How the Queen of England Beat Everyone to the Internet | Hacker News Reader

How the Queen of England Beat Everyone to the Internet

wired.com

38 pointsrbanffy28 comments

I was surprised to note at the end of the article it's written by Cade Metz, the same writer who doxxed Scott Alexander. I wonder if this turn to human interest pieces is a fallout from that scandal.

Only if he has a time machine -- the OP article was written in 2012.

So she became the first documented spammer.

What happened to coral 66? I'd love to give it a go now. Write up some code in the official royal signals and radar establishment language

(2012) https://archive.ph/8OBgp

Didn't realize Liz was an OG neckbeard.

every greybeard was once a neckbeard.

Link rot in the article sadly.

the last time there was a Queen of England was in 1702

quite a long time before the internet

Elizabeth II was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland which means she was Queen of each constituent part of it too. She was the Queen of England. Quite apart from that, it is a very common phrase, in part because the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is quite a mouthful.

The Treaty of Waitangi (1840) was a treaty between Queen Victoria and various native chiefs in New Zealand. It refers to her as the Queen of England. It was drafted by well educated people. Many other well educated people make the same "mistake". Maybe it is time to accept that it is perfectly reasonable, unambiguous usage.

> Maybe it is time to accept that it is perfectly reasonable, unambiguous usage.

In my experience most people do, and will do so without further comment regardless of their own preferences exept for nerds of the linguistic, historical or just overly-correct variety on the Internet that insist on correcting a common colloquial reference to the late Queen.

E.g.: The Standard (a British newspaper): https://www.standard.co.uk/news/royals/all-queens-england-ho...

The Sun (a British newspaper): https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/3352901/queen-elizabeth-birthd...

Oh!mymag (or however they stylize that crap, a British magazine? Website?): https://www.ohmymag.co.uk/entertainment/royal-family/elizabe...

A random British elder care website: https://www.seniorhomeplus.co.uk/blog/fun-facts/the-queen-en...

The Daily Mail (a British newspaper): https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5902465/What-happen...

The Sky History website: https://www.history.co.uk/this-day-in-history/02-june/corona...

Grazia (a British magazine): https://graziadaily.co.uk/celebrity/news/what-happens-when-q... (pic 17, also note that this site is probably violating the GDPR with its cookie banner implementation, you have to click "Continue" and then scroll down to "Do Not Sell My Personal Information in the footer).

Keep the Faith (some British religious site): https://www.keepthefaith.co.uk/2022/09/09/the-passing-of-the...

For what it's worth though, you also have this one in the first few results: https://royalcentral.co.uk/features/queen-elizabeth-ii-is-no...

Royal Central appears to be a monarchist fansite, so they're monarchy nerds.

I grew up in the UK, and can tell you it is very rare for people there to refer to her as "the Queen of England". To do so makes you sound ignorant, at least to British people. It would be a similar mistake to refer to the British prime minister as "the prime minister of England". That isn't really a political office, any more than the president of the United States is "the president of California".

I get that, but I also have found that sentiments like that are rarely as universal as they are proclaimed to be which I is why I cited specifically British sources which are easy to find and readily available, and I could have just kept going if I wanted to.

I've certainly corrected fellow Americans on the whole "President of California" thing myself because Federation is a poorly understood concept even within the United States; but unlike Queen/King of England, that one actually doesn't have a historical precedent whereas if I refer to King Charles as the King of England, King of Britain, King of Great Britain or King of the UK, or give the whole spiel and say King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, all will be understood, even though only a couple of those are correct with respect to the legal title described within the Royal and Parliamentary Titles Act 1927.

But if you want to be a true stickler, most instances where people say British with respect to the UK are also incorrect and we should instead be saying British and Northern Irish save for those times we are referring solely to Great Britain itself. I don't think that's a thing that happens much though, and I'm not looking to start now either.

I mean, people in the UK will just refer to "The King/Queen". It's usually pretty obvious which one you mean. I don't think I've heard anyone specify "of England" or "of the UK"

Agree, I grew up in the UK too and people don't say "Queen of England", even littlest Little Englanders I know don't.

I get that in the USA they seem to have grown up with notion of a "Queen of England" and it's hard to shake though.

> means she was Queen of each constituent part of it too

there is no constituent "part", the entities that merged to form the Kingdom of Great Britain ceased to exist more than two hundred years before she was born (see the text of Treaty of Union)

the United Kingdom (throughout is its various incantations) and Great Britain are/were unitary states, not continuing unions of constituent parts

> Maybe it is time to accept that it is perfectly reasonable, unambiguous usage.

right, so under your logic, it's perfectly reasonable to refer to Donald Trump as:

    - President of California
    - President of the Confederate States of America
    - President of the 13 British New England Colonies

all of which are referring to political entities that either no longer exist or which there is no current office for

(and all three of these political entities were created after, or survived beyond the end of Kingdom of England)

Legally there may be no entity called "England" but it exists as a defined area for many legal purposes and the law isn't the only thing that matters anyway. England absolutely exists!

