LONDON — No sooner had the long-anticipated news broken — Queen Elizabeth II was dead — than Britain activated Operation London Bridge, the painstakingly choreographed funeral plan that guides the country through the rituals of tribute and mourning that culminate with her burial 10 days later.
But the plan, with its metronomic precision, masks something far messier: a rupture to the national psyche. The queen’s death last week, at 96, is a genuinely traumatic event, leaving many in this stoic country anxious and unmoored. As they come to terms with the loss of a figure who embodied Britain, they are unsure of their nation’s identity, its economic and social well-being, or even its role in the world.
To some, it almost seems as if London Bridge is down.
Such trauma was not wholly unexpected: Elizabeth reigned for 70 years, making her the only monarch that most Britons ever knew. Yet the anxiety runs even deeper, scholars and commentators say, a reflection not only of the queen’s long shadow but also of the unsettled country she leaves behind.
From Brexit and the coronavirus pandemic to the serial scandals that recently drove Prime Minister Boris Johnson from office, the end of the second Elizabeth age has been a time of unending turmoil for Britain.
Portraits of Queen Elizabeth on Friday in London. The funeral plan, with its metronomic precision, masks something far messier: a rupture to the national psyche. James Hill for The New York Times
In just the two months since Mr. Johnson announced he would step down, inflation has soared, a recession looms and household energy bills have almost doubled. Almost lost in the worldwide outpouring after the queen’s death was that the new prime minister, Liz Truss, three days on the job, rolled out an emergency plan to cap energy prices at a likely cost of more than $100 billion.
“It all feeds into a sense of uncertainty and insecurity, which was already there because of Brexit and then Covid, and now a new, very inexperienced prime minister,” said Timothy Garton Ash, a professor of European studies at the University of Oxford. The queen, he said, was the rock, “and then the rock is removed.”
Not just the rock, but the rhythm of British daily life: Her image is printed on pound notes and postage stamps, her royal monogram — E.R. for Elizabeth Regina — emblazoned on flags and red postal boxes across the land.
At the formal proclamation of her son, Charles, as king on Saturday, the void left by the queen was palpable. Her empty throne, bearing the initials E.R., loomed before an assembly of the new monarch; his heir, Prince William; the archbishop of Canterbury; and the prime minister and her six living predecessors.
For older Britons especially, the loss is “deep and personal and almost familial,” said Mr. Johnson, paying tribute to the queen in Parliament on Friday, four days after she accepted his resignation in one of her last acts.
“Perhaps it is partly that she has always been there, a changeless human reference point in British life,” he said. “The person who, all the surveys say, appears most often in our dreams. So unvarying in her pole-star radiance that we have perhaps been lulled into thinking that she might be in some way eternal.”
A woman watching footage of King Charles’s address to the nation through a pub window on Friday. The queen’s death last week, at 96, is a genuinely traumatic event, leaving many in this stoic country anxious and unmoored. Andrew Testa for The New York Times
Beyond the queen’s constancy, Mr. Johnson and others said, was her immense global stature. She was a living link to World War II, after which Winston Churchill helped draw the map of the postwar world, seated around a Yalta conference table with Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin.
Mr. Johnson and Ms. Truss have harkened back to that role with their robust support for Ukraine. But Britain these days is less a major power at the center of global decision making than a midsize one cheering from the sidelines. It is fitting that the last Briton to receive a state funeral — until the queen’s, in the coming days — was Churchill in 1965.
“My own personal reflection is that there is probably never going to be an occasion in which another British figure is so mourned globally,” Professor Garton Ash of Oxford said. “It is in some way a last moment of British greatness.”
For all of the trappings of power, the queen projected influence not through political or military muscle but through an abiding duty to country. Her wartime service, and her dignified stewardship, contrasted with Britain’s often-fractious politics, not to mention the foreign strongmen she sometimes had to entertain.
She was, some said, a pioneer in the exercise of what later became known as “soft power.”
“I cannot lead you into battle,” the queen said in 1957. “I do not give you laws or administer justice, but I can do something else. I can give you my heart and my devotion to these old islands, and to all the peoples of our brotherhood of nations.”
