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Very sad to hear Lizzie has passed. 70 years on the throne and she has over that time has had 15 Prime Ministers from Winston Churchill to the most recent Liz Truss being asked to form the next British Government on Tuesday. She was the longest serving British Monarch and the second longest serving Monarch in history.

She is beloved and well liked by pretty much the entire British public and the country will celebrate and remember her life.

The Queen is dead, long live the King.

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Holy crap! Just heard this!

Queen is dead, long live the king :beer:

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I thought for sure Charles was never going to be King…that she would outlive him.

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I was listening to LBC radio as the political commentator and host Andrew Marr announced her death. Quite movingly his voice broke, he started to cry and they switched to his co-host.

The BBC has suspended all TV shows and dedicating the rest of the night to Royal Coverage. I assume ITV is doing the same.

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I would have wagered on it.

Do you think there is any chance that he will abdicate in favor of William?

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Charles is 73 so if he lives as ling as his mum he will be on the throne for 23 years. That means William will be in his sixties when he ascends to the Throne.

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Charles will not abdicate. Not a chance.

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They are already referring to Charles as King Charles.

Interestingly enough there is some speculation that Charles may take George as his official monarch name.

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From Winston Churchill to Lizz Truss.

Rather tells the story of our decline as a country.

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Ha! As the country has now has two reasons to be bummed.

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I’m a republican (small r) to the bone but I must say she was by far my favorite monarch in history and the best representation of what a good monarch truly is. She loved her country and her people dearly and has helped lead the commonwealth through some of its most troubling times.

She will be terribly missed.

I wonder if Charles can attempt to live up to her legacy.

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Who would believe that Liz Truss would ever be PM. Mind boggling.

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she liked horses, so therefore gets a thumbs up from me.

King Charles has big shoes to fill.

Allan

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You guys wanna know something weird?Queen Elizabeth, while deeply popular, really didn’t have much impact on history. Yet the next week or two will be spent in mourning.

Meanwhile, Gorbachev, who had an enormous impact on history, was barely a blip. I don’t think that he even inspired a thread here.

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Nice to see talentless women failing upwards just like the men.

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Eh Gorby kind of killed his legacy with those awful pizza commercials.

In all seriousness though, he definitely had a huge impact on history. Mainly because of what he didn’t do. When the Warsaw Pact was falling apart in 1989 he did something no other Soviet leader would have ever done. He said choose your own destiny.

If it had been anyone else in the Politburo in charge, the Soviet Army would have been in every single Warsaw Pact capital stamping out the revolutions of 1989.

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I had a Mandela effect moment when I heard about Gorbachev dying. I am convinced I heard he died a few years back.

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I wish he would.

Won’t happen though.

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Why should he even consider it. As King he will no longer be involved in his causes which at times crossed the line to be almost political.

His entire life has been dedicated to this one moment. And King Charles has not embarrassed his family in the same was as some of his siblings.

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I’m almost finished with Not One Inch.

An excellent book about the 1990s and how players in the US, Europe and Russia all made terrible missteps that squandered the golden opportunity we had for lasting peace at the end of the Cold War.

Especially fascinating is how Putin came to be in power in the first place…because he was pretty much the only one who promised to not have Yeltsin and his family executed for corruption and so therefore was the only successor that Yeltsin would accept after he resigned.

He wouldn’t have resigned otherwise.

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