I would just like to take a moment to say just how great our Queen is. Seriously, I think she’s just swell. I am proud to be one of her subjects and I defy anyone to suggest the UK’s had a better queen in the last one hundred and eleven years.
I appreciate that my view of royalty is not unrelated to the fact that I was born abroad. In America, we use the word king to describe cigarette lengths and the word queen to describe bossy bees and thin men who wear wigs and paint their lips to extend well down their chins. So, while my childhood was not dominated by forced reverence to any monarch (which, by the by, in America means a butterfly and would therefore be inappropriate to curtsy to or rearrange our Christmas dinner time for), my adulthood has not been affected by outrage over the fact that the royals are draining the public purse with their fancy pants palaces and crown jewels. I am therefore unencumbered by any outside influence on my decision of whether to cherish or condemn our Queen.
I choose to cherish. Here is why: she’s got a great head on her shoulders, does our Elizabeth. She’s smart enough to have been made Queen, after all. And she continues to be re-elected, so clearly she must have the public’s support. She also has a strange, lingering sort of beauty. Regardless of your age or sexual preference, you must admit that if you bumped into her at the Sainsbury’s petrol station, you’d stop to stare. My guess is you wouldn’t be able to take your eyes off of her. I know I wouldn’t.
ER II is also worth celebrating for the very fact that she keeps going in the face of adversity. Would you have the balls to keep going when newspaper columns are calling for you to literally be dissolved? I shudder to think how I would cope (and pray thanks that the media continues to praise me and my work). How many of us would be able to organise our time successfully so that we could open a bridge in the morning, wave at distance to retarded children midday and then count our swans by tea-time? Our Queen has a tough job, and it is a job. Do not think that having one’s face appear on every stamp, every note, every coin and the occasional Sex Pistols’ album isn’t hard work. It must be exhausting. Yet, every morning she gets up and goes to work, just like the rest of us.
The Royal Highness is one hell of a gal and when I swore allegiance to her, by golly I meant it. I think she is a great role model for young women today. Like Barack Obama she shows that it is possible for underrepresented minorities to reach the top of their professions. But more than that, she teaches girls that, with a little hard work and determination and a dash of inbreeding, they too can grow up to be leader of a once-great empire. And possibly have a pub named after them to boot.
So I say, long live the Queen and the inspiration she spreads like haemophilia!
Everyone Needs an Algonquin 
Agatha’s Public Chimes In