Queen Elizabeth II during her 80th birthday celebrations at St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, England. Photo by Michael Gwyther-Jones on Flickr, CC BY 2.0. After 70 years, London Bridge has fallen down: Queen Elizabeth II, the longest reigning monarch ever to occupy the British throne, passed away on September 8 at her beloved Balmoral Castle in Scotland, not long after her doctors revealed they were “concerned” for her health. She was 96 years old. The queen had celebrated her platinum jubilee earlier this year. As part of the celebrations, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, Prince William and his wife Catherine, embarked upon a Caribbean tour and were met with some resistance over lingering issues related to colonisation. In Belize, for instance, the Q’eqchi Maya community organised protests over indigenous land rights, while in Jamaica, people were calling for an apology from the British royal family for its role in the transatlantic slave trade. The question of reparations was also top of mind. In 2015, former British prime minister David Cameron refused to entertain any discussion around reparations, advising Jamaicans to “get over slavery.” Instead, he pledged to build a new prison on the island, which only added insult to injury. During the queen's jubilee tour, however, Prince William stopped just short of an apology. Such a fraught history has left many in the region attempting to achieve a fine balance between acknowledging a life dedicated to duty and service, and wrestling with a legacy that inflicted its share of pain and struggle. On a thread in the history-focused Facebook group Angelo Bissessarsingh‘s Virtual Museum of Trinidad and Tobago, members remembered Elizabeth II as carrying herself “with dignity and grace,” doing “a lot for the country and the Commonwealth,” and fulfilling her duties as queen “to the very end.” Just two days before she died, the queen carried out what would be her final constitutional duty, formally appointing the 15th prime minister of her long reign. Trinidadian Mark Edghill paid tribute on Facebook: May she Rest Peacefully now after honoring her vow to give her whole life to serving as the Queen of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth. Committed to duty, tradition and protocols. A symbol and pilar of strength and stability across the globe. Transcending decades of cultural changes, development and technological advancement. Truly the end of an era! Regional governments acknowledged the queen's passing in a myriad of ways: Today, the President of Barbados, Her Excellency The Most Honourable Dame Sandra Mason, offered condolences on behalf of the Government and the people of Barbados, to His Majesty King Charles III, on the passing of The Sovereign, Her Majesty The Queen.https://t.co/J7Cing0asC — Mia Amor Mottley (@miaamormottley) September 8, 2022 The Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago examined the queen's “deep legacy through the history of Trinidad and Tobago’s currency,” while in Jamaica — where the queen was head of state — a national day of mourning was declared for September 18, with the admonition that no celebratory events should take place. From Guyana, author Ruel Johnson put it plainly: In 1954, two years after Queen Elizabeth II ascended to the throne, a young poet, himself just a year younger than the then 27-year-old monarch, was thrown into a jail for protesting the rule of the British Empire over the tiny South American colonial territory he was born into, British Guiana. The picture [accompanying Johnson's post] shows that poet, Martin Carter (glasses), being detained along with Cheddi Jagan who was at the time leading the fight for independence from Her Majesty's Empire. That movement would be met with violence from the Crown's government, the deployment of British troops to the tiny place that we know today as Guyana. Of that era, Carter would write: ‘This is the dark time, my love, All round the land brown beetles crawl about. The shining sun is hidden in the sky Red flowers bend their heads in awful sorrow. This is the dark time, my love, It is the season of oppression, dark metal, and tears. It is the festival of guns, the carnival of misery. Everywhere the faces of men are strained and anxious. Who comes walking in the dark night time? Whose boot of steel tramps down the slender grass? It is the man of death, my love, the strange invader Watching you sleep and aiming at your dream.’ Know your history. You have been fed a carefully curated image of cups of tea and crumpets and curtsies and corgis when what exists was built upon blood and injustice.