In first place

Now that the Queen has reached the 60th anniversary of her accession to the throne, it is surely time for her and her advisers to remove a lasting insult to Scotland as fictitious as Mel Gibson’s Braveheart face-paint – namely the Crown’s insistence on maintaining her title as Elizabeth II north of the Border.

While undoubtedly the second of her name in England and Wales, the Queen is no more Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom than James VI of Scotland was sixth of the same kingdom – nor were Edward VII and VIII or William IV of England.

This gratuitous distortion of Scots, and indeed Commonwealth, history, thanks to the arrogance of the Old Fallopians who then as now comprised the “establishment”, certainly acted as a considerable boost to the Scottish Nationalist cause, if not on quite the same scale as Margaret Thatcher’s one-size-fits-all economic policies, which devastated Scotland’s industrial heartlands a generation later.

If the Queen, who seems a dutiful monarch, really wishes to preserve what it left of the Union, she might just see fit to correct this petty historical fiction – and also ensure that, if her grandson William ever takes the throne in his own name, his cypher reverts to IV of the United Kingdom.

Willie Morrison

Moray Park Avenue

Inverness

It IS amusing to see Peter Jones’s thoughts about the monarchy and Scotland (Perspective, 7 February) illustrated with a photo of the Queen surrounded by children waving England’s flag of Saint George.

It tends to be assumed that we have a choice between the present monarchy and a republic.

Personally I favour keeping the “Kingdom of the Scots”, declaring the throne vacant and electing a guardian.

That is for after independence is resumed, assuming that the present Queen or her successor continues as head of state for the immediately forseeable, post- independence future.

David Stevenson

Blacket Place

Edinburgh