Welcome to noble blood, a production of I heart radio and grim and mild from Aaron maankie listener discretion advised. On September eighth, twenty twenty two, Elizabeth the Second Queen of the United Kingdom and Commonwealth realms, died at her summer residence Balmoral in Scotland at age ninety six. She had reigned for seven decades, the Queen through the space race and the dawn of the information age, the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of the Internet.
She hosted the Kennedys at Buckingham Palace, Rode Horses with Reagan and sent Dwight Eisenhower a recipe for scones. Fifteen prime ministers formed governments in her name, including Winston Churchill.
Seventy years on the throne, for most people around the world she was the only monarch in memory, a constant presence, both physically on money and on stamps, but also in the popular imagination through jokes, references, songs and through every mother who had ever corrected the table manners of their child by saying would you too with your mouth open if you are having dinner with the Queen? The monarchy
itself is a strange and antiquated institution. If you've listened to this podcast, you understand how odd it is when vast political power is arbitrarily inherited, and inherited by well people who, for all the pomp and ceremony that tries to turn them into deities, remain, at the end of the day, just people with the normal jealousy's insecurities, vanities
and mistakes that people make. The death of the Queen, though, isn't just the death of an individual, it's the death of a symbol, because in the twenty one century, with political power almost entirely granted to democratically elected representatives, the monarchy is symbolic. Like Sherlock Holmes or Paddington Bear, the
Queen was an institution synonymous with Britishness. That Paddington comparison becomes all the more self evident with reports of mourners leaving marmalade sandwiches as tribute at the gates of Buckingham Palace. She's a symbol of British tea towel kitch, of a bygone era that we might falsely remember through Rose Tinted
Downton Abbey Lenses. A Symbol of Happy Childhood Memories, Watch doctor, who, of course, there are many around the world who understand the queen fairly, I might add, was also a symbol of an imperialist and colonial power that caused tremendous pain across the globe. For better or for worse, the Queen
was a fixture in every sense of the word. She was fixed, I think, in a world in which change is near constant and terrifyingly fast and the future is well, pretty scary, there was a comfort in thinking that this one thing was just there, remaining the same, not changing, not doing anything different, just there. The Queen understood that, that that fear of change and the need to cling to comfort was as much the purpose of the monarch in the twenty one century as anything else. Sometimes to
her detriment, she refused to bend to modernity. She did not reveal much of her personality, let alone her political opinions. Whereas Princess Diana was able to captivate attention with her vulnerability and charisma, Queen Elizabeth had an almost opposite strength. She wouldn't burn bright necessarily, but she would burn along
in action was her most powerful action. With that in mind, I want to draw your attention to one particular crisis moment in Queen Elizabeth's reign, a disaster in Wales that tested her instincts as a monarch. In her many years on the throne, the Queen would look back to the event that occurred in Aberfan in nineteen sixty six and
call her response her greatest regret. The Chat Lenge of balancing spontaneous action with one's position as an a political fixture is only becoming harder in a world of constant access and social media. If the monarchy is going to survive after Queen Elizabeth's death, perhaps the new king, Charles the third, might learn from his mother, both from her successes and from her failures. I'm Dani Schwartz and this
is noble blood. It was before a mid semester break, and so on October one, the students of punk glass junior school in Aberfun were only there for half day. They had raced to school in the rain, their boots squelching in the and hoods pulled up against the drizzle.
That area of Wales is usually wet, getting over sixty inches of rain a year, and so it wouldn't have been abnormal for them to have been shaking off their jackets and stomping the mud away as they settled into their seats to begin their day with a traditional hymn. All things bright and beautiful. It was, in other words, a perfectly normal day. Until the students heard a low rumble. The rumble became louder. It would later be described as
like the roar of a jet engine. It was an avalanche approaching, tumbling down the hill nearby faster than anyone could have imagined, but not an avalanche of snow or Earth, but the slurry or waste from the coal mine nearby. It happened before anyone knew what to do. The school and much of the town was buried. The roar abated and the town became eerily silent. Aberfan became a mass grave. To understand what happened in Aberfan and why, it's important
to go back in time. The whales became a coal mining center during the industrial revolution in the late seventeen hundreds. Its True Coal Hey day was during the nineteen twenties, when more than a quarter of a million workers were making their livelihoods in coal mines. By the nineteen sixties, at the Merthyr Vale Colliery Outside Aberfan. That number was just down to eight thousand, but still it was how those eight thousand men made their living and supported their families.
