Requiem for a Queen
Some fragmented thoughts on the death of Queen Elizabeth II, the painful legacy of the British Empire, family stories, and Christian theology
Thursday, September 15
Grand Rapids, Mich.
Greetings, dear reader.
In the week since the death of Queen Elizabeth II, people have reacted to the news in such radically divergent ways. We’ve seen sadness, ambivalence, snark, fury—the gamut of grief.
My own complicated feelings are shaped significantly by my family’s personal history with the British Empire. My maternal grandfather was born in Singapore, then part of the British-ruled Straits Settlements. And both my parents hail from the crown colony of Hong Kong, the city whose East-meets-West culture has had a huge effect on me.
Hong Kong’s very existence as a British colony can be traced to the Empire’s shenanigans: In the early 19th century, the illegal opium trade boomed, enriching British traders and devastating Chinese society. China’s efforts to end the lucrative trafficking sparked two wars with Britain in the 1840s and 1850s. The Chinese lost both. The Crown gained, then expanded, its foothold on China’s southeastern flank, building and polishing Hong Kong into a modern metropolis.
Especially after the 1949 Communist takeover on the mainland, Hong Kong was an outpost of relative liberty and stability. Though there was (and still is) tremendous socioeconomic inequality, the British system offered liberty unimaginable north of the border: free trade, free speech, a vibrant free press, and, crucially for my devout Baptist family, freedom of religion.
My paternal grandfather was a Baptist preacher and Bible-college professor. Though most of our family had settled in Hong Kong long before the Communist takeover, he remained in China to teach and to pastor. According to family lore, a couple of years after the revolution, he woke one night feeling a strong push to leave. He’d already obtained the necessary paperwork. So the next morning, he packed his bags and headed for Hong Kong. A few days later, the authorities shut down his college and imprisoned his colleagues—several of them for years.
Occasionally, anti-colonial sentiment flared up in Hong Kong. The Royal Hong Kong Police killed some two dozen protesters during violent clashes in 1967, the year my father left for the U.S. Still, letters from and rare visits to relatives in China reminded my forebears that Beijing’s rule was worse.
British influence pervaded much of everyday life in Hong Kong. Postboxes bore a royal emblem. Coins featured the Queen’s bust. Judges wore (and still wear) horsehair wigs in court. Landmarks and streets carried the names of faraway people and places: Victoria Harbour, Argyle Street (where my family’s church was), Stirling Road (where my paternal grandparents lived). Colonial fingerprints marked even the glass cases at Hong Kong’s ubiquitous bakeries, which were filled with Swiss rolls and egg-custard tarts and buns that were baked, not steamed, as was more traditional in China.
As a child, my mother joined the Girl Guides; she marched with her troop in a parade during Princess Alexandra’s 1961 visit to Hong Kong. She was educated at an Anglican school founded by British missionaries. Though she moved to the U.S. for university, she was still a British citizen when I was born; later, I chided her for not registering me at the British Consulate so that I could have my British passport.
My parents had returned to live in Hong Kong by the time the British transferred sovereignty to China in 1997. I remember watching the handover ceremony on TV. Prince Charles was there to represent the Crown. To me, it felt like a funeral. I regarded the handover as something of a betrayal—one colonial overlord giving power to another, less benevolent one.
Growing up, when I dreamed of life in the big city, it wasn’t New York that captivated me. It was London. In my twenties, that dream was fulfilled. I became a reporter in Time magazine’s London office. As a young journalist, I assisted with coverage of the Golden Jubilee and the death of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. Sometimes I’d leave my office and cross the street to attend prayers at the Queen’s Chapel of the Savoy; it’s one of a small group of churches that’s beyond the jurisdiction of any regular diocese, instead falling under the monarch’s direct authority, and, while open to the public, it’s considered a “private” chapel. One year, I attended one of the Queen’s summer garden parties at Buckingham Palace (the sandwiches were excellent, the scones a bit dry); I suppose it says something about my parents’ sentiments about the monarchy and perhaps about my wardrobe that they sent me money beforehand to go buy a new shirt and tie.
