Indeed, if you want to win a Six Degrees of Separation game, having met her lets you get to anyone who's been anyone over the past century.
She had, after all, met every president, PM, actor, singer, and do-gooder that has ever been, and she outlived them all.
But much more than that, she barely put a foot wrong and quite clearly served out of a deep-seated sense of duty and service that had to be admired, whether you are a card-carrying royalist or a born cynic.
She has been a constant, a rock, an anchor in a hurly-burly, crazy world. I will, we all will, miss her.
In the immediate aftermath of her passing, it may seem too soon to turn to the potentially profound ramifications that flow from it.
But in a sense, as the inevitability of people doing so seeps in, we have to.
Queen Elizabeth was not just a figurehead in a far distant land to which we were once tied, with warm beer, Beefeaters, and Wimbledon.
No, she was our head of state as Queen of New Zealand, represented at present by Governor-General Dame Cindy Kiro.
It has been somewhat fashionable for some time to say that when Her Majesty passed this would open up a "conversation" about republicanism.
I think that is true. But the answer to that conversation is far from inevitable and I believe change must be thought through and in fact contested.
I have often been labelled a conservative. This doesn't mean I am some unthinking reactionary.
Instead, it just means, to me, that we should always very carefully weigh the transaction cost of change.
When it comes to possibly moving on from the monarchy I believe those costs are much higher than would be commonly thought and indeed are too high to meet a threshold for change.
What we have had has been a head of state Britain pays for and which fulfils certain important constitutional functions in a low-key, low-maintenance way. Frankly, we don't even notice.
A change from this is sometimes pitched as not involving much.
Just change Dame Cindy from the Head of State's representative into the actual head of state and you're away laughing.
But it simply wouldn't be that simple. It wouldn't be a straight like-for-like swap. Frankly, we would all notice.
Questions like who and how to appoint the new head of state have to be answered and you quickly get to a position where such a person becomes more than a figurehead with their own power base.
There is no longer any hiding behind a constitutional monarchy. President Helen, or John for that matter? No thank you very much!
Moreover, changing from a monarchy to a republic would precipitate other bigger questions and changes. Do we need a formal written constitution?
If so, what is in it and will we, for example, enshrine the Treaty of Waitangi in it? What is the role of our courts in all of this? Can, meet worms.
The passing of Queen Elizabeth II is incredibly sad.
As we mourn the loss of her, we must also be clear-eyed about what her institution means to us and what we'd really lose if we made changes to our present constitutional arrangements.
- Simon Bridges is a former MP for Tauranga.
Simon Bridges is a former MP for Tauranga.
