Wizards and the Queen

[o_caipora]

No: HPFGUIDX 83869

How often is the Queen used in British fiction?

It's fairly common in American fiction to use the President. He's 
someone who's automatically "important", and as such he attracts 
bestseller authors the same way Death attracts teenage writers.

But I'm not sure the Queen is used in the same way. P.G. Wodehouse 
has endless earls and baronets, and Saki makes liberal use of 
Duchesses. But never the Queen.

There was a film set in a British board school some thirty years 
ago, "If...", where the climactic scene is a birthday assembly for 
the very ancient school. Someone at the assembly addresses someone 
else - who IIRC was not even visible - as "Highness", which would be 
a member of the royal family, but not the queen who would 
be "Majesty". 

I'm not referring to historical fiction, which may follow different 
rules. Though IIRC in Daphne du Maurier's "The King's General" the 
King never appears directly. American fiction or movies set in 
England doesn't count, either.

So - three possibilities:

1) When Rowling mentions the Prime Minister but not the Queen, she's 
merely following British literary convention.

2) The above is not true, and failure to mention the Queen tells us 
something about the Wizarding World.

3) She's waiting to be knighted, after which Her Majesty gets a cameo 
scene - or perhaps bashes Voldemort over the head with her sceptre, 
vanquishing him single-handedly, if Rowling is ennobled.

Can anyone shed some light on this?

 - Caipora

Lola said:

> That would make the Queen the official Head of State of the 
> British wizarding community.
> However, functionally, the Minister of Magic must be the Head of 
> State because the Queen can hardly have an in-depth knowledge about 
> wizarding affairs, can she?