Ryan Bingham Duff
Online/Special Projects Staff Writer

When Queen Elizabeth II died on Sept. 8, the United Kingdom mourned their loss. In the student lounge at Richland, students could be heard shouting, “The queen is dead!”

“I have a lot of friends overseas and they are very passionate about their country. [Those] who grew up there … they have a close connection,” business major Kiyah Corse said.

Corse adds, “I believe with a new leader comes new ideas and Prince Charles per se, has not always made the best choices.” Although the royal family does not wield any real constitutional power, they do have real influence with the government. “There could be some economic changes that arise, whether they’re good or bad depends on how things roll out the next couple of weeks.”

Business major Oliver Chamberlin said, “He’s quite a scandalous individual people believe him to be. And also [they] see him as a very emasculated dude and how his wife [Camilla] treats him and how in reality, his wife wears the pants.”

According to the Associated Press, in 2021 the chairman of the prince’s charity resigned after is was revealed that the organization was offered a donation of more than 500,000 pounds ($692,000) from a Russian banker seeking British citizenship.

Dr. Jon Ewing, a theology professor at Richland, said he was shocked at the queen’s passing. “I’ve been surprised with the generally sympathetic reaction in the U.S. so far: Flags flying at half mast, even the Union Jack occasionally.”

Generally in the U.S., presidents order flags lowered to mourn the passing of political leaders. “In a country that prides itself on being one of the first, if not the first, countries historically to not have a monarch, we seem to still admire aspects of the British monarchy. I think there’s a fascination with these types of people and their families and how they deal with real problems and dysfunction on a pedestal, so to speak.”

Ewing gave his opinion about the queen, “Whether or not one prefers Queen Elizabeth II, she did provide a sense of stability to the UK. All the way from the very end of World War II up to the present day. She even contracted corona virus recently, which makes her a participant in what has affected much of the population globally speaking. The UK has of course gone through drastic social change in the time of her reign. In many ways it is a new society from what it was in the 1950s and ’60s. So, it remains to be seen if its cohesion can serve as a future asset, or if [King] Charles will be the harbinger of a ‘new age’.”

Ewing said, “It’s one thing to be 25 and ascend the throne; it’s quite another to be in your seventies … so I think he is at a much more mature time in his life and that could be an asset as far as sincerity is concerned.”

“Who knows, King Charles may live as long as his mother did and reign for the next two decades; but she seems to be the exception and not the rule.”