Coal mining is a messy business and part of the process is that waste rock is generated in the digging. The best way to deal with that way east is too elegantly enough stack it up in piles that are referred to as tips. In nineteen sixty six there were seven tips from the Mirth R Veil Colliery. The seventh, which had begun in nineteen fifty eight, atop a sandstone base above a natural spring on a hill above Aberfan,
was more than one d feet tall. Of course, in retrospect it seems obvious that a massive waste pile shouldn't have been built atop a hill with a primary school just below. And citizens in Aberfan complained to the mine and to the National Coal Board. But nothing was done. And worse than nothing, the response back from the powers that be seemed to be saying, in not so many words, keep making a fuss and will close the mind altogether,
and then will you make your living. And so the mining continued and the spoil tip on top of the hill continued to grow. Later after the disaster, the National Coal Board would face an examining tribunal who would report. Quote. The aberfan disaster could and should have been prevented, but it was a matter not of wickedness but of ignorance,
ineptitude and a failure in communications. End. Quote. It was a rainy autumn in a rainy place that day on October, the sludge on the hill became swollen with water, thick and wet and black, and then the tip gave way. Bulldozers set to work immediately, trying to dig away the one hundred and forty thousand cubic yards of black sludge
that had consumed the primary school and the town. Firefighters, policemen and countless volunteers began digging at the earth with their bare hands, horror struck at the faint sounds of wailing they could hear coming from below. The men digging had come straight from their jobs at the mine. John Humphries, a Welsh journalist who had been reporting there that day,
described them. Quote. There they were when I arrived, their faces still black save for the streaks of white from the sweat and the tears as they dug and prayed and wept. Most of them were digging for their own children. End Quote. The community continued their efforts at finding survivors, digging every single day in the wreckage of the school for a week straight. But after that first day no
more survivors were found. It was a national tragedy. Twenty eight adults were killed in the disaster and one hundred and sixteen children, half of all of the children in the towne of Aberfan, were dead. Of course, in moments like that, of senseless loss and unimaginable grief, the monarchy is there to offer comfort and to help draw attention
to relief efforts. And Prince Philip arrived in Wales the very next day, along with the prime minister at the time, Harold Wilson, and Lord Snowden, the husband of Princess Margaret. But the Queen wasn't there. The question is why? The answer is, well, we're not sure. It seems a decision was made and that decision was to dispatch Prince Philip in the Queen Place. But whose decision was it? According to the Queen's former private secretary, Lord Charteris, the Queen
had been given bad advice. Quote. We told her to stay away until the preliminary shock had worn off. End. Quote. The thought was that if the Queen went while the relief efforts were still underway, it might cause a distraction divert resources among police or security that otherwise might go toward digging still. Another adviser presents a different picture of
the discussions happening within the royal inner circle. Biographer Robert Lacy quoted an adviser who said we kept presenting the arguments, but nothing we said could persuade her. STOICISM and aversion to emotional gestures was a feature of Queen Elizabeth's reign, not a bug, as they say. She was averse to doing anything that might have an outsized reaction, even if the reaction might be good, because it risks the possibility
that it might not be. Consider that Elizabeth's Moore, let's say, Les a fair sister, Princess Margaret, offhandedly remarked that people should be donating toys to Aberfan for the remaining children. The consequence of Princess Margaret's remarks was that toys overwhelmed the town, overflowing from the cinema and the donation centers to the point where it was a distraction from relief efforts.
