Is the reputation of the last Queen salvageable ?

[SomeoneCalled]

Many of us respected and thought so well of the Queen. What now?

why do these threads typically start with hyperbole about how much QEII was loved and respected? I would think the majority of people either felt vaguely positive or vaguely negative about her, not “love” or “hate”

I am foreign and from what I remember people made a big fuss about the Queen

Who was saying this?

Personally, I think she did a pretty reasonable job - I struggle to think of much she could have done differently within the confines of the role.

Had she not contributed towards the VG settlement (as she allegedly did but not ever confirmed AFAIK) then I don’t think it would have led to better justice for VG. I think VG would simply have got a smaller settlement.

Could she have encouraged Andrew to give evidence in the US? Maybe, but any legal advice would have been for him not to do so and he was ultimately a grown man deciding that for himself (and we have no idea what was said within the family)

I think the late queen was a good person. But good people can still have huge blind spots when it comes to their own children. It could be that she didn’t have the full truth and chose to protect the monarchy by paying what was necessary to keep everything away. I don’t know. None of us do. She might also have been a spectacularly bad person who deliberately tried to cover up the sins of her son. I don’t think that’s the case though.

Truth is, if any one of us had enough power and money and could make our children’s problems just go away, we might choose to do the same. Of course on Mumsnet, no one is ever going to admit that and I really hope that for me personally I wouldn’t but none of us really know what we’d do.

Which people?

The US press (some of it, anyway) makes quite a fuss about the royal family. I wouldn’t take that as reflective of UK national feeling one way or the other.

Even in the crown she comes across as a decent enough queen but a terrible mother

Most people in The U.K. couldn’t give 2 fucks about her when she was alive..,,and couldn’t gave the same 2 fucks now she’s dead….I doubt many people think about her full stop ( postitive or negative) …..she just wasn’t important to most people

They MET at 13 and 18.
Thats not the same as him shagging a 13 year old

My late husband was brought up on and around Balmoral. His dad was a gardener there. Later, DH worked in the forestry division at Balmoral and was also a ghillie when required.

He thought that the Queen and the Queen Mother were wonderful - always very kind to him and his parents.

He didn't have a lot of time for Prince Philip, but one of DH's pals was at Balmoral a bit longer than DH and said that PP looked after the men in the forestry division - when he took over the running of it, he created merry hell when he discovered that the men in the sawmill hadn't been provided toilet facilities.

Nevertheless, that's nothing to do with how any of the Royal Family interacted with women, etc.

According to DH, the only Royal adjacent who displayed snobbery was Anthony Armstrong Jones - DH had to accompany him on a shoot around the time when A.A.J. was engaged to Princess Margaret.

DH's rueful comment, however, was that his wage was the basic agricultural wage, plus 'sixpence from the Queen'. Hence, he returned to education, got his degree and went into a different line of work - the only advancement at Balmoral was 'dead men's shoes'.

I never met any of the Royals myself. All I know is that DH would never say a bad word about the Queen.

She was the Ma Soprano of Buck House. A ruthless woman. Or maybe she was Tony and the Queen Mother was Ma.

There are dozens of Royal thread on this site alone and 1000s on all other outlets. Perhaps if you are interested, read on and comment

which people? the whole world is quite large

It’s more that The Crown is essentially speculative fiction, written by scriptwriters trying to imagine what someone might feel like if her father’s death catapulted her into a high-profile job with your husband as dutiful prop, or what she felt while refusing to let her sister marry Peter Townsend. Inevitably, because of casting good actors, the royals were frequently portrayed as more thoughtful, sensitive, intelligent and interesting than there’s any evidence they are or were.

or what she felt while refusing to let her sister marry Peter Townsend.

IIRC, it wasn’t so much that QEII “refused to let” Margaret marry.

Margaret (IRL) was aware she could marry Townsend if she stepped out of the line of succession, but chose not to do. Quite possibly with some familial and political pressure, just as pressure was brought on Townsend.

I don’t think - at the time - it was in the monarch’s gift for her to marry and keep her place, given that her uncle had abdicated to marry a divorcee and would presumably have decreed that “allowed” if he had the option.

OP

I rather suspect you have been here before and this is a name change.

However, you are being rather evasive - when asked if you had respect for the Queen which you had now lost, your answer was that you didn’t know her personally. Newsflash - none of us did!

I've always thought this. The whole "duty" thing. It's a totally outdated concept. That family has always been above the law, and stood by an "admit nothing" mantra for years. No-one knows what really goes on but I suspect EVERYTHING is stuck in the past in that institution, including the idea of a "men will be men" attitude towards sex and tolerated mistresses etc.

Yes, I get that, but The Crown’s writers, creating a high-end pseudo historical soap, were basically taking events from the historical record and speculating a backstory eg ‘How would it feel to actually have the power to veto your sister’s marriage?’ or the ‘whether to invite Dodgy Uncle David and his awful wife to your coronation’ plotline being a wedding guestlist story ramped up several notches.

Sorry @BendSinister think i misunderstood your original post!

I enjoy The Crown, but large pinches of salt required all round!

Oh, I enjoyed it too, or at least parts of it, but there’s a real problem with getting very good actors to play fairly ghastly people — they imbue them with far too much warmth, intelligence and humanity, which I think in this case, spilled into public perceptions of the real people. Elizabeth Debicki’s Diana and Josh O’Connor’s Charles, for instance, were considerably more interesting than their RL requivakents!

Curious...who do you think I was before and why is that important? Also about the name change. Why is that part of commenting, since everyone name changes

not “everyone” name changes.

I CBA to recall alll the names, but a number of posts have plopped onto MN in the last few months, in this kind of style, about the RF, Brexit etc - which have a provocative title, a hyperbolic first post and an OP who evades any questions about their own opinion (I notice you didn’t reply to the part of my post)

Not evasive. I had 0 clue what the Queen did to help Andrew, nor that there were trade envoys sponsored by the tax payer nor anything like that. Also the world respected the Queen and enjoyed reading about it. We respected the English monarchy until we came here and started actually reading in proper English and understanding how much rotten the inner working is behind the facade

This is my only political thread. Good I look like others but I am not that clever

What now?
Life will go on as it did before. Those who felt postively about the old Queen will continue to do so. Those who weren't bothered will continue to do so. The press will continue to print a varying mix of nonsense about the royal family as they always have done. Most of us will not read it for the sake of our sanity.

If all of this is new to you OP now you are here reading in English then that is a you thing. People have been reading drivel about the royal family in the British papers for centuries and mostly take it with a pinch of salt the size of the Isle of Wight.