Now, the passing of a monarch and the accession of a new one is a strange dual event in British history, because on the one hand, you have the death of a monarch, the passing of an era, the mourning of the loss. And on the other hand, you have the accession of a new king, a new monarch, the beginning of a new era, and all the pageantry and pomp that goes with that. And so they're happening concurrently.

And so it's been a really fascinating few days. So I thought I would sort of go back and talk about how the week played out and go on from there. So it was supposed to be just a regular week in brief. politics. It was a week that had been waited for for about six weeks. The election of a new prime minister was, or a new leader of the conservative party was going to be over and Boris Johnson was going to formally resign and then the new prime minister would be appointed.

It was either going to be Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak. I'm not going to get political. That that's not what this is about. And so on Monday it was announced that it would be Liz Truss is the new prime minister. But then it was also announced that the queen would not return to London to do the, quote, kissing of the hands. She would not return to Buckingham Palace where Boris Johnson would formally resign and then trust would be, she would be asked to form a government.

Like she would not do that. That was a big departure from tradition alone, but it was said that her doctors recommended that she not travel. So that meant the prime minister. and the new leader had to go to Balmoral in Scotland where the queen has been for most of the last couple months. And so on Tuesday, we were presented with the pictures of the formal transfer of power, the kissing of the hands. The queen asked those trusts to form a government and all the wheels went in motion for that as they normally do, just with the added historical context that.

that this was unusual. And many people, me included, when they saw the pictures of the event in Balmoral, were sort of alarmed because the queen looked frail, and she's looked frail this whole past year. I mean, she's 96 years old, or she was 96 years old, and she had some really bad bruising on her hands, and she looked much worse than she had previously. and so fast forward to Thursday and I'm we're based out here in California now so we're eight hours behind London time so like things sort of happen in the middle of the night while we're sleeping and so I woke up and saw all these alerts on my phone that that the queen was very ill and the rest of the royal family was urged to head to bout moral moral and so I knew immediately that this was probably it.

So I turned on my BBC news feed and basically watched and waited while I worked and sort of prepared for the inevitable. And then sure enough, about mid-morning here, the news came that she had died. And then I watched it live from the BBC. Huw Edwards announced it. It was strange. The news alert on my Apple watch to notify me before anything else did by seconds. I mean, it wasn't like a significant amount of time. And that was it.

The Elizabethan, second Elizabethan age was over. And I'm not going to lie. I got very emotional in that moment. I cried. It was very upsetting. It's, you know, like I said, it's one of those things we've expected for years, but you can never really be ready for. and it's, it just, it's, it's, it was very upsetting. And then, so immediately, once the queen died, Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales, he became king. There's no gap in power.

There's no, there's no, like, there's no formal ceremony that has to take place right away. Those, those, those come later, like, the crown passes, the crown is immortal, the crown does not die, and it immediately passed to Charles, and he became king. And within hours, it had been confirmed that he'd chosen Charles III as his regnal name, and that this was the new reality. And it was all so surreal to watch play out on Thursday. And, yeah, it's been a, it's been an interesting week.

So, as an American, it's kind of weird that I have this fascination for the British royal family. but I'm not the only one that does. There are lots of reasons why Americans cared so much about Elizabeth. But I think the major reason is that she was such a permanent fixture on the world stage and a calming force for the world. And this force of a person who was never meant to be the reigning monarch, but took on the role and performed her duties.

You know, her famous quote was never complain and never explain. And people really admired that. And while the royal family has had their, you know, plenty of scandals and plenty of dramas, the queen has sort of of always been the studying force in British cultural life and in the wider world. And she was very beloved in America. I mean, she, I lost count of how many American presidents that she had met and received. Some not so great, some perfectly, perfectly wonderful.

But she had to meet them all. You know, it's, you know, they, she had 15 prime ministers of Britain. You know, her first prime minister was Winston Churchill. That is a baffling and fascinating fact that her reign started with. Britain's greatest prime minister and wartime leader and ended with Liz Truss being prime minister for essentially two days. And it's so bizarre. So one question I get asked a lot about is why do Americans care so much about the British royal family and the queen?

