So now it is all over. It is time to stand back, take a deep breath and let the realities of the Queen Mother's life and death become a little clearer.

We all understand this was not just another royal death followed by a magnificent state funeral - even though the impeccable planning and execution of Tuesday's ceremony proved yet again that no other nation in the world is able to create pageant on such a grand scale as Britain.

The Queen Mother's death had republicans and monarchists at each other's throats with a ferocity we have never seen before.

The freedom with which the two sides traded insults with each other as well as pursuing their individual agendas was a clear reflection of the public's ambivalent attitudes towards the monarchy.

What is absolutely certain is that all those deluded souls in the streets who talked to the television cameras saying "we loved her because she was one of us" could never have been more wrong.

For the one thing the Queen Mother never was, was one of us.

She was just about the last of the breed of tough, hard and ruthless aristocrats and landowners, born in Britain at the turn of the century, born to rule, living sumptuous lives and assuming social superiority as of right and without guilt.

This was also the time Queen Victoria was predicting the end of the monarchy, suggesting it might only last a further 20 years after her death.

She may have been a little premature but certainly the age of deference and the doffed cap was on its way out.

The war years were the peak of the Queen Mother's popularity but after King George's death in 1952 she lived the grand life to the full.

Lavish beyond the dreams of most of us, it included accumulating a long running debt at her bank of more than £4 million.

She was notoriously eccentric in her attitude towards money.

During a dinner table conversation with the author Andrew Wilson, she confessed she had had "such an awful afternoon today with my bank manager, scolding me about my overdraft".

We are now told Queen Elizabeth will settle the debt for her. That's nice!

It was the understatement of her reign when Queen Elizabeth said to visitors, during her weekend walkabout at Windsor Castle, "My mother had a wonderful life".

But whatever the prodigal excesses of her lifestyle, the quality the Queen Mother possessed in fabulous abundance was a charm that embraced all she met.

It was indefinable. As the jazz pianist Fats Waller once said when asked about swing: "If you have to ask, you ain't got it!"

Queen Victoria's prediction about the future of the monarchy may have been a century or so wide of the mark, but one thing is beyond doubt.

The popular image of the Queen Mother as the People's Queen Mum was just an image - a figment of the imagination.