In the immense fanfare and ceremony that accompanied Winston Churchill’s funeral in 1965, Queen Elizabeth delivered a small but telling gesture.

John Krull, publisher, TheStatehouseFile.com

Only two wreaths were placed on Churchill’s grave when he was laid to rest.

Handwritten notes accompanied both.

The first was from Churchill’s widow, Clementine. It said, simply, “To my darling Winston, Clemmie.”

The other was from the queen. It, too, was plainspoken.

“From the Nation and Commonwealth, in grateful remembrance, Elizabeth R,” it read.

The note was, of course, a tribute to the leader who had carried Great Britain through its greatest trial.

But it also was something more than that, a quiet statement of the monarch’s own belief in the importance of honoring one’s duty and loving one’s country and people.

The queen was not yet 40 when Churchill died. But she already had occupied for more than a decade the throne of what was once the world’s greatest power and empire. She had weathered crises both personal and political and soldiered through them with determination and dignity.

Hers was not destined to be a reign filled with glory.

She came to the throne when Great Britain shifted from being the world’s colossus to becoming just another member of the community of nations. It was largely on her watch that the British empire first shrank, then disintegrated and dissolved.

That loss of status, coupled with decades of economic and cultural upheaval, easily might have toppled another monarch and even ended the monarchy in Britain altogether.

Certainly, that was a challenge for Elizabeth.

During her reign of 70 years—the longest in British history—there was persistent questioning about the value and legitimacy of the monarchy in what was increasingly an egalitarian and even populist modern age.

When one superpower during the long Cold War era, the United States, asserted that all were created equal and the only just system was a meritocracy and the other, the Soviet Union, argued that the nation’s bounty should be divided according to need rather than worth, what role did a system based on inherited privilege and an inherent notion that some people are just born to rule have to play? How could a monarchy, even the idea of kings and queens, be justified?

It seemed an absurd system.

In many ways, it was.

And is.

But what preserved and even redeemed it was the woman herself.

As the descendant, on my mother’s side, of Scotch-Irish peasants who in the 18th century fled the often capricious cruelties of the British crown and settled in America before this land was even its own nation, I never have had much interest in the trappings of monarchy. The soap-opera-like dramas featuring members of the royal family over these past decades bored me when I couldn’t ignore them.

I could not figure out what made their dysfunction more fascinating than that of any other family.

That’s because I am, to my core, a democrat with a small “d,” a firm believer that all people have the same right to seek out life’s blessings. That is, to me, the essential promise of America.

But I would be less than honest if I did not acknowledge profound respect for Elizabeth II, respect that aligns easily with my egalitarian principles.

That’s because of who the woman was.

She saw herself not as the nation’s ruler but as its servant, the person fate selected to serve as the human embodiment of the United Kingdom. The call that spoke to her during her long years of service was that of duty rather than an opportunity.

Despite all its privileges, hers must have been an often lonely and isolated existence.

But she did not complain. She went about her work, meeting her responsibilities to the nation she loved, right up to the time of her death, asking a new prime minister to form a government when she was only hours from meeting her own end.

Thus, Elizabeth did what she always did. She brought her people back together in times of dissension and turmoil.

Her fortitude, her dignity and her unshakable resolve become ever more admirable in a world that often seems to place a greater value on notions of entitlement than it does on principles of self-sacrifice.

Queen Elizabeth II has died.

Long live the queen.

And may she rest in peace.

FOOTNOTE: John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students. The opinions expressed by the author do not represent the views of Franklin College.