Unfit For a Queen — Elizabeth’s Funeral as a Lavish Display of Economic Injustice

1965, Queen Elizabeth II sits in a carriage during the Opening of Parliament, Queens royal procession I Photo Courtesy of Annie Spratt on Unsplash.

The opinions reflected in this OpEd are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of staff, faculty and students of The King's College.

In mainstream American culture, especially among Gen Z students, traditional “Britishness” — encompassing the aura of opulence displayed during the royal funeral service — should be criticized for its cultural base in colonialism and discrimination. 

The royal family and members of the British armed forces marched over a mile, mourning the loss of Britain’s longest reigning monarch on Monday, Sept. 19. Dressed in black, faces grief-stricken, they followed her coffin from Westminster Abbey to Windsor Castle. 

At the funeral, everything maintained a hint (or realistically, a heap) of traditional British glamor — from the womens’ fascinators to the mens’ suits. Apart from the outfits, it is estimated by the British government that the funeral cost at least $7.5 million. The British monarchy as a whole is estimated to be worth $28 billion. 

“Even reduced to being a figurehead, the monarch of the United Kingdom represents an institution that perpetuated colonialism on nearly every continent,” said Regan Baker, a student at The King’s College studying English. “While the death of Queen Elizabeth II does not rectify any wrong, I hope that conversations surrounding her death can help individuals rethink the role that the monarchy has played in history and whether the United Kingdom should continue to preserve the institution.” 

According to the Archbishop of York, the Queen didn’t even want a long and grandiose funeral. It all comes down to tradition — one that was built on wealth inequality and feudalism.  

Natalia Gaytan, a King’s student studying Media, Culture and the Arts and minoring in Politics expressed her frustrations against the English monarchy on Instagram the day of the Queen's death. 

Her silence in times of injustice mattered, her support for brutal political decisions mattered, and for someone that holds the title of monarch, the only thing she was loyal to was the privilege she upheld without acknowledging the atrocities caused by the grasp for power and expansion,” Gaytan said. 

This critique is not exclusive to the British. Young people fault Americans on the same basis, criticizing the “one percent” whose power, all too often, is derived from oppression and colonialism. This begs the question: how does the American political elite differ from the English monarchy? 

Of the most powerful people in the Senate and executive positions of the United States, no one’s wealth approaches that of the royal family, let alone eclipses it. President Joe Biden’s approximate net worth is $8 million. Vice President Kamala Harris’s net worth is $7 million. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky is worth an estimated $30 million. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is worth an estimated $69 million.

This sentiment is shared by many British young people as well. Joe Frampton, an alumnus of the University of Bristol who studied history, has publicly reproached the British monarchy on Instagram. 
“To try and be quite brief, my general view is that I thoroughly dislike the monarchy, the idea of monarchy is inherently unfair and outdated, just an old relic of the transition from feudalism to capitalism,” Frampton said. “The monetary cost of the funeral is disgusting — we have over 14 million people living under the relative poverty line in the UK. Over 2 million of those are children.”

Blue-collar British families are struggling to power and heat their homes. Energy costs will be up nearly 80% by this October in the United Kingdom, according to the House of Commons Library. 

Making an enemy of the Queen as a political figure seems convoluted and counterproductive. She’s dead. On top of that, Queen Elizabeth never held a significant amount of political power. Instead, we should question the systems that concentrated such immense wealth and social standing within one homogenous, white family. 
The concentration of $28 billion in one family is deeply unjust. When millions of British families are struggling to heat their homes, a $7.5 million funeral doesn’t strike me as very “prim and proper.”

Mattie Townson is the Editor-in-Chief of the Empire State Tribune. She is interning with the Crown and Convergent imprints at Penguin Random House.