If you do nothing, the queen seemed to believe, then you can do nothing wrong, except, of course, sometimes you can. In action is also action, and as the days crept by and the relief efforts became exhausted, eventually it was decided that the Queen would visit Aberfan. After all, it was eight days after the disaster. The deaths were counted and there was no more digging. When the Queen arrived, a young girl approached and presented her with a posy.
The note attached red from the remaining children of Aberfan. According to a number of the morning families, the Queen's visit was a great comfort. She stood with the parents who had lost their children, listen to them, made them feel less anonymous, less alone. The crown was here with them. The country saw their pain. That was what her visit symbolized. Still, she had waited eight days. Maybe it would have been
a distraction if she had come earlier. Maybe the grief would have been overwhelming and the relief efforts too chaotic to accommodate a royal visit. But still, sometimes you can only regret and think what you might have done differently. Queen Elizabeth the second certainly did. The Queen would return three more times the village of Aberfan in her reign. Though the power of the monarchy is largely symbolic, now,
that power is still legitimate. Case in point, during one of her later visits, it was revealed that the government had used the Aberfan disaster fund in order to fund the removal of the six remaining slag tips. That sounds all well and good, but that money had actually been set up explicitly to help the bereaved families. Queen Elizabeth's visit helped bring attention to that corruption, which led to
the money be repaid to those families. On her final visit to Aberfan, in against the advice of her advisers, the Queen insisted that she take off in a helicopter. The ground was too wet, they said, and the weather too erratic, but she insisted because she thought that the children would like to see it, and so off in a helicopter she went. I highlight the Aberfan disaster because it captures at once what I believe to be the
monarchy's greatest weakness, but also their strength. Its weakness is that its stability comes from inaction the royal family can never be dazzling or unexpected. There can be no great victories, because to achieve any victory is to risk defeat. The Queen understood that more than anyone, that her role was to be less a person, with whatever one or desires came from that, and instead be an institution, to let her personhood be subsumed by the role. That was her
sacrifice and that was her duty. Elizabeth the second was never supposed to be queen. Her father was King George the fifth, second son, and so her uncle had been in line for the throne. He was King Edward the eighth, but for several reasons that we've already discussed on this very podcast, he was entirely unsuited to the position. He abdicated in order to marry an American divorcee, in what Elizabeth's family saw as a fundamental betrayal, a selfish dereliction
of duty. She would never do anything like that. She would honor the institution of the crown at all costs. She would do her duty, withstanding whatever small humiliations and criticisms it required. She would be the human statue that the nation could look to so that she could be able to achieve what I believe is the monarchy's greatest strength, to make people feel seen comforted. If the Queen represents the entire nation, when she is there with you, you
know that the nation is with you too. That's the story of Queen Elizabeth the second and the Aberfan disaster, but stick around after a brief sponsor break to hear a little bit more about the human side of the late Queen. The Queen is such an institution that sometimes it's easy to forget that she was in fact a real human being. There's one anecdote I love, possibly Apocryphal, but that shows her sense of humor. The Queen's favorite
spot was balmoral. The castle located in the Scottish countryside, and often she would walk across the hills to take in the views. One morning she was walking when she encountered a pair of hiking tourists. Incredibly, they didn't recognize her and made conversation. They heard that the queen sometimes stayed around there. Was that true? Yes, she replied it was. The tourists became excited. Have you ever met her, they asked. No,
the Queen deadpanned. She pointed to her guard, who was standing nearby at a respectful distance, but he has yeah. Noble blood is a production of I heart radio and Grimm and mild from Aaron Mankey. Noble blood is hosted by me Danishwartz. Additional writing and researching done by Hannah Johnston, Hannah's wick, Mirra Hayward, Courtney Sunder and Laurie Goodman. The show is produced by Rema Il Kali, with supervising producer Josh thane and executive producers Aaron Mankey, Alex Williams and
Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from I heart radio, visit the I heart radio APP, apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.