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As the Queen peered into the camera lens for her 2019 Christmas Day message, uttering the time-honored mixture of platitudes and gentle allusions to earth-shattering events, there was a striking sense that this was the end of an era.
The Queen described the past year as “quite bumpy”—which some people might say is a rather understated reaction to your 98-year-old husband being in a car crash and nearly killing both himself and a baby, your favorite son being defenestrated on primetime TV, and your grandson and wife making clear their discontent with royal life.