>right, so under your logic, it's perfectly reasonable to refer to Donald Trump as:

People don't say those though. They do say Queen of England.

Only people I hear say Queen of England is Americans

> the United Kingdom (throughout is its various incantations) and Great Britain are/were unitary states, not continuing unions of constituent parts

I don't think the situation is as clear-cut as you assert.

Scotland has its own legal system separate from that of England and Wales. It has its own parliament.

> I don't think the situation is as clear-cut as you assert.

it really is

> It has its own parliament.

which isn't sovereign

it's a glorified county council, and could be abolished by the Parliament of the United Kingdom at any point

this is all clear as crystal in the Scotland Act 1998, which created the (new) Scottish Parliament

it's acknowledged on the Scottish Parliament's own website: https://www.parliament.scot/about/how-parliament-works/power...

and even the Scottish nationalists acknowledge it (because they don't like it and want it to change)

I grew up in the UK, and literally no one there refers to her as the Queen of England. Sure, she is technically also the Queen of Scotland, the Queen of Wales, and so on. But, at least to British people, you sound ignorant by referring to her as such, even if it technically is correct or unambiguous.

I also grew up in the UK, and yes people do, what are you talking about?

Here is the Standard calling her one of the Queens of England. It does later point out that she was technically the Queen of the United Kingdom, but the headline is content to use the Queen of England shorthand:

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/royals/all-queens-england-ho...

Here is an article from the Sun that directly refers to her as the Queen of England without any sort of correction whatsoever:

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/3352901/queen-elizabeth-birthd...

Most people would simply say "The Queen" without clarification, but if you're going to say what she was the queen of, I suspect a lot more people would say the phrase "The Queen of England" than "The Queen of the United Kingdom", simply because the former phrase rolls off the tongue more, and we're all used to learning about the kings and queens of England in history or from those rulers sold at gift shops.

Technically you're correct. But in the UK she was mostly just "the queen". The whole "Queen of England" thing comes from some USians (and others) who use "England" as a synonym for "the UK".

Were Capt William Hobson and James Busby Americans? (USian isn't a real term - people from America, which is a country, are called Americans.)

> USian isn't a real term - people from America, which is a country, are called Americans.)

I agree its not a real term. But I was using it as a compact way to refer to people from the USA, rather than America the country. Because "American" is arguably ambiguous in that it can refer to anyone from the Americas, which is obviously not the same as America the country.

tl/dr I was trying not to make the mistake I was suggesting that others have made

> The whole "Queen of England" thing comes from some USians (and others) who use "England" as a synonym for "the UK".

Pretty sure its a common informal holdover of a correct title from pre-1707 that has also seen at least some use as a subsidiary reference in formal documents of the governments of the Kingdom of Great Britain, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and/or the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in the period after it was no longer the correct formal title (and, particularly, at least, the second of those three, as an example has been provided elsewhere in the thread.)

That's the thing, she wasn't Queen of England in the same way Trump isn't President of Texas. The Treaty of Waitangi might use that term, but it is simply incorrect, even if they are well educated. I'm going to make a guess you are well educated, but also incorrect.

> That's the thing, she wasn't Queen of England in the same way Trump isn't President of Texas.

The same way in that both are true, but not really the same way beyond that. Texas is separate-but-subordinate sovereignty from the United States, England is not a separate sovereignty from the United Kingdom, it is one of several older sovereignties that was fused to form the UK. To the extent that laws still in force in the country of England refer to the monarch of that kingdom, those references now apply to the monarch of the United Kingdom.

> The Treaty of Waitangi might use that term, but it is simply incorrect, even if they are well educated.

The interesting thing is that the Treaty uses the correct formal title in the introduction, but then uses "the Queen of England" in the individual operative articles. Honestly, looking at other treaties of the Victorian era that are similar in context (dealing with entities that are ceding authority and becoming subject, as distinct from treaties with entities that will continue as independent sovereignties -- there is a pretty big stylistic difference here, if you compare, say, the Treaty of Waitangi or the Stone Fort Treaty with the treaty with the Republic of Texas addressing the African Slave Trade), it looks like possibly a quirk of the drafting of the particular text, using the shorter outdated title where more typically treaties would just use "Her Majesty the Queen" in the interior. OTOH, this is also earlier than the other comparable treaties I can readily find (like the treaties of the 1870s with various Canadian First Nations), so the style may also have shited over time; in either case, the interior references are clearly less-formal references with the formal and correct title at the beginning.

The opening of the Treaty of Waitangi is: "HER MAJESTY VICTORIA Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland regarding with Her Royal Favor the Native Chiefs and Tribes of New Zealand and anxious to protect their just Rights and Property and to secure to them the enjoyment of Peace and Good Order has deemed it necessary [...]"

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