The Queen's Death: One Year On

A royal commentator's reflection on the day.

September 8th, 2022. I had celebrated my mother’s birthday the night before and woke up anticipating a pretty uneventful day, content-wise.

I’d been a part-time content creator providing commentary on the British Royal Family for almost exactly 18 months by then; I’d provided my thoughts on Harry and Meghan’s interview with Oprah, and running commentary on Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee just that summer. I did royal fashion breakdowns (those are still my favorite), as well as deep dives into history, protocol, and precedent. But I had never broken news before.

That was about to change.

8 am

I woke up intending to head into my day job (as a social media manager at a local business), but my plans quickly shifted as I switched on my phone and saw the state of my notifications.

The Palace had released a statement, quite innocuous on its surface: Following further evaluation this morning, The Queen’s doctors are concerned for Her Majesty’s health and have recommended she remain under medical supervision. The Queen remains comfortable and at Balmoral.

Now, I’ve always been incredibly clear to my internet audience that I am NOT a journalist; I’m merely an educated, opinionated person with a point of view—albeit one that seems to resonate across a wide audience. I don’t get Buckingham Palace press releases sent to my inbox. I have to see what the royal rota (the appointed circle of journalists who do have inside sources and access to the Palace press office) is willing to share with us.

I’ve always insisted in my content that I’m not an authority; I’m a facilitator. But this was the moment where I found that I had to grow comfortable with the fact that I might be driving conversation rather than simply hosting it. And fast.

Because people were alarmed. And they were turning to me to make sense of things.

“What does this mean? Should we be worried? Is this it?”

We’d received statements on the Queen’s health before, but always when there had been some pre-arranged engagement that was going to be impacted by, say, her limited mobility or her low energy levels. This was different. The Queen was meant to still be on her summer holidays at Balmoral.

We had seen her just two days previously, on September 6th, as Boris Johnson offered his resignation as Prime Minister. Then as Liz Truss made the trek to Balmoral to kiss hands with the Queen and become the 15th PM of her reign.

Looking back at the photos from that day, it’s easy to see how small and frail Queen Elizabeth II had become. Reports of her needing a wheelchair to get around the damp Scottish Castle had trickled out. She was apparently growing increasingly confused, hard of sight and hearing, and tired.

But at the time, we were also used to fake reports, alleging that the Queen had died and that the Palace was hushing it up until the right moment. The photos of her in Balmoral’s drawing room had come as a balm, not as a reason to worry.

Ironically, I had just complained in a video the night before that the Royals’ vacation was making it difficult to create content. I was bored. I was wishing for something to happen. Be careful what you wish for, I can hear Liz saying to me now.

This statement changed everything. It was unprompted. It used that ugly wording, “she remains comfortable,” that every single person who has lost a loved one after a period of convalescence will recognize as…the end.

9am

I’m about to tell you something that I’ve not said publicly in the year since that statement was released: it was a lie.

I don’t mean in the sense that the Queen wasn’t being kept comfortable, or that her passing was traumatic in any way. But by the time we got the statement, it simply wasn’t true any longer. She had already gone.

The moment I had woken myself up with a cold shower and sat down to make a plan of how to address this, I began getting a second round of messages: from people I had become acquainted with through the 18 months I’d been a content creator. People who worked in news, in media. People who had received a very different statement from the Palace.

This one? Advised that the Queen had passed away peacefully earlier that morning. This one contained a strict embargo of 12:00pm ET, meaning that no one could report that news until the Palace was ready. (That time, it turned out, would get pushed back over the course of the day, for reasons I’ll muse on below.)

My sources were having changes of clothes rushed to them so that they could be attired in black when the OK was sounded to release the news, were rearranging their stations’ programming schedules to accommodate what would be a very different day than we had woken up expecting.

So here I stood, in my kitchen, with wet hair and no makeup on, and a choice to make. What type of commentary would I provide on this day that I now knew to be the biggest of my professional career?

It was a no-brainer, looking back on it. I sent a text to my boss letting him know that this statement had been released. Actually, I think I told him straight out that the Queen had died, and that the news was embargoed. I needed to tell someone. Because I was about to lie to my audience.

10am

I hope you can forgive me, but I decided to play along with the Palace’s version of events and see where it took us. I went live on TikTok just to provide people a digital space to congregate. I launched a subscription on Instagram, giving my followers a way to connect with others in group chats. The goal at this point was to help people process, and prepare for the monumental shift that was forthcoming.