These are the personal circumstances that shaped my respect for Britain and by extension the Queen. I know that my family and I have been lucky. As with many other Hong Kong families, we are scattered across ex-colonies: We are Americans and Britons, Canadians and Malaysians, Australians and New Zealanders, and most of those who remain in Hong Kong hold other passports. Though none of us would describe ourselves as monarchists, Hong Kong’s relatively benign colonial experience means that we’ve regarded the British royal family somewhat positively.
As a journalist, I learned that there is no single objective story. The same subject, the same place, the same events, can be experienced a million ways. Others’ stories, particularly those of people whose experiences of the British Empire were much more painful, have compelled me to interrogate my perspective and question my assumptions. They have helpfully complicated my own narrative. Perhaps this is part of becoming a good neighbor: to make room for other stories, even and especially those that differ from one’s own.
As a Chinese person, I believe that our ancestors remain with us. Their presence is felt, if not always acknowledged, through family heirlooms, handed-down narratives, generational trauma, and inherited culture. This was true too for Queen Elizabeth, who inherited not just a crown but also all that was done in that crown’s name before she even took her first breath.
The division and acrimony in the wake of the Queen’s death is yet another part of our collective inheritance, yet another aspect of the enduring legacy of imperialism. In the outcry of those who bristle at the posthumous adulation, we hear the echoes of previous generations whose voices were silenced and whose stories—and indeed lives—were erased. People want and need to be seen, to be heard, to know that they matter. That they haven’t been—that so many peoples have been subjugated, hurt, and treated as second-class: That deserves to be acknowledged. That ought to be grieved. That demands to be named. That should be rectified.
I wonder how to make space for the whole complicated range of stories—those of joy and inspiration as well as those of unhealed trauma and tremendous pain. How do we hold in tension both good and bad, noble as well as ignoble? How do we make sense of the conflicting depictions—both the glowing tributes and the angry denunciations? How do we reckon with both individual responsibility and the collective weight of history? What remedies are available that might begin to dress the wounds of families broken apart, societies fractured, humans trafficked, and resources plundered?
I wonder, too, how we ought to view Elizabeth Windsor. Most commemorative British postage stamps for the last seventy years have featured not a portrait of the Queen but simply a monotone silhouette, tucked into the corner. It’s an apt picture of both the Queen’s steady presence and her practiced inscrutability: She never gave an interview. She maintained a careful distance from the partisan din. Even if she exerted her influence privately, she rarely offered public opinions on any matter of importance.
That postage-stamp silhouette also helps hint at how many of us are responding more to our ideas of Elizabeth the Queen than to the reality of Elizabeth the human, whom we didn’t and couldn’t really know. We have filled the blank space with our projections and our imaginings. To some, she rose above the fray to serve dutifully and with great dignity. To others, she seemed coldly and even immorally indifferent to the real human costs borne by those who had no choice.
It’s human nature, I suppose, to want our heroes to be thoroughly heroic and our villains to be totally villainous—and it’s a great inconvenience in both cases that humans are human. So often we instinctively minimize the sins and magnify the goodness of those we admire. Likewise, we downplay the virtues and emphasize the vices of those we dislike or even despise. At both extremes, we dehumanize. We fail to allow people to be people, which is to say simultaneously sinner and saint.
As a Christian, I’m left to wrestle with this core conviction: One of Christian theology’s most scandalous teachings is, whatever you’ve done or left undone, you remain an equally beloved child of the God who created and redeemed you.
The traditional Anglican liturgies for death and mourning, some of which will be used at the Queen’s funeral and burial next week, testify that, whoever you are, whatever family you’re born into, whatever position or title you hold, you are equal before the judgment and mercy of the Creator. For instance, as the coffin is brought into the church, a series of Bible verses is usually read, including 1 Timothy 6:7: “For we brought nothing into the world, and it is certain we carry nothing out.”