And I think there's There's a lot of reasons why. And I think, and I'm going to talk about those reasons, because I think they're interesting. And you can talk back in the comments and see if you agree with me or not. And, you know, why do we care so much about the royal family when we make such a big point of having gotten rid of the royal family back in 1776? And I think it's because when you look back in that historical contact, independence was never, there was like, like 30% of of colonists who did not want independence from Britain.

And when the war ended and we had our independence, they still wanted to have the king. And some fled Canada, some fled further afield. And many just stayed and maintained their affection for their lost king and they're kind of a silent constituency. And that that kind of thread continued in American society and culture that maybe some people thought we were better off of the royal family. But, you know, we decided to go on a different path.

And I think the sort of second element is far, is more far reaching. Many Americans have deep British roots. I was reading up that according to an Ancestry.com survey from a few years ago, nearly 72 million Americans have British roots. And by British, I mean English, Scottish, Welsh. That's almost as many people as currently live in the United Kingdom. And while other sort of ethnic, groups in America like Irish Americans, Italian American, Mexican Americans, African Americans have well-defined and vocal constituencies and identities.

Many Americans of British descent don't really have that, or they're kind of a silent minority. And I think that manifests itself in this appreciation for the royal family and all things British. I mean, British TV and British culture is so incredibly popular here. And these, quote, British Americans is kind of blended into American life. and, you know, many of these Americans will remember their ancestors and where they came from and sort of have an inbuilt fondness for the royal family as a consequence.

And the queen was the embodiment of that just because she was such a good person, a good figure. My own story is very American. I wrote about this in my book a few years ago. When we traced my ancestry, I found deep American roots going back to the mid-1800. but I was still able to find that I had English ancestors. And they came from a small village in Durham called Shincliffe. And it's mind-blowing to think that these people, they were born in a cottage in Northern England and decided to seek better opportunity in the new world.

And they abandoned everything they knew and sailed to America when it was still incredibly dangerous to do so. And started a new life. And that became, you know, a part of my familial identity. And when I visited the village a few years ago, I felt immediately at home, despite 150 years separating me from my ancestors there. And there's a lot of Americans like me who have this ancestry, who have an affinity for British thing just because it's part of our DNA, it's part of who we are.

And a lot of Americans, you know, they like to say that because we're a young country and we only have a couple hundred years of history. We're always kind of searching for deeper roots and deeper history than we actually have. And going back to the old country, going back to our British roots gives us cements our ancestry and a place that's endured for a thousand years or anything on how far back you go. And we're sort of connected to that continuum of British history.

And while we have sort of gone on our own path, you know, the base of American cultural life is the laws and structures and ideas that came from the English common law tradition, the British cultural tradition, and the British political tradition. And we've sort of taken those ideas and created our own thing from it. And I think it's important to acknowledge that. And I think because of that, we still have this affinity for anachronistic things like a royal family.

And, you know, in America, our politics are very divisive. Our head of state is a political figure. He's a but also an administrative figure. Whereas in Britain, you have, the Iranian monarch is an apolitical figure. They don't participate in politics. They don't have opinions. They serve the nation. They are, they kind of represent all the people. And I think that, you know, that would be kind of nice to have instead of. of having to argue every four years over who should be president and, you know, getting in one camp and vehemently disagreeing with the people in the other camp and creating this divisive environment that we have that's especially bad right now, you know, sure would be nice to have a head of state who was apolitical, in my opinion.

I think another element of why there are so many American Anglophiles and who love the royal family is that after World War, There were a lot of U.S. servicemen who passed through Britain fighting for freedom against the Nazis who found themselves falling in love with the local British women. And it's estimated that there were something like 70,000 war brides who moved to America after the war, starting new lives with their American husbands. But they never stopped being English and or British.

And they had, you know, hundreds of thousands of children, which led to hundreds of thousands of grandchildren. and they all had an affinity for their mother's homeland or their grandmother's homeland and, you know, sort of had that inbuilt appreciation of where their mother came from and the things that she would have experienced and the things that she would have appreciated like a queen, you know, everyone loved to listen to their mother's stories about the old country and watched and probably watched as she cried on Coronation Day.

