THE passing of Queen Elizabeth on Thursday (Sep 8), after a record-breaking era on the throne, is shining a spotlight on the uncertain future of not just the monarchy, but also the United Kingdom which has a new prime minister and monarch within a whirlwind 3 days.

Elizabeth (who some may now call Elizabeth the Great), died aged 96, and visibly declined in health in the last year and a half since the death of her husband, Prince Philip. While she enjoyed a long life, she didn’t get to best her mother’s record of living to 101, and preparations intensified in recent months for her eventual passing.

The Queen’s body will be transported to London from Scotland by Royal Train. Prime Minister Liz Truss and other senior ministers will meet the Queen’s coffin on arrival in London before she is taken to Buckingham Palace.

There will also be a state funeral later this month (probably in around 10 days’ time) at Westminster Abbey in London. The UK will be in an official state of mourning on the day of the funeral, and at midday there will be a national 2-minute silence.

The funeral will be attended by most members of the Royal Family, along with senior officials from the UK and the 15 other governments where the Queen was head of state. Following her funeral, she will be buried in St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle. This is the resting place of her father (King George VI), mother, sister and husband Philip.

Her sad death will remind audiences not just in the UK but also abroad, including her beloved Commonwealth including Singapore, about the unifying role she has played in recent decades. For the Queen was very widely admired, internationally, fuelled by her visits to well over 100 countries during her reign which was the longest in UK history.

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Part of the reason why this is so, is that she represents a figure of significant continuity during a 7-decade period when the world has been transformed. When she assumed the throne, Winston Churchill was UK prime minister, Joseph Stalin was leader of the Soviet Union, Harry Truman was US president, and Mao Zedong was the Chinese Communist leader. Then, the Korean War was still underway; the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was only 2 years old; and the UK was just about to join the United States and Soviet Union as a nuclear weapons power.

Today, the PRC is an emerging superpower, with the largest economy in the world on purchasing power parity terms; the Soviet Union has long ago disappeared from the geopolitical landscape (although Russia continues to challenge the world, as shown most recently in Ukraine); and the UK has transitioned to what some term as a “middle power” with its Empire now dismantled, although some of these former colonial states and dominions remain in the 54-member country, 2.4 billion population Commonwealth, which Elizabeth has done much to champion.

The stability she has provided has been important for many institutions, including the monarchy and Commonwealth, but also the UK itself. This point was highlighted by new Prime Minister Liz Truss on Thursday when she said “Queen Elizabeth II was the rock on what the modern United Kingdom was founded”. The continued union of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland could suffer from a potentially less popular UK head of state in the future.

As much as Elizabeth was a stabilising force for many people, the UK appears to be increasingly divided on geographic lines. This is especially given increased pressure post-Brexit for independence in Scotland. Plus also the growing signs of political change in Northern Ireland too with the nationalist Sein Fein party, which favours unification of the island of Ireland, becoming the largest single party in last May’s elections.

Beyond the debates about the Commonwealth and UK, there is also significant uncertainty over the future of the monarchy itself. Amid the high esteem that the Queen and some other royals are currently held in, what is sometimes forgotten is that she has enjoyed bouts of significantly lower popularity.

The 1990s were particularly troubled, with 1992 becoming her self-described “annus horribilis” when the marriages of 3 of her children, including her heir Prince Charles, disintegrated, and Windsor Castle was nearly destroyed by fire. Meanwhile, her response to the 1997 death of Charles’ first wife, Princess Diana, was widely criticised at the time by the UK public.

Nonetheless, the Royal Family appears to have largely recovered from this period, and the media focus on Elizabeth’s remarkable, long life following her sad passing is highlighting the continuing fascination much of the population has with the monarchy. This is a key driver of the fact that less than a quarter of the UK population today wants a republic, and many believe that it is better to have a non-divisive, non-political head of state.

Turning with the future, within the next 24 hours, the UK Accession Council will meet at St James’s Palace. The council is formed of all Privy Councillors, Great Officers of State, the Lord Mayor of London, the Realm High Commissioners and senior civil servants. The gathering will proclaim King Charles III the new sovereign.

Troublingly, the personal popularity of Charles is neither as high as his mother’s, nor that of his own son William. Moreover, at almost 74 years of age, Charles is already at an age when many people are retired, and is the longest-waiting and oldest heir to the throne in UK history.

Indeed, some polls show that a significant body of the UK public would prefer the monarchy to skip a generation from Elizabeth to William upon the Queen’s passing. This leaves open the significant possibility that the Royal Family could become less popular under Charles’ rule.

So the skill Charles now shows as Elizabeth’s successor could therefore have implications not just for the monarchy, but also the wider union of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. He will do well to learn the astuteness his mother has shown of being a reformer, while widely being seen as a force for stability, evolving to meet the changing social, political and economic contours of the 21st century.

Andrew Hammond is an associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics.