I love a good internet rabbit hole, and watching The Crown has given me a great chance to learn all sorts of new and completely useless information about the British royal family, along with an unhealthy emotional investment in Queen Elizabeth’s love life! And, since I couldn’t think of anything clever to write about today, I’m going to share my largess with you!

You’re welcome.

• She’s also Queen of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Because when they decided to become their own countries it was too much trouble to establish their own monarchies.
  

  Which means she gets to rock some truly fantastic feather capes

• She’s weirdly related to her husband. If I’ve got this right, they’re cousins because their great-great grandma was Queen Victoria, and Queen Victoria was married to her own first cousin, Albert. Maybe that’s why they wound up spreading haemophilia to pretty much all the royalty, which in turn helped contribute to the fall of the Russian Empire. So basically they’re all a bunch of diseased, inbred lunatics. As opposed to politicians who are voted into power, and don’t have that excuse.
  

  Yes, I just smoothly transitioned from the English monarchy to Rasputin. IT WAS RELEVANT.

• Fittingly, the way they fell in love was also hella creepy. She was 13 at the time, while he was 18. Have you ever met a 13 year old? Do you remember being 18? If your kid was 13, and came home all, “Daddy, I’m in love with my 18 year old cousin!” how fast would you invest in bars across her bedroom windows?
  

  Pictured here: 13 year olds engaged in age-appropriate activities. Like not writing love letters to their much older cousins.

• She was a mechanic in WWII. Because she’s a secret badass.

 

• Since all British passports are basically just pieces of paper saying, “The Queen officially requests that you be cool,” she doesn’t need one herself. Because she is the Queen, in case you forgot.
  

  “I fucking DARE YOU to forget, peasant.”

• The party gets started before lunchtime if she has anything to do with it. And by “party” I do mean “gin.”
  

  Chug! Chug! Chug!

• She uses her purses to communicate a secret code. No, seriously. 
  

  This is a woman seriously committed to accessorizing.

• She bought her wedding dress with rationing coupons, but it was covered in pearls, so… probably not actually as frugal as that sounds.
  

  Oh yes, very understated.

• A teenager tried to assassinate her with… blanks? Because he couldn’t buy real bullets in Britain, because they’re better at these things than we are? I’m genuinely confused how he thought those blanks were going to work out for him.
  

  So… this? He basically used this?

• She once woke up to a weirdo in her bedroom. And then she ran out, and he was arrested. He wasn’t actually up to anything, other than to see how far he could get before he was caught? The 80’s were a weird time.
  

  I tried to find a picture of her in something embarrassingly 80’s, and this was the closest I came. You have to give her credit, the woman found her look and stuck to it.

• Technically, she owns all the whales and sturgeon in UK waters. Actually, the king owns the head, and the queen the tail, but since there is no king I guess she gets both? Or does Phillip, even though he’s just a prince consort? You’ll have to ask the Receiver of the Wreck (a real title!) for more information.
  

  THIS IS MY NEW FAVORITE PICTURE

• Okay, I know, enough with the wedding trivia, but this one’s good: The Queen’s grandma was shocked – shocked! – by Gandhi’s wedding gift, a shawl he hand-spun himself. Because she thought Gandhi had given her daughter his underwear as a wedding present. Yep. Who thinks something like that? She obviously had her mind in the royal gutter.
  

  I couldn’t find any pictures for this, so I’m giving you this instead.

• Most obviously of all, her collection of hats is truly stunning. She claims to wear them (and all those crazy colors) so that people in a crowd can see her easily, but I’m pretty sure it’s really just an excuse to be as fabulous as possible.