Queen Elizabeth II

2015catchphraseclassic

Published September 23, 2026

Queen Elizabeth II reigned as Britain's monarch from 1952 until her death on September 8, 2022, and during her final decades she was the target of running internet jokes framing her as effectively immortal. The gag fed into hashtags like #QueenFacts and a wave of gaming-inflected send-off memes after her death.

british memesdeath hoax tragedy memeshashtag memesunwilling celebrity memesdark humor memes

Overview

The online treatment of Queen Elizabeth II mostly leaned on the running gag that she would never actually die. Urban Dictionary entries from the 2010s defined her as 'an immortal that will never die and will rule England forever,' predicting she would 'probably live till 1000'1. That framing produced years of Twitter and Reddit posts treating her as a supernatural fixture of British life.

A parallel format called #QueenFacts turned the immortality joke into invented trivia, with users tweeting fake facts about the Queen's supposed habits, oddities and secret abilities3. The tone stayed affectionate rather than cruel, casting her as an eccentric grandmother figure with hidden powers.

After her death on September 8, 2022, jokes shifted into gaming-adjacent gallows humor. The line 'she ran out of totems,' referencing respawn items in games like Apex Legends and Fortnite, spread as a mock explanation for how someone so long-lived could finally go1.

Origin & Background

Platform
Twitter (viral spread)
Date
2015

Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor was born in 1926 and ascended the throne on February 6, 1952, after her father King George VI died. She was coronated on June 2, 1953, and reigned for 70 years, the longest of any British monarch2. As she moved through her 80s and 90s, the extreme length of her reign started generating the 'she is immortal' framing across Twitter, Reddit and Tumblr.

The most trackable early meme format tied to her is the #QueenFacts hashtag, which appeared on Twitter around September 9, 2015 and involved users posting fake facts about her3. Earliest known meme: 2015-09-09, #QueenFacts on Twitter.

How It Spread

The immortality format built up slowly across the 2010s. Urban Dictionary entries from that decade codified the joke, with definitions calling her 'an immortal that will never die'1. Twitter accounts and meme pages recycled the framing whenever she appeared healthy at public events well into her 90s.

The #QueenFacts hashtag spread across Twitter starting September 9, 2015, and mainstream outlets picked it up shortly after, with the Huffington Post running a write-up titled 'Queen Facts That Might Not Be 100% True'3. The Royal Family's official Facebook page passed 6 million likes and its Twitter account passed 5 million followers by 2022, giving remixers a steady stream of official material to work with3.

Her death on September 8, 2022 triggered another wave of posts. 'She ran out of totems' spread on Twitter and TikTok as a gaming-flavored eulogy joke1, sitting alongside more sincere tribute posts and the older immortality format flipped into 'RIP Queen Elizabeth II' variants1.

How to Use This Meme

To riff on the Queen Elizabeth II meme, users typically leaned on one of two moves. Immortality posts often paired photos of her from different decades with claims she looked identical or would outlive everyone reading. #QueenFacts posts kept a straight-faced tone while inventing absurd claims about her habits, secret powers or hidden past, treating each invention as verified trivia.

Frequently Asked Questions