Another traditional liturgy for death and dying contains a commendation that I’ve always found tremendously moving. The priest asks God to “acknowledge... a sheep of your own fold, a lamb of your own flock, a sinner of your own redeeming. Receive her into the arms of your mercy, into the blessed rest of everlasting peace, and into the glorious company of the saints in light.”
A sheep of your own fold.
A lamb of your own flock.
A sinner of your own redeeming.
This is not some cosmic cop-out. Nor is it a free pass for us to behave badly in this lifetime, believing that all shall be forgiven in the next.
Even as the pomp and circumstance around this one funeral reminds us of this world’s inequities and iniquities, our gratitude for God’s ridiculous and otherworldly grace ought to stir the Christian toward a life of righteousness, justice, and love. To embody these concepts is the hard work of a faithful lifetime. We are called constantly to discern the details: What is ours to do and what is not? Which silences are holy and which are profane? Whom do we honor, and who suffers from our negligence? How do we turn good intentions into healing action? Where can our presence help, and where might it hurt?
Inevitably, every single one of us will err. The collective cost of our sins is heartbreaking, and it’s hard to imagine how we will ever make proper amends. Still, of course we should try! And I also have to hope in a God whose love is so beyond ours that whatever we have failed to heal will eventually be healed.
A God who, having wept, will wipe away all tears, whether they’re the ones spilled at the loss of a mother and grandmother who died of old age or those poured out at the loss of those who were unjustly killed.
A God who can repair when we humans seem only to have the ability to rend.
A God who, with an endless thread of divine care, sews all our ragged strands of human story into a quilt of redemption.
A God who will make all things new.
A God who has already embodied love beyond what we can offer or even comprehend, so as to guide us through every shade of death and onward into the light of resurrection.
I’ve come across a few pieces of writing that I’ve found helpful and thought-provoking as I’ve wrestled and reflected. The New York Times has regularly asked historians to help parse Queen Elizabeth’s legacy. Maya Jasanoff, who teaches at Harvard and has penned three books on the British Empire, offers a nuanced take on mourning the Queen but not the fading Empire. And Jasanoff’s colleague Caroline Elkins, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her work on Britain’s tragic history in Kenya, wrote a piece in June, during the celebrations of the Jubilee, about the Empire’s mythology. There is, of course, something odd to me about reading only American perspectives on the Queen. So I appreciated this op-ed by the Ghanaian-British writer Afua Hirsch in The Guardian. Churchy types might appreciate this sermon by David Barrow, preached last weekend at St. Stephen’s Uniting Church in Sydney, Australia. And finally, from the archives of British Vogue comes Zadie Smith’s memorable and controversial 2017 speculation on the Queen and her enduring popularity.
Whatever your family’s story, the Queen has been a monumental figure in modern history. How are you feeling amidst all the debate and nonstop media coverage? What personal histories do you bring to these conversations? I’d love to know.
As always, I’m so glad we can stumble through all this together, and I’ll try to write again soon.
With gratitude for your grace,
Jeff
Beautiful essay, Jeff.
Thank you for your words, Jeff. I find your perspective so valuable. I live in Belfast and I've trying to process the Queen's death in context of where I live. I specifically chose to study here because of the history of division and conflict between traditionally Irish Catholic Unionists/Republicans and British Protestant Loyalists. And, naturally, the response to the Queen's death has been mixed. While Ireland itself generally views the Queen quite favorably, there is still resistance to British rule and the monarchy. Throughout the UK, anti-monarchy protesters are being arrested. The upcoming bank holiday for the Queen's funeral raises a lot of questions about which businesses will be open or closed and why. I never thought I would be living in the UK when the Queen passed, and I find myself trying to examine my own thoughts and feelings while also being mindful of the experience of those around me. And it's all quite complicated. But most of all, I am resisting the temptation to fall into binaries and just allowing the complicated tension to breathe and take up space, both inside myself and around me.