An American Mourns His Queen, Elizabeth II

I swore an oath of allegiance to her majesty on July 12, 2021, the day I became a British citizen. A born-and-bred American (and still a dual national), I had never put much stock in monarchy. As many Americans are, I am fascinated by the history of the institution and even pride myself on being able to reconstruct a reasonably accurate list of the men and women who have ruled England. Just don’t ask me for all the dates.

But, as many Americans also do, I developed an innate suspicion of monarchy the more I learned about the history of my country of birth. Hereditary monarchy is, quite literally, un-American—it is the institution the United States was born to displace. The U.S. is the place to which many of our ancestors fled to get out from under the thumbs of various European monarchical despots.

On a more personal level, being contrarian, stubborn and a little ambitious, I’m exactly the sort of person you might expect not to thrive under a monarchy and the hereditary class system it drags in its wake. For good measure, I went to the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va., a few miles down the road from Yorktown. Several American revolutionaries were educated at William and Mary. Imagine how surprised I was to discover that

George III

is fondly remembered in the U.K.

When I decided to apply for British citizenship, it had nothing in particular to do with the queen. Having lived in London for more than six years and with the prospect of doing so for a while longer, it seemed only right to put down roots and fully become part of the country that has welcomed me. It was only quite late in the process—once my application had been approved and my naturalization ceremony scheduled—that I realized an oath of allegiance to the queen would be involved.

At which point I also realized the idea didn’t offend me in the way it once might have.

That’s because Britain’s monarchy, although it serves a crucial constitutional role in the functioning of the country’s government, is no longer a political institution. It is a spiritual one. Americans have a conviction in “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” to knit together their country. Britons have the monarchy to bind together theirs.

It’s a remarkable, obstinately anachronistic kind of nationhood. America’s version, or similar breeds such as France’s liberté, egalité, fraternité, demand political conviction, civic engagement and constant vigilance. Britain’s requires instead a mystical form of mutual affection binding sovereign and people.

Queen Elizabeth’s great gift was her ability to maintain that affection over so many decades, many of them very difficult for her country. She did this by being constantly present in the nation’s life without ever seeming overbearing, and by taking care to stay out of politics. This allowed her to ask for, and receive, the love of her people without demanding of them the impossible—toleration for a suffocating presence or assent to political positions they might not share.

It’s an affection for the queen I came to feel myself, in a curmudgeonly American way. Whether it was taking visiting family members to admire the stately exterior of Buckingham Palace (“Is she at home?”) or walking past bright red mailboxes emblazoned with the cipher “ER”—Elizabeth Regina—or feeling more moved than I might have expected when she told her people in the depth of the pandemic crisis in 2020 that “we will meet again,” Elizabeth has been an inseparable part of my life in the United Kingdom. And, I now realize, an indispensable part of what it meant for me to become British.

So: “I swear by Almighty God,” I said last year, “that, on becoming a British citizen, I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, Her Heirs and Successors, according to law.” Allegiance is one thing, affection another. Will I feel the same affection for King Charles III? Will others? It remains a question, widely understood but rarely discussed openly. For now, though, Britain mourns the queen who held it together as a nation for seven decades.

Mr. Sternberg, a member of the Journal’s editorial board, writes the Political Economics column.