It’s not every day that someone experiences the death of three queens at once to whom they owed allegiance.

As well as the queen of the United Kingdom, Elizabeth II was also queen of Canada, New Zealand and Australia. I became a citizen of each of the last three in chronological order at a time when I believed I’d be living in it for the rest of my life. Because all three permit multiple citizenships, this posed no legal difficulty other than the fact that I cannot be a member of Australia’s Parliament — not a career change to which I have ever aspired. Because the same queen was sovereign of all three countries, the question of conflicted loyalties was never a realistic prospect.

Her death seems to have energized several of the perpetually angry denizens of the Twittersphere. It’s her critics who diminished themselves with meanspirited coarseness. Nigerian professor Uju Anya from Carnegie Mellon University tweeted (later pulled by Twitter): “I heard the chief monarch of a thieving raping genocidal empire is finally dying. May her pain be excruciating.”