On the passing of Queen Elizabeth II

I've never been that interested in England's royal family. But I find I'm oddly saddened, shocked, surprised (I'm not sure of the right word) about Queen Elizabeth II's passing.

I'm not British. I don't even follow British news any more than most Americans. I'm also not a member of the British Commonwealth. I do have a certain fondness for Canada, but the fact that the Queen/King of England is also the Queen/King of Canada figures only incidentally into why I feel that way. (In case you're wondering, I'm not one of those people who say, "if things get too bad here in the United States, I'll move to Canada." There's much to like about Canada. But it has its own problems, and I'm not convinced I'd fit in there.)

I guess you could say I have a cultural affinity for England. Don't be fooled by my pseudonym. My real-life name is Anglo, not Irish. While I know almost nothing about the English side of my background--I don't know when my (English) ancestors came over--it's probably present, in a weird way, in how I view things. My sister did one of those "find your ancestors in your DNA" tests, and it came back even more white than I expected. I refuse to concede that biology is a good basis for conferring moral judgments against others (on that score, I differ from many of those who today claim to be "anti-racist"). However, I do, despite my own ideals, feel a sense of "family belonging" that is probably a cousin to the sense of racial belonging that I claim to reject.

I was a bit of a history buff growing up. And I learned quite a lot of European history. My takeaway was (and mostly still is) that England was the best of the lot. That was partly because of my biased source material, but also because I came to that honest assessment. Whether or not England was really "the best" (there is quite a lot to be said against it), I learned a lot more about England's monarchy than I ever learned about the other monarchs of Europe or elsewhere. (It's for that reason that the new king's choice to call himself "Charles III" seems inauspicious to me. Charles I had a very rough go of it, to put it mildly. And whatever you can say of Charles II, having to "restore" your monarchy after your dad made a mess of it isn't an ideal situation to be in.)

Whatever cultural affinity I have for England, one fact tied me to the Queen: she reigned throughout my life (I'm almost 50). I knew that England had had kings in the past, but I wasn't used to thinking of a current monarch of England as "the king." Even to say "the King of England" and mean the present-day monarch of England sounds weird to me.