Andrew Testa for The New York Times
In the parks and squares around Buckingham Palace, where crowds gathered on Saturday, people spoke of her loss in political and personal terms. “She meant reliability and stability,” said Kate Nattrass, 59, a health recruiter from Christchurch, New Zealand, which is a member of the British Commonwealth.
But the queen did so at the cost of great personal sacrifice. “In many ways, she was a woman robbed of being able to be herself,” Ms. Nattrass said. “She probably missed a lot of her own family because of that.”
Callum Taylor, 27, an actor from the northwest English town of Preston, traveled to London to leave yellow roses at the palace gates. He said he had heard yellow was one of Elizabeth’s favorite colors. Mr. Taylor admitted he was not sure of his information, but added, “I think we all felt we knew her.”
While the queen has long been revered — the swelling crowds at her Platinum Jubilee celebrations in June attested to her enduring popularity — her role arguably grew even more important after Brexit.
With Britain no longer part of the European Union, the country’s pro-Brexit government fell back on symbols of its imperial past, ordering the Union Jack to be flown regularly from public buildings and pushing projects like a new royal yacht (neither King Charles III nor Ms. Truss appear particularly interested in that one).
King Charles III during his first audience with Prime Minister Liz Truss on Friday at Buckingham Palace. Defenders of Charles argue that he may be better suited than his mother to deal with the nation’s fraying social fabric. Pool photo by WPA
Respect for the queen papered over the fissures that have widened within the United Kingdom since Brexit. Scotland and Northern Ireland now each have significant populations that favor breaking off from the kingdom, and it is not clear that King Charles will give them a more compelling reason to stay.
In Scotland, where the queen died at her beloved Balmoral Castle, an independence referendum was defeated in 2014 by vote of 55 percent to 44 percent. The Scottish National Party, which controls the country’s Parliament, is determined to hold another vote.
Many in Ireland still recall the queen’s landmark visit in 2011, when she charmed the public and spoke candidly about Britain’s tense relationship with its neighbor. “With the benefit of historical hindsight,” she said, “we can all see things which we would wish would have been done differently, or not at all.”
In Northern Ireland, however, the Irish nationalist party, Sinn Fein, became the largest party after elections in May. Sinn Fein is within striking distance of being the largest party in the Irish Republic, too, a milestone that could accelerate its drive for Irish unification.
Managing the North’s restive unionist parties, which favor staying part of the kingdom, has become a headache for the British government. Ms. Truss, following Mr. Johnson’s lead, is threatening to upend the post-Brexit trade arrangements in Northern Ireland that are part of its withdrawal agreement with the European Union.
James Hill for The New York Times
The centrifugal forces are even greater in Britain’s far-flung dominions, like Jamaica, the Bahamas and St. Lucia, where predominantly Black populations are demanding a reckoning with the racist legacy of British colonialism. Barbados cast off the queen as head of state in 2021, and Jamaica may soon follow suit.
On a trouble-prone tour of the Caribbean last March, Prince William and his wife, Catherine, confronted calls for slavery reparations and demands that they confess Britain’s economy “was built on the backs of our ancestors.”
Vernon Bogdanor, an authority on the constitutional monarchy at King’s College London, said Charles was a departure from other royals in that he tries to appeal to those on the margins of society. He cited Charles’s visits to Tottenham, in north London, after it erupted into riots in 2011 following a police shooting.
For that reason, among others, Professor Bogdanor said the new king might surprise those skeptical of his ability to replace his mother. Still, he acknowledged a surprisingly deep sense of loss at the death of the queen.
“I feel more affected than I thought I would be,” he said. “It’s not unexpected if someone of 96 years dies. The only explanation I can think of is that people felt instinctively how much she cared for the country.”
The River Thames in front of the Houses of Parliament in 2020 in London. Andrew Testa for The New York Times
FEATURED IMAGE: Laying flowers outside Windsor Castle on Friday in tribute to Queen Elizabeth II. Mary Turner for The New York Times
