The labors of Elizabeth, the duties of a queen until the last day

Only his peers can understand the excruciating effort with which the queen must have accepted Liz Truss, the third lady (all Tory) of the 15 premieres he had seen stooping before her in the seventy-year reign: two days before letting go. And it was as if not she, but only her image, had already abdicated: shrunken, bent, a colorless sweater against the cold of goodbyes, pale, lips too red, a lost look, a hand given with difficulty to a lady a a bit clumsy, the incarnation of those who really matter today, without history or grandeur or style.