And, you know, you can live, you can move to a place and live your whole life in a place and still maintain that connection to where you came from. And I think down the generational lines, that's where we get this popularity of all things British and Royal in America. And then I think there's a final element worth mentioning is that British culture is that British culture is deeply embedded in American society. And while it's well known that American.

culture in Hollywood movies and American music dominates world culture and is very popular. I would argue that British culture is the second most popular cultural force in the world. You know, it's the, it's cultural currency. And from Harry Potter to James Bond and Jane Austen and Doctor Who and, you know, in my own life, I grew up with Roald Dahl and Mr. Bean and Doctor Who being being critical parts of my childhood and adolescence and British culture is everywhere in America and we can't get enough of it.

And there's constantly new things coming and, you know, from even as recently as Great British Bakeoff, which became a, you know, a massive hit here. People love British things and you only have to look at how much money the last Downton Abbey movie made to know that there's huge appetite for this kind of thing. And it's, you know, British culture is everywhere in America and we appreciate it. And that's what led me to start Anglotopia, you know, because I wanted a website dedicated to all things British.

So it's only right that we American Anglophiles have such an affection, had such an affection for the queen. She was Britain's grandmother. And I would argue to some extent, she was America's grandmother, too. And like I said earlier, you know, I cried yesterday when they announced she died. You know, this is, this is a woman who is not my queen. I'm not a British subject. I'm an American. I was still very sad that she had died.

I'm still very sad about it. But it's also an auspicious time because, you know, now the queen is gone. She has left the stage. It's time for a king to enter the stage. And, you know, the queen leaves a powerful legacy. And she was this permanent fixture in the world, sort of a permanent thing in an impermanent world, and now she's gone. But now we can see her legacy and her son, Charles, who is now King Charles III.

He's the living embodiment of her legacy. And I think through him, Elizabeth will continue. As I said earlier, the crown is immortal. It is permanent. And now it's on Charles's head. And there There's, over the years, there's been a lot of, like, gossip and talk. People were like, well, we don't want Charles to be king. And we'd rather skip over him and go right to William and, you know, with all the scandals and whatnot. And, you know, he's not, not suitable.

And, you know, as we saw this week, a lot of that immediately disappeared as soon as he was king. Now, I'm not saying he's going to be without criticism. at all, but he immediately stepped into the role. And so far, two days in, he's nailed it. His speech yesterday to the nation was heartfelt. It was perfect. He delivered it perfectly. He's, he's, you know, and granted, I know there's an element of stage management, and he didn't, I know he didn't write his speeches.

I know that he's being told what to do, but he's fulfilling the role that he needs to fulfill for a nation and mourning, but also celebrating the accession of a new monarch. And, you know, it's monarchies work, they're hereditary. You don't get a say in who the next monarch is. It just happens. And I think that's one thing that a lot of people outside of Britain struggle with is, you know, well, you don't get to say.

Yeah, well, no, you don't get to say, you know, it was always going to be Charles. You know, he's in his sense. 70s. And if you base, you know, his longevity based on the longevity and his family, he's probably going to reign for 20 or 30 years. So we are now in the new Carolinian age and the reign of King Charles III. And it's, it's really hard to get used to saying that, to saying King Charles and the king, you know, a minor amusing thing is, you know, since we started Anglotopia.

We had a section on the site called The Queen, which is where all the articles about the Queen went. I had to create a new section of the site for the King because now there's the King and all the things about the King will go there. And it's such a weird, like, minor thing, but it's like, oh, I got to do that now. And now, you know, we don't, we won't be talking about the Queen. We'll be talking about the King.

And I was saying on Twitter the other day that Britain is going to change in a thousand minor, but significant. ways in the coming weeks, months, and years. You know, every, sort of every aspect of British society is going to be touched in some way. And some things are practical, like there's going to need to be new money. Don't worry, the old money will still be fine until then. There's going to be, they're going to have to redo all the stamps, all the coinage.

They're going to have to, you know, when they put in a new post box, it's going to have to have Charles's cipher, when all the passports are going to have to change. change. It's no longer her majesty's government. It's his majesty's government. You know, the one thing that kind of got a lot of headlines was, well, the national anthem is going to have to change. It's now God save the king, not God save the queen. And granted, that's a minor update.

And, you know, no one's officially done it yet, but it's already been done. People were literally down on the mile in front of Buckingham Palace singing God Save the King on the day it happened. And I highly recommend, and I'll put a link. in the show notes, because we have it on the site. Katherine Jenkins recorded the famous British soprano. Great voice. Highly recommend her work. She recorded a new version of God Save the King, and it was broadcasted the BBC Radio for her, and it was beautiful.

