Well, as I stated back when I published the ‘official’ version of this strip, I had played with the idea of having the Queen step into the vacuum left behind by the passing of another well-known monarch, before I ultimately decided to let her follow in the footsteps of Freddy Mercury.
Back then, Britain had recently lost their queen and wasn’t terribly enthusiastic about the replacement, so there would have been something of a job opening. And the Queen could certainly have dealt with the job, which isn’t terribly difficult, after all – mostly just dressing funny and waving at the audience at the opening ceremony of some piece of pre-crumbled infrastructure. And the perks aren’t bad, the job comes with quite a bit of wealth. On the downside, you’ll have to hang around whoever is the current prime minister of the UK. To illustrate which I would obviously have gone with Boris Johnson, despite him no longer being PM at that time. Because this is a comic, after all, and most of his predecessors wouldn’t really have belonged on the funny pages…while both of his successors…I’m not going to complete this sentence, why even bother?
But, yeah, the requirements of this job would have left somebody of the caliber of ‘our’ Queen almost a bit underemployed, plus there are her hard-partying ways. British people are known for their prudishness, so a monarch sprawled out semi-nude and drunk on the floors of Buckingham Palace might have given rise to some small amount of criticism. She’s just much better off as a rock star – just as much wealth, less scrutiny of private behavior and more pleasant company.
More on Thursday.
Too soon for the British people probably?
Some of them, possibly, but probably not very many. Contrary to appearances, a good part of the British public isn’t particularly fond of the monarchy to begin with, and the people that are into it seem to have gotten a little bit intoxicated with all of the fuzz surrounding the beginning of a new reign, like the coronation, new coins, new stamps and all of that. There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of grief around anymore, at least from what I can see.