Rosie DiManno: We thought Elizabeth would live forever. How can anyone follow her example?
LONDON-She will be a hard act to follow.
Except it was never an act.
Queen Elizabeth II was genuine, from her tiara - or Hermes head scarf when slumming and mucking about - to her black patent leather shoes, the same Anello and Davide brand she wore for six decades, broken in by a footman. Footwoman, rather. Because she didn't have time for such pedestrian tasks.
On Thursday afternoon, at her beloved Balmoral Castle, time ran out for Her Majesty.
Peacefully, surrounded by family, the sovereign took her last breath.
We thought she'd live forever.
And with her passing, after a remarkable life that spanned 96 years - from a charmed childhood that seemed well-buttressed against a future throne, to adolescence in wartime England as a gamine princess, to an Empire in decline, because the sun did set, to a realm and a royal solitude reinventing itself, from girl to great-granny - so too an era has ended.
A bereaved nation - and far beyond these British Isles - is hurting. A family is grieving. A people that has never known a world without their Queen is grappling. The streets of the capital are oddly quiet, the mood sombre. Every bus shelter and every digital billboard where the imagery can be instantly flipped had slid over on Friday morning to a portrait of Her Majesty.
She hovers, the essence of her, the majesty of her. At that grand age, her death was certainly not unexpected. But just two days earlier, she was still on the job, greeting the new prime minister, all the formal folderol of forming a new government - using a cane, yes, and looking so much tinier, as if she'd been shrinking in a matter of months, since the pageantry of her Platinum Jubilee. Fragile yet very much alive and lively.
Her 15th prime minister. Her first - reportedly her favourite - Winston Churchill, was born in the 19th century and served in her great-great-grandmother's army.
At the other end of that lifelong spectrum, a Queen who was on Facebook and Twitter. Well, doubtless functionaries did that for her.
Just ponder for a while, though, that tremendous span.
Then so quick, gone. And probably that's a blessing. She was never infirm, she never lost her marbles - dementia or a debilitating stroke, the Queen once said, were the only circumstances in which she would have even considered stepping aside for her heir, King Charles III as he now is. Even then, it would have only been in practice, not in name.
She would depart this mortal coil as a Queen. Because that was the vow she'd taken.
Her Majesty leaves behind, though, a country somewhat better than she found it, better for her reign over it, as a beacon of stability, as matriarch and monarch. She reinvigorated monarchy and made something quite magnificent of the straitened life that was given to her.
A monarch's role, she believed, was to unite the realm, not divide it. To help usher it, by her abiding and stoic presence, into and through a rapidly evolving modernity. That, perhaps, is her most profound legacy: She took the country - and the Commonwealth - by the gloved hand, through periods of turbulence and scandal, through phases of contentious politics, through labour strife and economic stagnation, always that bedrock, even if she never expressed a solitary public opinion.
Oh, how the Queen learned to walk the fine line of constitutional monarchy, scrupulously neutral and largely inscrutable but deftly avoiding controversy, except for that one time - the death of Diana, the only time her subjects were downright mad at her for not - what? - soothing their hysteria, paying proper tribute, sinking into very un-British bathos.
She was severely annoyed with then-PM Margaret Thatcher, who was visiting Balmoral, for repeatedly offering to help. Muttered the Queen: Can someone tell that woman to go and sit down?'"
She didn't have a passport. She didn't have a driver's licence. She couldn't vote. All she ever carried in that ubiquitous handbag was a makeup mirror given to her by Prince Philip upon their marriage and a collection of loose charms, from her children and grandchildren. No money, even though her face was on it. As Charles will soon be - facing the other way, though, in profile, because that's the tradition.
Elizabeth did, obviously, enjoy a life of almost unimaginable privilege. Yet there was also so much sacrifice, so much duty at the very centre of it. Virtues that seem almost archaic these days, but she personified them, all whilst safeguarding the monarch amidst a world in restless transformation. Enigmatic behind a dignified facade, as a Queen who reigned but couldn't rule.
Her movements and schedule were planned a year in advance, which didn't leave much room for spontaneity. Her face in repose could look grim. But she also smiled easily, a big wide grin. Those who knew her best said Elizabeth was quite funny, a wicked mimic, a wry humour. Most of us rarely saw that side of her, reserved for family and her closest confidantes. Certainly not the homemaking wife who liked to set the table and do the dishes when up at Balmoral, her coziest of domestic abodes.
Her Majesty embodied self-effacement in a selfie-taking world, embraced - by nature or by training - public good and unselfishness over individualism, even if she was often engulfed by strictures. In her uncle David, King Edward VIII for a minute and a half - for the woman I love" - she learned what not to be, even as his abdication stunningly condemned her to sovereignty. Poor Lilibet," consoled little sister Margaret while Elizabeth ardently prayed for a little brother in those primogeniture days.
On one matter alone, she was absolutely intractable - Philip, her Viking prince," smitten as a 13-year-old with this penniless third-cousin royal and navy officer in training. She never looked at anyone else," said her cousin, Margaret Rhodes. Eight years they courted before their lavish wedding. Ensuing motherhood ... let's just say she had a laissez-faire attitude toward her children. Lord knows they caused her enough heartache as adults.
From the outside looking in, Queendom seems awful tedious - thousands of ribbons cut, openings marked, knighthoods presided over, endless ceremonial events, a cavalcade of children presenting bouquets. Elizabeth never mailed it in, though surely she must have at times regretted the life she'd yearned for as a girl and was denied - to be, she'd said, a farmer's wife with lots of horses and dogs and a countryside existence.
During her lifetime, she kept rumblings of republicanism at bay. Nearly every poll had Elizabeth at the top as the public's favourite royal, even in the doomed Diana epoch. But that adulation may have been more for the person who rarely put a foot wrong than the royal-in-chief, and attachment to monarchy may fade in the realm of Charles. He's already 73, however, and the longest monarchy of all may segue to a relatively short tenure for King Charles III, and who knows what the Crown will signify by the time William assumes the throne.
That Elizabeth held the anachronism of monarchy intact for nearly a century and into the dawn of a new millennium may be her crowning achievement.
I hope she's with Philip now, the love of her life, all her queenly obligations fulfilled, all her queenly burdens laid to rest.
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. End of.
Rosie DiManno is a Toronto-based columnist covering sports and current affairs for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @rdimanno