She Lived Her Best Life

CNN and Fox were fine, but you had to tune in to the British news channels to get the full weight of the Queen’s death on Thursday. Every anchor, every reporter, spoke in a voice burdened by grief. So it was easy to forgive one Sky News commentator when she said, “At a time when it’s all about having a brand, the Queen stood in defiance of that trend.”

In fact, it’s hard to think of anyone who had a more cultivated brand than Elizabeth II. Her every public appearance, every utterance, every twitch was carefully calibrated toward the image of a stately monarch. Yet you can also understand what the Sky commentator meant. For most of us, having a brand means slapping pictures on Instagram of ourselves mid-parasail over a beach in Florida or mid-six-mimosa brunch at an outdoor bistro with only seventy-three of our closest friends. Our teeth sparkle; the sun shines; the mundane stretches are blotted out. It’s a narcissistic thing, a commercial promotion of the self. The message is: this is how I have chosen to spend my time, and isn’t it just glorious?

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