Last week, a new exhibition opened up at Buckingham Palace. Ahead of what would have been Queen Elizabeth II’s 100th birthday, curators put together an exhibition of the late queen’s frocks, bags and hats. Apparently, the exhibition is already a huge success and tickets are being sold at a steady clip. So what’s the problem? The exhibition is another reminder that the magic of the monarchy died with QEII. The left-behinds are dull, lazy, compromised, incandescent with rage and consumed with the charismatic royals who live in California. That’s not me saying this – it’s Jan Moir, the Daily Mail columnist. From her column, “Who would have imagined things would get so bad – and so sour – for the Royals so soon after we lost the Queen?” LMAO.

This week, on the eve of what would have been her centenary, a huge exhibition of the late Queen’s fashion opens at Buckingham Palace – and already looks to be a blockbuster.

‘We’re selling 60 tickets every 15 minutes. And that’s before all the publicity starts,’ a palace steward told me on Thursday morning at the Press preview. Crammed with more than 300 exhibits, including accessories and jewels alongside the outfits, Queen Elizabeth II: Her Life In Style has already sold out for this month. It runs until October in the King’s Gallery, but if you want to go, don’t hang about.

I have to say, the demand is cheering; a mark of the esteem and affection in which the late Queen is still held. In the future, would loyal subjects queue around the block to see Queen Camilla’s box pleats and Country Casuals specials, to gaze through glass at the dark coat she wore when leaving The Ritz with the then Prince Charles in 1999, their first demi-official public appearance together? Somehow, I doubt it.

In contrast, here is Queen Elizabeth’s fascinating, dutiful life measured out in tweeds and silks, in ermine and umbrellas… The suits, the coat dresses, the ritzy gowns with their lush beading and embroidery which formed the glory of her global tourdrobe, plus the public-facing outfits she wore to see her own family get married or buried or crowned. Look at this precision tailoring in which she armed herself to worship and to mourn. Just gasping, even if the exhibition is both wonderful and oddly sad.

After all, the Queen was 96 when she died, a good innings by any account. Yet once upon a time she attended Ascot and state banquets in these fluttering, vibrant outfits, she welcomed presidents, knighted the deserving, accepted bouquets, fell in love with a handsome sailor. Now they are just clothes hanging on faceless mannequins, ghosts in the gallery, empty shells on the lonely beach of decease.

It has been nearly four years since the Queen died – and I can’t be alone in thinking that her passing still leaves a painful void at the heart of British public life. There was always a feeling that after HM had gone to the great palace in the sky, the Royal Family would never be quite the same again, but who could have imagined things would get so bad, so sour, so soon?

Hecklers shouting at King Charles and Prince William in the streets. Her favourite son, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, utterly disgraced, exiled in Norfolk, while his fungicidal ex-wife Fergie the Bogeywoman is hiding under a rock somewhere. Not to mention Beatrice and Eugenie, fighting against the tide, but slowly being engulfed by this sulphurous scandal.

Meanwhile, in America, an increasingly desperate Duke and Duchess of Sussex continue to traduce the monarchy by making terrible television shows, embarking on fake royal tours and offering themselves up for sale.

Dear God. In a way, I’m glad our former monarch did not live to see any of this. It would have killed her.

[From The Daily Mail]

Personally, I think ALL of the royalists knew this back in 2022. It’s just been a slow-motion cope ever since, trying to convince everyone that people really like Queen Side Chick or that a bald demon is the most popular royal ever. In fact, I still believe that the so-called “modern monarchy” was as good as dead when they couldn’t figure out a way to accept and include a woman of color. They couldn’t modernize that far, and they’ve been reeling from the fallout ever since. Anyway, I’m always happy to see the Daily Mail acknowledge that William and Charles’s crowds are sparse and that they keep getting heckled. Something I keep thinking about is… why did people stop throwing eggs at Charles? For several months after he became king, eggs were being thrown at him with some regularity. Why did they stop??

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.