My compassionate Windows 8.1 computer evidently is mourning QE II’s demise and, at nine years old, is nearing its own. Nine years in computer life is equivalent to 154.36 years in human life. Altice internet willing, there will be a Daily Disquisition come what may. But as I transfer the files and responsibilities to a new Windows 11 desktop computer, you may not receive a direct link to the Daily Disquisition in your email until I learn how to use and fiddle with (if not master) all the new crap.

So if you don’t get the daily link, please go to LitchfieldMonitor.com every day and click on the title of the Daily Disquisition. It’ll be here . . .

9 September—Queen Elizabeth II died yesterday. Kind of sad, too. While I have no patience and minimal respect for the royal family or hereditary privilege in general (as opposed to hereditary wealth, of course), Her Majesty’s issue do have my condolences. And congratulations, to be sure. I was rather looking forward to HM making it to 101, like her mother. Really.

Will the Windsor kids and grandkids and great-grandkids miss their sweet old mummy and grammy and great-grammy, who has been so bloody good to them? Anybody’s guess.

Like the pope, a British monarch can choose a so-called regnal name. Thus, should the spirit so move him, the (former) Prince of Wales could be crowned King Kong. But evidently (and surprisingly?) he’ll simply be King Charles III. His profile will be appearing on money, stamps, and lots of other things throughout what’s left of the Commonwealth. And we’ll likely be seeing the CR III (for Charles III, Rex) monogram under a crown—known as a royal cypher—where there used to be ER II (Elizabeth II, Regina).

Not to be sarcastic, but poor 73-year-old Charles has been very patient. In the good old days he’d have had mummy dispatched—make that euthanised [sic]—by now in a vat of malmsey, mead, or Manischewitz. We all hope, of course, that Charles, given his advanced years, makes it to his coronation. All things considered, he’s entitled.

Charles’s successor one way or the other—assuming the British monarchy survives—is his elder son, Prince William, Duke of Cornwall and Cambridge (and now Prince of Wales). Charles’s younger son, Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, is fifth in line. But since he and his American wife have made a big deal of ditching the royal stuff when it suits them, Harry should make it clear that he’d renounce the crown should it ever make it down to him.

Charles’s younger brother Andrew, the Duke of York, who’s eighth in line, will especially miss mummy. He’d likely be in the slammer were it not for her largess in paying off an Epstein whore. And all that HM mummy did to discipline the royal rectum was strip him of the title His Royal Highness (HRH) and some other piddling stuff, like 230 royal patronages (which was really doing the schmuck a favor). But he’s still a vice admiral and a prince. Go figure.

QE II’s youngest son, Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex (and Earl of Forfar), is 13^th in the line of succession and has no notable scandals to make him worth writing about. And nobody these days cares about QE II’s only daughter, Anne, Princess Royal, who’s 16^th in line and now simply Lady Laurence, since she’s married to retired Royal Navy Vice Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence. Unlike Prince Andrew, Sir Tim was a real vice admiral.

We don’t want to get into the ludicrous intricacies of royal succession, which can be and have been amended by regnant British sovereigns’ so-called letters patent as recently as 2012 when QE II wanted to ensure that all the children of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (William and Kate) were titled as princes or princesses.

It was good to be the queen . . .