Commentary
The Queen is dead. Long live the King.
These are the words that must be uttered upon the death of a sovereign. They establish the practice that there is no break in the sovereign power, which passes immediately to the heir upon death, along with the guardianship of our constitutional form of democratic government.
It is with great sadness that we acknowledge the passing of Queen Elizabeth II at 96 years of age. The second Elizabethan era has finished and the reign of King Charles III has begun.
The standard for Queen Elizabeth’s 70 year reign, the longest of any monarch, was set on her 21st birthday, April 21, 1947, when then Princess Elizabeth was with her parents, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth (later the Queen Mother) and younger sister (Princess Margaret) on a tour of South Africa….