Outside a corner store in suburban Wellington, a small chalkboard announced the news amid the ice-cream specials. “Queen has Died,” it read. The photograph, circulated on New Zealand social media, encapsulated the country’s understated, matter-of-fact response to its longtime monarch’s passing.
As 21 gunshots echoed across Wellington’s harbour on Sunday, a few hundred had gathered on New Zealand parliament’s grassy lawns for the formal pronouncement of their new king. The crowd was sparse, in relative terms: the size one might expect outside parliament for a high-profile petition, and around a tenth of the number that gathered to grieve at a vigil for George Floyd. At the gates of the British High Commission, a few lonely bunches of flowers rested.
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