A rainbow for the royalty

‘When beggars die there are no comets seen / The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes. Thus declares Caesar’s wife Calpurnia, in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, as she tries to dissuade her husband from leaving for the senate. Scary supernatural phenomena have been reported in Rome, and when Caesar argues that those could portend general disasters, Calpurnia retorts that only the passing of extraordinary mortals is foretold by dramatic manifestations. Soon after, Caesar is assassinated.

I was reminded of Shakespeare’s play when I learnt that Queen Elizabeth II was no more. A rainbow sighted over Buckingham Palace came to be viewed as a symbol of her transition from this world to the next. Over a century earlier, the arrival of Halley’s Comet, in April, 1910, was popularly believed to have augured the death of Edward VII (the late queen’s great-grandfather) that took place the following month.

Whether or not celestial signs actually appear when someone of stature departs, one thing is certain: The news of the queen’s demise flashed across the globe in seconds, and social media was flooded with an outpouring of tributes. Bad news travels fast, more so if it concerns celebrities. That is especially the case if they meet an abrupt end.

Remember the death of Diana, a quarter of a century ago? Cell-phones were not common, but people were quick to call each other on landlines. Before I watched the grim images of the mangled vehicle on TV, I had heard about the accident from my husband. I immediately informed a friend, who was an ardent admirer of the princess. I can still recall her dismay and disbelief as she struggled to make sense of my incoherence.

Nearly six decades ago, my parents were in a similar stunned state. Hearing a cry, we rushed to the drawing room, where my uncle was reading the newspaper. ‘They’ve shot Kennedy,’ he murmured through his tears. While I could not understand the effect of the event on the adults, their distress stands out in my memory. It was the morning of
the November 23, 1963, several hours after the President of the USA had been killed. Those were not days of instant communication, and no divine disclosure had predicted the tragedy.

One might dismiss Calpurnia’s talk of signals in the sky being reserved for the renowned as undemocratically outdated, but we continue to be fascinated by the fortunes of the famous and the exits of the exalted.