Word: queens
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Most likely, the concept of liking her job would seem odd to her. Prince Andrew explains: "People say to me, 'Your life must be very strange.' But of course I've not experienced any other life. It's not strange to me. The same way with the Queen. She has never experienced anything else. That life, that knowledge, that wisdom is purely natural to her." Pamela Hicks agrees that the Queen, while gratified if people respond to her work, does not seek a conventional sense of happiness in it. Duty is its own reward: "She is very religious...
...naturally curious about people, and observant; this, "plus her fantastic memory, means she is not bored," says Hicks. A dry sense of humor helps. On a walkabout in Scotland, one person told her, "You look just like the Queen!" "How reassuring," she replied. When a visiting head of state managed to slip out of Buckingham Palace overnight, she quipped: "Has he taken his wife?" She can laugh at herself too, as when a new footman pulled back her chair as she stood up after a family dinner, but then immediately went to sit down again to continue a conversation...
...racy as "my goodness." But "she's very modern," says Reid. "People don't realize it. Some people who work for her don't." Her granddaughter Zara Phillips has had a tongue stud, lived in sin with a jockey, posed for Hello! magazine and sold the rights, but the Queen is very fond of her. The monarch who said in 1955 (following the government's decision) that her sister, Margaret, could not remain a royal princess if she married a divorced man has had no qualms about her grandson William living with his girlfriend. A senior aide says...
...steer the monarchy now? The polls reveal some directions in which imperceptible change - or more - is needed. Asked whether the monarchy reflects today's multifaith Britain, only 21% agree; 49% disagree. The palace already works to include more ethnic minorities and representatives of non-Christian faiths in the Queen's events, but can be expected to do more of this. Another area the Queen can develop is what Frank Prochaska, a Yale historian, calls the "welfare monarchy": the royal family assisting charities and groups that help the disadvantaged. British monarchs have been doing this since at least Victoria; the Queen...
...good bet. But, as the 1990s proved to the Windsors, human bloodlines can be as fickle as horses'. "Self-destruction is their biggest problem," says Prochaska; and that, in the end, will depend on choices the future Kings themselves will make. As for the institution of the monarchy, the Queen's track record reveals what she wants to leave behind: a Crown relentlessly pragmatic enough to stay popular...