It’s Getting Increasingly Difficult for Prince Charles to Not Outwardly Express Excitement

Queen Elizabeth II is four thousand years old and dying. This is to be expected; generally the royal body gives out once it reaches the middle of its third millennium. One bonus to dying, though, other than being allowed to finally stop guzzling the dreaded poison of life, is that you get to cancel your plans. In the Queen’s case, that would be the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland. “Oh no, and I really cared about the future of the climate …,” you can imagine the Queen saying as a joke to one of her hundreds of live-in nurses.

"Her Majesty is disappointed not to attend the Reception but will deliver a message to the assembled delegates via a recorded video message," Buckingham Palace said in a statement. We’ll definitely look out for that, sounds good.

Though her imminent death is apparent, the palace still seems a bit reluctant to admit it; last week they confirmed an overnight hospital visit only after it was reported in British tabloid The Sun, issuing a statement saying “the Queen attended hospital on Wednesday afternoon for some preliminary investigations, returning to Windsor Castle at lunchtime today, and remains in good spirits.”

Other than journalists who have been sitting on their Queen Elizabeth obituaries for years, there is one person likely looking forward to the Queen’s last good spirited breath, and that is her son, bright-eyed 72-year-old Prince Charles. Yes, soon he’ll get to drive his cheese car to the big boy crown store and become England’s Big Man. And after he dies, which will be pretty soon probably, who will be King then? Prince William. And after he dies? Adele. And after she dies? The kid from Millions. And after he dies? Well ... the world will have ended by then so there’s no use in really talking about it, but it’s actually one of the main corgis.

Would be interesting to see that, though, so I hope the climate summit manages to get on well without the Queen. Amen.