There wasn't a dry eye in the radio studio when they, when they broadcast it. And I don't think, I don't think a lot of Americans realize how much Britain is going to change under a new monarch, and it's a fascinating change because it's both sudden and gradual and they'll just kind of get used to it. So what is there to expect next? And I think, because there's a, we've gotten a lot of questions and we've gotten a lot of questions on Twitter.

And there's kind of a lot to unwrap here. So as I said earlier, we have the accession of a new king, but we all also have the funeral of the old monarch, and that that official morning process is going to last approximately 10 days. So yesterday we had Charles returned to London with his new queen consort, Camilla, and he greeted up well-wishers, and then he met with his prime minister, and then he made his address to the nation, and there was a service to Thanksgiving at St.

Paul, and there was a lot. A lot happened yesterday, even though it wasn't really, a lot of people didn't expect so much to happen that day. And so right now, the queen is still in bow moral. And then on the 12th, or on the 11th, I'm sorry, tomorrow the 11th, she's going to be taken to Edinburgh. And then she's going to lie in state in St. Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh for a small service and a vigil by members of the royal family.

And then on the 13th, it's expected to be flown to London and moved to Buckingham Palace. And then on the 14th, the Queen will begin lying in state at the Palace of Westminster following a procession of the coffin from Buckingham Palace to the Houses of Parliament. It will, I believe it will be held in Westminster Hall, which is the only surviving bit from before the fire of London. It's a beautiful thousand-year-old space. If you ever have a chance to do a tour of the houses of Parliament, even if you ever have a chance to do a tour of the houses of parliament, even if you're not interested in politics.

I highly recommend it. The architecture and history there is amazing. And so then she's going to lie in state. And what that means is, you know, the coffin's going to lay there and she'll be guarded by ceremonial guards. And then the public will have a chance to file past and pay their respects. I expect this to be a very popular thing to do to anybody who can get to London. The British get to practice. They're one of their favorite national past times of queuing because you will be queuing for hours if you attempt to do this.

It's going to take a while. There will be lines for days. And then she'll lie in state probably until the 19th. And then, which is Monday the 19th of September. They haven't actually formally announced the date yet, but everyone suspects that because they're a little esoteric thing is they're following something that's called Operation London Bridge, which was the plan for what happens when the queen dies. And it got leaked a few years ago in a big long article that explained everything.

So everybody kind of knows the broad strokes of what's going to happen in the next few days. And so on the 19th, that will be the formal state funeral. And it was just announced today. that it's going to be a bank holiday. Everybody has the day off. If they want to watch it, I'm sure some people will just enjoy the day off and that's okay. The funeral is expected to take place at Westminster Abbey. There will be a procession in town probably.

And then the coffin will be taken to St. George's Chapel at Windsor Castle. And that's where the queen will be interred because that's where her mother and father are interred. That's where Prince Philip is interred. And she'll be laid rest next to him. And I believe that element of the service will be. So that's sort of the details of the funeral. And I'll link to an article we published on Thursday night that kind of details all of this.

So you can follow along. And I know that you can count on most of the major American networks to cover this. They always cover these big royal events. And this is a big a world event, they will cover it. I am usually disappointed with how American networks cover these British things. They're oftentimes lacking in understanding in the commentary. And a little too, what's the word? I guess they're a little too American and their attitude towards, towards it a little too excited.

So I would recommend if you can get a feed of the BBC feed, I would watch that. It'll probably be broadcast on the BBC World News channel. I suspect it might even be broadcast on BBC America. I'll use a, I will use my own private British TV feed that I have through the service, TV Mucho, and I'll be able to watch the proceedings live. And I'm, I'm sure it'll be broadcast on YouTube. There will not be a shortage of places you'll be able to watch all this coverage.

And that's what to expect. And then, you know, there's a whole, there's all change with the royal family. The line of succession has changed. Everybody has moved up the spot. Titles have changed. I'll link in the show notes to an article that kind of lists all the major titles, but I'll talk about the big ones. The big one is now, and this is announced yesterday officially, that William and Kate, which they were the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, they're now the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and, or now the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and Cambridge because William inherited immediately the Duchy of Cornwall, which was set up six or seven hundred years ago to provide an income for the, for the Prince of Wales.

