Some Guy is Dead. Long Live Some Guy.

So, the queen died.

Ever since, my Facebook feed has been inundated with all kinds of takes on her demise. Some people are celebrating her life and mourning her death, while others are mourning her life and celebrating her death. Some people see her as a feminist icon who ruled an entire country in her own right and took no shit, while many understandably see her as a symbol of the British monarchy and imperialism. And yet, some people are lavishing in the moment Princess Di greets her at the pearly gates with a brick. Needless to say, like most world leaders, Queen Elizabeth was a divisive character.

I think she was all these things. And most importantly, I think she was — hear me out — Just Some Guy™.

People love to sort each other into Good Guys™ and Bad Guys™. We’ve become more polarized in recent years, thanks to an uptick in political fervor brought on by populist leaders like Trump, but it’s always been a thing. We human beings love our black and white morality. You’re for us, or against us. And in certain things, I’m prone to agree. You can’t be a Nazi and a Good Guy, for example. If you ascribe to that ideology, you’re automatically in the Bad Guy category. There’s not a lot of people who are unambiguously Good Guys, but—

Anyways, back to Queen Lizzy. She did some really dope things, like getting off her royal highness and serving in the military during WWII as a frickin princess. Yes, she was a princess who worked to aid the effort to fight literal Nazis, who we have established to be absolutely, 100 percent Bad Guys.

At the same time, she was complicit as the British Empire committed many atrocities against other countries. Plenty has already been written about how shitty Britain has been throughout history. I mean, what do you expect from a country that’s tried to take over the world? I say this as someone who is of primarily British descent. Most Americans get to brag about cool stuff their ancestors’ countries did. Me? Nothing but imperialism and some dope ass rock music, which, in all fairness, was “borrowed” from black American musicians. So really, just imperialism.

The point is, everyone sucks. The queen sucked. Trump sucks. Biden sucks. Freddie Mercury sucked. My mom sucks. I suck. And at the same time, we all do really cool stuff (except Nazis, because fuck them). That’s all part of this thing called being human. We’re all magic moving sentient carbon lumps, and there’s nothing wrong with that. All we can do is reduce the amount of sucky things we do and try to do more cool stuff. Learn from other’s mistakes and try to be a better person.

There’s no Good Guys or Bad Guys, for the most part. Just Some Guys, and the queen? Definitely Some Guy.