of the peace (which if allowed to proceed would very likely have taken the form of him getting his head kicked in).
The other thing though is “the nation united”, the nation being of course the UK, which is an important policy outcome for Johnson and, it looks like, Truss as well. We have now had 10 days of this and I doubt its finished yet.
But how similar to Diana? Diana was about grief, and that was about it. Elizabeth though was overlaid by a number of other qualities/ variables – tradition, unity of UK, service, loyalty etc. While the reaction to the Queen’s death was profound, the reaction to Diana was much more hysterical, so a massive outpouring at the time, but given its initial scale that could not be expected to be maintained. This is not going to be a post-Elizabeth problem and I would expect Charles to cite his mother at any and every opportunity (expect “continuity” to get big licks) as he attempts to mark out his own kingship. But even this wont last – we all know his mum is dead and that he’s the man now, so get on with it.
One observation, if you have read “Scotch on the Rocks” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotch_on_the_Rocks) co-written by Douglas Hurd (one of Thatcher’s Foreign Secretaries) is that the name of the King in that book was Charles III (I think).
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Diana’s death was unexpected. 96 is a fair age to go. 79 is average life expectancy. Going lower in the south under the Tories
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Quietly /conveniently forgotten has been the initial reaction of the ”mourners” to Diana’s death – the anger of the crowds directed against The Queen for her apparent indifference to the death of her daughter-in-law . Had they been able , they would have hanged , drawn and quartered ”her Maj ” outside the gates of Buckingham Palace .
Many of these same people are now distraught at the death of the same woman they vilified in 1997 !
Don’t expect this manufactured ”grief” to last !
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I think you make a good point here James Mills, notwithstanding Alasdair Galloway’s insightful statement about the factors relevant to the grief for the late Queen. There was substantial anger directed at the Queen in particular and the Royal Family in general. In his funeral oration the brother of the Princess of Wales, Viscount Althorp, was scathing about them.
Undoubtedly, there are people who feel a strong emotional attachment to the monarchy, but I have never been clear whether this is to the institution or to the person, but I suspect that it is a combination. And, undoubtedly, there is a determined effort by the establishment via the media to endow the persons of the Roayl Family with the most admirable of human qualities, indeed, superhuman ones: theirs are in someway superior to ours. The ‘otherness’ is heightened because of the selective presentation of these qualities and the exclusion of most of us for most of the time to the swathe of their lives and personalities. This what Bagehot and others called ‘the magic’.
The media, of course, have the cadre of establishment propagandists who continually preach the ‘authorised version’ and present it as steeped in history when most of it is scripted to suit the prevailing ethos. Part of this includes the ‘vox pops’ and the cropped and selected photographs of ‘ordinary people.
However, the great majority of the population is not uninsightful and the realities of poverty will focus the minds.
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Bereavement
‘Intense sorrow, pain and rumination over the loss of your loved one is a natural description and “Each to their own”comes to mind on such occasions; however, in this day and age, when one’s reading references about the British Empire, the task of filtering out what may or may not be propaganda is an unwelcome task for most of us.
My parent’s generation couldn’t possibly have anticipated what our country’s current political circumstances seem to be… And that’s difficult enough for today’s population! However, our teenage people are now able to cast their votes and do have access to information that their grandparents would have found astounding.
I am a retired man – not ‘earning a living – however, although I’ve had a few paid jobs, the last one involved meeting a wide range of people, including some Europeans – I was a qualified Driving Instructor who, while teaching, was also learning from many of my pupils… A win-win situation, I feel!
In closing, I’ll quote a friend’s description of “a quiet man with an active mind”, about someone that’s calmly and comfortably sure that Scotland will SOON be an independent country again!
Thanks for your time,
Ewen
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