dear elizabeth
By Sam Jordison
3:AM Magazine
Dear Elizabeth,
Fuck off.
Fuck off with jubilee fever. Fuck off with national pride. Fuck off with people pretending our ruined country is anything like great. Fuck off with we your subjects pretending that we should be anything like happy with our lot. Fuck off with pretending that we should be partying instead of storming the palace gates. Fuck off with that.
Fuck off with bunting. I don’t want to see bunting. Fuck bunting.
Fuck off with the people who claim you work “so hard”. That’s not working hard. That’s sitting around looking bored. I can do that for fucking free.
Fuck off with the fact that your palaces contain more bedrooms than there are homeless people in London. Fuck off with inequality. Fuck off for being the symbol and shrine of top heavy society. Fuck off with privilege. Fuck off with “betters”. Fuck off with genuflection. Fuck off with lick-spittles. Fuck off with titles. Fuck off with feudalism. Fuck off with deference. Fuck off with inequality, with being at the dishonourable end of the wealth gap, with getting ahead through inheritance. Fuck off, you fucking Tory.
Fuck off with Prince Philip. Fuck off with people saying that “at least he’s got a sense of humour”. That may be true. But why are his jokes so often so cruel? Why are his jokes so often at the expense of people who are weaker and poorer than he is? Why are those people forced to stand by and take such jokes? Why aren’t they even fucking funny?
Fuck off with Prince Andrew. Fuck off with “trade missions”. Fuck off for toadying to dictators. Fuck off with arms sales. Fuck off with blood money. Fuck off with corruption. Fuck off with meetings on yachts. Fuck off with his friends who fuck children.
Fuck off with Prince Edward. Fuck off with It’s a Royal Knockout. Fuck off with inbreeding.
Fuck off with Anne. I don’t even know what Anne does anymore, underneath that wig.
Fuck off with Princess Diana. Fuck off with her cocaine friends. Fuck off with her hate and spite. Fuck off with her anger and her unhappy life. Fuck off with putting a girl so young out to stud with that… husband. Fuck off with her Selina Scott hairdo. Fuck off with getting smashed to pieces in a top of the range Mercedes. Fuck off with greed. Fuck off with extravagant mourning. With people for whom she cared nothing, and who hated her when she lived, and who laughed at her when she lived, and who called her a slag when she lived: fuck off with them lining the roadside and weeping when her coffin went by.
Fuck off with Prince Charles. I don’t even have to explain that one, do I? Fuck off.
Fuck off with Sarah Ferguson. Fuck off with Budgie the helicopter. Fuck off with toe-jobs. Fuck off with corruption scandals. Fuck off with her sadness. Fuck off with another life that your family ruined.
Fuck off with Prince Harry. Fuck off with someone who thinks it’s all right to dress as a Nazi at parties.
Fuck off with someone who has friends like that at the parties he goes to. Fuck off with the fact that everyone knows he contains no more royal blood than I do. Fuck off with the absurd pretence. Fuck off with Major James Hewitt.
Fuck off with Prince William, about whom the best we can say is that he doesn’t seem too bad yet. Fuck off with the fact that someone so unremarkable is going to be put at the head of our nation, just as soon as we’ve figured out a way to get rid of his fucking father.
Fuck off with Kate Middleton. Fuck off with a woman marrying an ugly thick lad, at whom she wouldn’t normally look twice, just because he comes attached to a palace or two. Fuck off with the emptiness, the great aching void at the centre of their lives, at the fact that they can never really know if it’s love they share, or greed, or calculation. Fuck off with their poor children who will be famous before they even take their first shit.
Fuck off with hushed tones. Fuck off with grown men abasing themselves before you on the BBC. Fuck off, especially, with Nicholas Witchell.
Fuck off with all that money. No! Wait! Come back with the money! That’s our money! Fuck off and leave us the money. Or at least, leave us what money you haven’t already spent on ponies, on Rolls Royce cars, on pedigree dogs, on sending the kids to Eton, on helicopters, on security guards, on having men in silly hats standing outside your house(s), on silver cutlery, on having all those hundreds of toilets in your dozens of bedchambers sparkled to a standard of which we your subjects can only aspire. Fuck off. Come back. Now fuck off again.
Fuck off ma’am. Fuck off your Majesty. Fuck off your Royal Highness. Fuck off my lady and fuck off my Queen. And fucking fuck off while you’re doing it.
2021 update: Holy fuck! Are you still fucking here? Why haven’t you fucked off already? And fucking hell, aren’t you fucking ashamed of the way your fucking “Firm” treated that poor girl Meghan? Fuck off with asking what skin colour her child would be. What the fuck is that? What the fuck is wrong with you all? Actually, no fucking need to answer that. We fucking know. We even saw you shielding Prince fucking Andrew for fucking noncing. So we know exactly how fucking low you can go and it’s the fucking bottom of everything you abusive bunch of absolute fucks.
How many lives is your creepy fucking family going to ruin before we’re finally fucking done with you? The sooner you fuck off, the fucking better the world will be. I mean. Really. Fuck.
This originally appeared in 3:AM Magazine on 30 May 2012 to celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sam Jordison is an irregular contributor to The Guardian. He is the author and editor of several books including Enemies Of The People and Crap Towns. He is also the co-director of Galley Beggar Press. He still hasn’t written a novel.
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