Buckingham Palace has confirmed that Queen Elizabeth II died peacefully at her Balmoral residence on the afternoon of Thursday, 8 September. For her former subjects across the Commonwealth, what will the reaction be -- if any?

With the death of Queen Elizabeth II at the age of 96, the second Elizabethan Age is officially over.

Surreal as it might seem now, for the first nine years of the queen's reign, she was the Sovereign of South Africa. When she ascended to the throne in 1952, the British Empire still held about 70 colonies abroad. Zimbabwe would gain its independence from the crown only in 1980.

Within the queen's lifetime, she would see the end of that empire more or less officially arrive in 1997, when the last significant colony, Hong Kong, was transferred back to China.

The queen's personal feelings on the demise of the British Empire remain unknown, much like her personal feelings about most topics. In Tina Brown's recent book about the British royal family, The Palace Papers, however, Brown records that Elizabeth's sister Margaret was more open about her distress at the loss of each successive colony, frequently declaring: "Africa's quite gone to pot since we left...