I tried to maintain a balance, as I could see news anchors around the world doing, between reassuring the public that we would know more soon and steeling them for the worst possible outcome.

11am

Huw Edwards was leading the BBC’s coverage on September 8th, 2022. I’ve thought since then that he changed into his black tie too early—because people immediately noticed and started speculating more intensely that the Queen had already gone—but then again, we were also expecting the news to drop at noon ET.

Everyone, behind the scenes anyway, had drafted their statements, planned their photo montages. I had filmed a video announcing the news, with just one additional clip needed once I could grab a screenshot of the official statement.

If this sounds detached, it was. That’s what’s required of reporting major news like this, I was learning. A clear head and strategic thinking. I was grappling with my own complex emotions related to any sentiment I had for Queen Elizabeth with maybe 1% of my brain.

The rest was occupied with the course of events that would follow. The marathon of content and coverage I would now need to provide. Need to, that is, if I was going to step up and seize this moment. Reader, I would end up gaining 400,000 new followers in the following 2 weeks, going from 800,000 to 1.2 million. So, whatever I did…it worked. I just wish I could remember any of it.

12pm

Noon had been the time that I’d heard the official announcement would go out from the Palace, thus giving news outlets the go-ahead to break the news to their audiences. But noon came and went, and the only reports coming in concerned not Queen Elizabeth II, but her family.

This is the part that leaves a bad taste in my mouth, even now. In fact, more now, as I’ve had confirmation from other sources that the Queen was indeed gone by the time that Prince Charles, Camilla, Princess Anne, Prince Andrew, Prince Edward, Prince William, and Prince Harry were rushing to Balmoral.

This mad dash to Scotland by the royals was described as them wanting to say their goodbyes and be at the Queen’s bedside. But only Princess Anne and Prince Charles, according to my knowledge, were able to do that. They were already in Scotland at the time and were thus able to make the trip in time to be at her side as she passed away. The remaining family members, it seems, were racing not against death, but against the clock that was ticking towards the moment that the news would become public.

Reports suggested that Harry (in the UK ahead of the WellChild Awards) intended to travel to Balmoral with his wife, Meghan—sparking outrage and ire from his brother, Prince William, who had seemingly left Kate back at their new home in Windsor. Since then, the story has morphed into a version that suggests that Meghan was “banned” from Balmoral, and thus, Kate had to stay away in order to make that decision seem less personal.

But the goal wasn’t to say goodbye to the family’s beloved matriarch; it was to present a united front to the world when the news broke. The goal was for the royal family to close ranks as they, presumably, grieved and planned their next steps. Barring both Kate and Meghan from that sort of gathering feels more like a “family business” decision than one based on ill will.

But banning Prince Harry from the RAF flight that was to carry the royals from London to Balmoral? That feels personal. Reports gleefully suggest that it was Prince William who demanded the flight take off without Prince Harry, leaving him to make his own way to Scotland to join his family.

Those specific reports want to rub Harry’s nose, it seems, in the fact that he landed in Scotland about 15 minutes after the news was finally announced to the public at 6:30 pm British time (1:30pm ET). They draw attention to the fact that he was “too late to say goodbye”—regardless of the fact that everyone else was, too.

1:30pm

By this point, I was already 90 minutes later getting to work than I had originally told my boss that I would be. The news had been slated to drop at noon, and I had all my content ready to drop the second it did.

But the announcement kept getting pushed back, and we at home watched the slow progress of the Queen’s family members to Scotland. The only thing I can conclude at this point is that the statement was delayed until they were all together and the hatches of Balmoral were battened down. And Prince Harry, it seems, was superfluous to that motivation.

I remember thinking, She’s already been gone for hours. They couldn’t wait 15 more minutes to give the green light for the announcement? They’re the Royal Family, for God’s sake.

It seems not. Whether it was the demands and pressures of the news cycle that drove the 1:30pm announcement, or a heartless decision to ostracize one of the Queen’s grandsons in the wake of his decision to “go rogue,” we may never know.

The news dropped. My heart dropped with it. I had given up on waiting around in my kitchen, and had decided to walk to my office not 5 minutes before. I was in the middle of Midtown Harrisburg, but I stopped in my tracks, pulled the official announcement up on TikTok’s recorder, and made my own announcement. Watch it back, and you’ll see a definite tone shift from the first clip to the rest of the video.

