Have these people never played chess?

Although if we're being honest, I don't really know much about it either. Chess I mean. But I do know that the Queen is probably the most valuable piece on the board. She can move in any direction and any number of spaces and without her, the game's basically over.

For hundreds of years, high-level chess players
have regarded the Queen as OPAF.

"Please, we both know there's no
cage built that can hold me."

-Queen Elizabeth II

And I know the U.K. has been doing this whole monarchy thing since the dawn of time or whatever, and far be it from me to question them, but how hard is it to keep the hereditary ruler of your country from getting COVID? Did Elizabeth II give them the slip and go out partying? And look, as you may know, I'm a quarter Canadian and am therefore genetically predisposed to be one quarter pro-Queen. I therefore wish the Queen a speedy recovery from this, but she's ninety-five-years-old and the Queen of a hundred and fifty-one million people. Put her in a room and lock the door until this is over, right?

Pictured: Charles, future King of
Great Britain and the Commonwealth of
Nations, and I don't know, some lady?

The British royal family are basically indoor cats yet somehow, the Queen, along with Prince Charles, and her daughter-in-law Camilla whom the Queen recently decided would be--wait, now that's interesting. Charles and Camilla had COVID like, a couple of weeks ago and right around the time the Queen announced that Camilla would get to be Queen Consort when the time comes. Which isn't the same as Queen Regnant, but is still kind of a big deal, because up until now, the plan was that Charles would be the King and Camilla was going to be--officially speaking--just that woman he married. 

There can be only one...

But after decades of rolling her eyes every time Camilla walked in the room, the Queen finally warms up to her and says ok, fine, when I die you can be Queen. Then, suddenly, the Queen comes down with the plague, right after Camilla? I'm not suggesting that Camilla, in some kind of elaborate, Game of Thrones-style long game, deliberately weaponized her respiratory illness, but did she in some kind of elaborate, Game of Thrones-style long game deliberately weaponized her respiratory illness? Ok, no. That's crazy, even as internet theories go, but it's not flat earth or microchips in vaccines crazy, so who knows? 

Got COVID and then hoped in an SUV with
his security detail exposing them all to it
for a photo-op. Yeah, don't miss him at all.

Anyway, my point with all this is that Elizabeth II is just another in a growing list of European monarchs to come down with COVID after Queen Margrethe of Denmark and King Felipe VI and I just can't help but wonder, where are their handlers? When Trump got it, we were all like, of course he did. He was a septuagenarian toddler with the keys to the nuclear arsenal, no accountability and no regard for the safety of others. Of course he got COVID. But these are heads of state we're talking about.

Regular people can get COVID despite being careful because we have to go to work and to the store and live lives, but these peoples' job is to be the living embodiment of political authority for their respective countries. You'd think their staffs would be better at this. Like, there's a reason we keep the Constitution in a case at the National Archives.

Ok, yes, obviously so Nicholas Cage doesn't steal it,* 
but the other reason is so that it doesn't catch COVID.

(source: what passes for civics education in)

*Update! March 27th, 2022: I see now that in National Treasure, Nicholas Cage steals the Declaration of Independence and not the Constitution, but I'm going to stand by the joke on the grounds that a copy of the Constitution is also housed at the National Archives and that National Treasure is an incredibly dumb movie. And yes, believe it or not, I do sometimes go over old posts looking for typos. Wich happens a lot actually.