I was in bed when I heard the news.

I can’t say I’ll remember the moment itself. It didn’t have the same shock value as Princess Di’s death and unlike most other historically significant events, we know exactly what’s coming over the next few days. The pageantry, the choreography, the careful coordination; it’s all quite deliberate and precise.

I’ll be honest. I’m not a huge fan of the institution. I never have been. I prickle at the privilege of hereditary monarchies. I don’t like aristocracy.

For me and many people of my generation, the monarchy feels like an old-time throwback to empire and an imperial place in the world that Britain no longer holds and should no longer hold.

I think it’s possible to feel ambivalent (at best) about the institution and what it represents, and at the same time a deep respect for the Queen herself as an individual.

In her case, the privileges of the role, the money and castles and special treatment, were surely offset by the extraordinary burden of service. The figure that stuck with me yesterday was 21,000 – the barely fathomable number of private service engagements the Queen undertook during her reign.

No one on the face of the Earth will know a life quite like it. The small talk. The handshakes. The mindless monotony of having almost everyone in your company freak out when you walk in the room.

One thing that has struck me is the sheer volume of people with memories and anecdotes of the occasions upon which they met the Queen. She was like a beach ball in a crowded stadium, passed along time and again for seventy years. Never stopping. A handful of plebs could reach out to her just for a moment in time, before the beach ball was bopped on.

But everyone remembered their moment.

In so many of those stories there is a lovely contrast. For the person she was meeting, the person with the story, the interaction was a huge moment, among the most memorable (and sometimes meaningful) few minutes in their life. But for the Queen, we can only imagine that in the vast majority of cases, the interaction represented the exact opposite.

Just another Tuesday, just another handshake, just another how-do-you-do.

I expect King Charles will have a difficult time maintaining the monarchy’s relevance in a modern world. There are many people who feel an allegiance or a loyalty to, or a reverence for the Queen, who don’t feel the same for King Charles. There will be scrutiny. There will be criticism. There will be many conversations about Republicanism. Without its matriarch, the Royal family’s myriad issues feel all-the-more exposed.

Queen Elizabeth II took the throne when meat was still being rationed in Britain in the post-war years, and lived to see the impacts of globalization, mass-digitalization, and the rise of new threats to democracy.

In an increasingly tribal and partisan world, she was a steady, neutral force.

She was the steady force. I admired the Queen’s careful restraint.

The Queen lived through arguably the greatest period of change the world has ever seen. And in that period of great change there is no figure on Earth who has represented a greater picture of stability. Queen Elizabeth was the constant.

Now, the constant is gone.