Finally, finally uploading the video, a slow process on a good day, seemed to take forever.

While I waited, I took stock of the official announcement. We had gotten our first official use of the “Queen Consort” title, which Queen Elizabeth (in a statement, at least) had given her blessing for Camilla to use during her Jubilee. And it has been a thorn in my content-creating side ever since. But yes, Camilla, once a pariah among the Royal Family, now sat at the head of it.

I also checked on a hunch, refreshing the Prince of Wales and the Duke & Duchess of Cambridge’s social media pages in turn. Sure enough, the latter’s titles changed before my very eyes: to the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and Cambridge, a reflection on their status elevating in real-time.

There’s the confirmation I needed, on a personal level, to justify my theory. The rush to Balmoral had been to streamline the strategizing, the reorganization that needed to happen. Beat the media frenzy, and have all the answers ahead of time.

A few days later, when now-King Charles conferred the title behind-the-scenes on William, their name would change again, to the Prince and Princess of Wales. That’s how they’ll be known, I thought, until the next time we go through all of this.

The rest

My announcement video skyrocketed in views, as did every other video I made over the course of the day, week, month. As I said, I wish I could remember it all. I was working part-time for my day job, but not to a point where I could balance my time usefully. I had projects that needed my attention at work, but I would also be making two, three, sometimes four videos in a day.

There were so many steps that needed to be completed as the monarchy transitioned from the Second Elizabethan Era to the….Carolingian. Yep, that’s what you call the reign of a guy named Charles. It’s curious that hasn’t caught on, isn’t it?

The pace was unmanageable for me, sitting at home. I can’t imagine what it was like for people in the thick of it, namely the royals themselves and “real” reporters. But the logic of the quick turnaround—from the Queen passing to the various proclamations of Charles as King to the funeral preparations—began to make sense to me. This is how the monarchy survives. March forward, ever forward, and don’t let the public think there’s any choice to be had in the matter.

My accounts became a hub of explanations, context, commentary, and real-time updates. We watched together as Queen Elizabeth II’s body made the trek from Balmoral to Buckingham Palace. We cried together at the pomp and pageantry as her children and grandchildren stood vigil at her coffin. And at Emma the Pony turning out to say one last goodbye to this monumental mother of a nation.

People asked me if I would be traveling to the UK for the funeral; at first I said I was still thinking about it, but I quickly knew that I couldn’t. My role had evolved into something unfamiliar to me, but something that I knew to be an opportunity. How could I provide updates from a hotel room? From the streets of London during the processions? While jet-lagged? I knew I had to stay put and let the news cycle run me, for at least a little while.

I regret this partially now, a year on, because I know now what that would do to me. I quite literally blacked out the majority of September 2022 out of sheer exhaustion and creative burnout. I earned a new footing as a creator, but I also didn’t sleep more than 5 hours at a time. And I cried a lot. (I had gone through a breakup that summer, and my own grandfather was placed on hospice care during that month. A lot was happening.)

But I also don’t know what else I would have done. Facilitating conversation and providing context came so naturally to me; I felt a pull in my gut to rise to the occasion and see what happened.

That pull would take me all the way to May 6th, 2023—the day that King Charles III was finally, officially crowned in Westminster Abbey. I truly do not think I shook my burnout in the nearly 8 months that separated his actual accession from his ceremonial one. By then, I had met my new (and incredibly supportive) partner, had a group of friendships that I’d been carefully cultivating, and felt like I could breathe for the first time in ages. I slept for about 14 hours following that day.

If this account feels too self-centered, it’s because I’m writing this now as much to allow myself to fully reflect as to provide a recap. The loss of Queen Elizabeth II, and the way her family handled it, shaped my perception of the Monarchy in more ways than one. In reflecting on her own legacy, we invariably arrive at the conclusion that she, as a symbol and a person both, meant many different things to many different people.

And in reflecting on her family’s actions in the wake of losing her, we have so much to consider about the way that this institution handles the humans at the center of it. At what it forces them to do, and choose between.

Above all, I marvel at how it felt like the world stood still on September 8th, 2023, waiting with bated breath to learn of the passing of a cultural touchstone. To me, it’s one of those things you will never really forget. You’ll always know where you were when you heard the news.

Lucky for me, I was with a million of my closest friends. In spirit, anyway.