The Windsors have been a rare and wonderful mix of devotion to duty and delight in simple pleasures.  They seem to do well, as is true for most of us, when they marry light hearts to regimentals.

The Queen’s mother, nee Elizabeth Bowes Lyon, was the life of every party in sweetness and fun, sought after by all but won by none, until Prince Albert came along.  It took time (and three proposals of marriage!) to convince her to leave her happy home life in Scotland, to trade it in for a royal husband.  Prince Albert, later George VI, was wound much tighter than she, but he adored her.  She lacked neither money nor position, and she wanted no part of the intrusions of monarchy, even in marriage to a second son.  They loved one another, enjoyed one another, and weathered the abdication and the horrors of World War II hand in hand and heart to heart.  This happy soul lived a year beyond her hundredth birthday, at which she insisted upon standing at the gate to receive the salute as a long parade in her honor passed by Clarence House.

Her daughter is the more regimented of the two current occupants at Buckingham Palace, by necessity and probably by nature, as well, although the Duke of Edinburough was an up and coming Lieutenant in the British Royal Navy for many years.  He is the jokester, and not without incident, but she loves to laugh, so they’ve managed well together, even with the media finding fault, severing trust, and opening tender schisms in their family.  Despite the personal tragedies of more recent decades, they’re still laughing.

The Windsor family is, essentially, just like yours and mine, under glass.  Always scrutinized.  Never off the clock, not entirely.  They stay close; they keep going.  Perhaps they know that the vast majority of people are pulling for them.  Let’s hope they do.  That would have to help.

public domain

Elizabeth of York (Elizabeth II) with a wounded soldier