Edinburgh vigil

[Goatling]

Just caught the last few minutes of this on tv, I found it very difficult to watch. I felt so sorry for HMQ's children standing around her coffin while members of the public filed by gawking. I know they say they were paying respects but I couldn't have stood there watching if it was my parent.

I started a post saying the same thing. I expected them to stop the public from filing past whilst the vigil was held. It made me very uncomfortable that the King and his siblings where there holding vigil whilst the public walked past gawping. Whether you are a Royalist or not, this is a family grieving for their mother, who is the Queen, so the majority of that grieving has to be done in public, but this just seemed wrong somehow.

The BBC close coverage of their faces was too much. Maybe other broadcasters did the same, I don't know. But it was too much for me. If they had to film them it should have been from a distance.

I don’t mean this in a cruel way, truly, but I don’t particularly feel extra sorry for them either even though it’s poignant and moving and must be very difficult.

This is in the nature of their role — a family situation has to be conducted and lived through in a highly symbolic public way. It seems to be the exact flip side of their enormous privilege — which again, I honestly do not mean in a chippy or scornful way. But they aren’t really private citizens, they just aren’t. They chose to conduct the vigil as a symbolic public act and that’s fine; so if the cameras zoom in, that’s fine too surely? Not that I watched; but to me it seems okay for the public to want to watch, to be interested or curious in a way that wouldn’t be okay if they were an ordinary family.

I do, however, agree people should switch off their bloody phones.