The People's Nan?

 A key pillar of the queen's personal popularity has been the construction of the image of a benevolent old matriarch. Whichever royal correspondent or press secretary came up with this idea deserved a raise, but given how the Windsors treat their staff probably got nothing. It's a new trick and was unthinkable with previous monarchs it was too undignified and brought the sovereign too close to the commoners, but queen liz the nation's grandma worked very well.

I've encountered many people who are at best indifferent to aristocracy and some who are openly against it as a concept and have genuine loathing for individual members, Charles, Andrew etc. who are taking the death of this 96 year old really badly. 

It never worked for me though, even as a child I thought the soundbites on the news  about the nation's grandmother were empty. The reason is because the queen was one of the few people in the world my actual grandmother openly disliked. She thought it was absurd and offensive that one family should not only get a free ride off the backs of everyone but to be fawned over too really got at her. My Nana came to the UK after WWII with her husband to find work, she had to raise eleven children by herself often relying on the produce of a small plot and a chicken coop to ensure everyone was fed. I genuinely don't understand how she did it, keeping 13 people fed and clothed alone at a time when there were no modern efficient appliances and with frequent moving across Britain and Ireland. The past really is another world.

Despite everything she was a kind and caring woman, apart from Liz 2 the only people I can recall her expressing open contempt for were weapons manufacturers and governments that enabled them and were keen to start wars[1]. I miss her dearly and often. I do not miss Elizabeth 2, on the contrary I'm already sick of her half way through the mandated mourning period. And I would also note that when my Nana did pass away the outpouring of grief and sympathy had no coercion or social obligation, it was completely genuine. I used to find this line of propaganda laughable, I now find it offensive. Queen Elizabeth 2 was not my grandmother, but if she were then she would have been a rubbish one. The kind that never bothered with her family and expected them to make all the efforts, who never gave out presents or sweets and spent her fortune on indulgent trips and stubbornly refused to leave her ridiculously outdated and drafty mansion(s). Furthermore, when she did pass on she had the cheek to stick us with an expensive burial to arrange and the unsurprising but still insulting news that all of the inheritance of her vast estates is going exclusively to her chosen favourites, the same weird sycophantic cousins she spoiled rotten while alive. 

Where are my humbugs and Werthers originals Liz?

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1: I can see her now, watching the news footage of aerial bombardment and tank formations cursing that the folk in charge always find money for bullets.