And speaking of Prince of Wales, William is now officially the Prince of Wales. Kate is now officially the Princess of Wales. And, you know, that's that's going to be a big change for everybody. It's an exciting change. William now sort of takes over the many properties and estates and and kind of pet causes that were important to his father because his father, now that he's king, he can't do a lot of those things anymore. He's busy with the running, you know, with the head of state duties, but also in a lot of his pet causes, he was very political and very opinionated, and he can't have those anymore.

And so those will be taken up by by William now. And William will, you know, sort of elevate and run these things and they'll teach him the administrative duties he needs to know to be king. And it's another training opportunity while he prepares for the big day, hopefully a long way from now when he ascends to the throne. The Camilla is now queen consort. I remember when they got married back in 2005 that there was a lot of hand-wringing over this that no one really wanted Camilla as queen, but she has really been a great partner and wife to Charles and has excelled as the Duchess of Cornwall for the last 17 years.

And I really don't think many people are really upset about her being the queen consort now. There were some people when it was announced earlier this year that the queen wished for her to be the queen consort, that some people were upset about it. But I think overall, people are going to be fine with it. And like I said earlier, with the monarchy, you don't really get to say. They can decide what they want to do, and that's how they're going to do it.

When I started Anglotopia and for years, and as a news publication, you kind of have to kind of have to plan for these things, even though you're not supposed to talk about them, because you don't want to, like, you don't want to talk, like, it's not something you want to think about, but you have to. And we always kind of had a plan in place for when this day would come. And I always thought that when the day came, I'd immediately head to the airport and go to London to cover all this in real time from London.

But unfortunately, that's not going to happen. This is not going to happen. It's just we recently had a big cross-country move family obligations and cost issues. Like, there's just no way I can. And I'm very committed to my day job. There's no way I can just, like, I'm very committed to my day job. There's no way I can just like drop everything and go to London to cover the funeral of a head estate who's not mine.

And I'm really sort of bummed about that, but I do plan to go to the coronation whenever that is, because now we'll have more time to plan for that. And a lot of the issues that are preventing me from leaving now should have gone away by then. So let's talk about the coronation. So Charles was as soon as his mother died. There's no, there's no, nothing formal happens. It just the crown passes. Now, granted, there's been a lot of events, especially today, the accession day where he was formally proclaimed with the Privy Council, and by the, sorry, my dog is very vocal, she would like to get out of her nighttime crate.

So there's a lot of proclamation, stuff that happen after the fact, but the, but the big event is the coronation. So while there's a lot of informal things and, you know, Charles is king immediately, the coronation is always later because the state must go into mourning. There's a, there's a period of mourning the previous monarch, and a coronation is a celebration. And so you don't want to have that too close to the morning and the funeral.

And so Elizabeth's coronation was was over a year after the death of her father, partly because of the privations of post-war Britain. People just wanted to wait until June when the weather would be nicer. So I suspect that the coronation will probably be in the spring of 2023. So, like I said, I hope to be there. In the meantime, though, we'll be able to provide full coverage of everything that happens over the next few months through our partnerships with the Press Association and the writers that we have on the ground there and what we can observe from here.

So you don't have to worry about our coverage. We'll be providing every aspect as soon as we can. So when we celebrated the Platinum Jubilee earlier this year, we released Crown and Glory, which was a tribute to her 70-year reign. And when we were laying it out and designing it, the thought was that we could also use this as a tribute to her when she eventually died. So we're probably going to reissue that and you can buy it on Amazon and we're going to sell copies of it.

But it's the Crown and Glory is a great guide to her life overall, the effect of her rain and everything. So I'll put a link to that. show notes. So I think that is a good place to stop. It's a fascinating time for Britain to watch as an observer. It's also a very sad time. Over the coming days and months, it's going to be really interesting to watch how Britain changes under its new king. And we'll be providing full coverage along the way.

And I'm looking forward to the reign of King Charles III. And I hope you'll all join me in mourning the queen, but also welcoming the new king into power. That's a good overview of what's happened in the last week, what we can expect in the coming weeks and months. So until then, thank you for listening.