Royals are a chance to escape reality

Religion, Karl Marx once wrote, is the “opium of the masses”. But looking at the massive interest in yesterday’s funeral of Queen Elizabeth II – both in the UK and around the world – one would be tempted to correct him and say that royalty is the people’s drug of choice.

Certainly, the British royalty has been written about and spoken about more than any other dynasty in history… and the death of the Queen has provided an opportunity for His Majesty’s subjects, both in uniform and without, to show that nobody does pomp and ceremony quite like they do in England’s green and pleasant land.

WATCH LIVE: Queen Elizabeth II’s state funeral

It was the chance for many to lose themselves in vicarious grief – for the queen herself and possibly for themselves, at the prospect of a world entirely different from the one to which they are accustomed. There was time, too, to ignore the fact that the UK’s soaring inflation rate and outrageous fuel costs could send many loyal commoners going hungry and cold in the coming winter.

Much of the soap opera drama around the royals has been media-hyped, but it is, for all that, still real. And that’s why people keep watching and can’t kick the addiction.