Indeed, the Royal Family have every right to be left in peace to grieve. But privacy is not what they, or the establishment they belong to, crave.
The Royals' loss is public in every sense. There will be a lavish state funeral, paid for by the taxpayer. There will be an equally lavish coronation of her son, Charles, also paid for by the taxpayer.
And in the meantime, the British public will be force-fed the same official messages by every TV channel - not neutrally, impartially, or objectively, but as state propaganda - paid for, once again, by the British taxpayer.
Reverence and veneration are the only type of coverage of the Queen and her family that is now allowed.
But there is a deeper sense in which the Royals are public figures - more so even than those thrust into the spotlight by their celebrity or talent for accumulating money.
The British public has entirely footed the bill for the Royals' lives of privilege and pampered luxury. Like the kings of old, they have given themselves the right to enclose vast tracts of the British isles as their private dominion. The Queen's death, for example, means the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have just added the whole of Cornwall to their estate.
If anyone is public property, it is the British Royals. They have no right to claim an exemption from scrutiny just when scrutiny is most needed - as the anti-democratic privileges of monarchy pass from one set of hands to another.
The demand for silence is not a politically neutral act. It is a demand that we collude in a corrupt system of establishment rule, and hierarchical privilege.
The establishment has a vested interest in enforcing silence and obedience until the public's attention has moved on to other matters. Anyone who complies leaves the terrain open over the coming weeks for the establishment to reinforce and deepen the public's deference to elite privilege.
Continuity of ruleUndoubtedly, the Queen carried out her duties supremely well during her 70 years on the throne. As BBC pundits keep telling us, she helped maintain social "stability" and ensured "continuity" of rule.
The start of her reign in 1952 coincided with her government ordering the suppression of the Mau Mau independence uprising in Kenya. Much of the population were put in concentration camps and used as slave labour - if they weren't murdered by British soldiers.
At the height of her rule, 20 years later, British troops were given a green light to massacre 14 civilians in Northern Ireland on a protest march against Britain's policy of jailing Catholics without trial. Those shot and killed were fleeing or tending the wounded. The British establishment oversaw cover-up inquiries into what became known as "Bloody Sunday".
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