Under the cheers and applause of loyal subjects, the remains of Queen Elizabeth II arrived in London on Tuesday evening, precisely at Buckingham Palace, to spend one last night there, before five days of public homage to Westminster.
She was welcomed there by her son Charles III and the queen consort, Camilla, who had returned from a brief official visit to Northern Ireland, and other members of the royal family. His return to the capital is preparing for his funeral, which will take place Monday at Westminster Abbey.
Outside the palace, a huge crowd greeted the arrival of the woman who reigned over the country for 70 years, with cheers and loud applause, lighting up the stage with their mobile phones despite the capricious weather.
The Queen’s coffin, covered with the yellow, red and blue royal standard of the United Kingdom and a wreath of white flowers, was unloaded, by the famous grenadiers, from the hearse which had transported it from the airport of the Royal Air Force, where he had landed an hour earlier.
On his way, hundreds of motorists got out of their cars to make him a guard of honor, not hesitating to cross the central reservation after having stopped their vehicle on the part in the opposite direction of the highway.
“I just want to see the coffin,” Joseph Afrane, a 59-year-old Briton who had been camping in front of Buckingham since Sunday, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The remains of Elizabeth II will spend her last night at the palace, where the queen has so often resided, on Tuesday in the Bow Room, a circular room whose marble columns frame each of the windows. Palace staff can bid him farewell in private.
On Wednesday, the coffin of the sovereign who died Thursday at the age of 96 will leave its official home in the British capital on a gun carriage, crossing central London to join in a grandiose procession the Palace of Westminster, where it will be exposed during five days at Westminster Hall.
A last goodbye
The Queen’s state funeral will take place on Monday attended by some 500 foreign dignitaries and many crowned heads, but not the leaders of Russia, Belarus or Myanmar.
The event, a security challenge of unparalleled magnitude, promises to be grandiose, for the last farewells of a people who, for the most part, have known no other sovereign than Elizabeth II since her birth.
Thousands of people are expected for the procession through central London, which will be greeted by the bell of Big Ben and cannon shots in Hyde Park. The press evokes up to 750,000 people over more than 10 kilometers. In Edinburgh, 33,000 people have already lined up to say goodbye to him at Saint-Gilles Cathedral.
“We expect a huge queue from Wednesday morning,” Rumesh, a security guard stationed near the Palace of Westminster, told AFP. “It’s the calm before the storm!” “I have never seen anything like this […] we feel that it’s happening, and that it’s going to be huge. Tuesday morning, a handful of worshipers, surrounded by dozens of journalists, were already braving the London rain to wait on the other side of the Thames, well before the official opening of Westminster Hall to the crowds, Wednesday at 5 p.m. local.
A popular figure, rock of stability in the political, social or health storms during COVID-19, the queen was a reassuring image for millions of Britons. A heavy legacy to bear for his son Charles III.
Tensions in Northern Ireland, separatist desires in Scotland, galloping inflation: the new 73-year-old king, older than all the British sovereigns when they acceded to the throne, takes office at a critical moment. The country, in the grip of a serious social and political crisis, has had a new prime minister for a few days.
On Tuesday, he already passed a delicate stage of his accession to the throne without a hitch, during his first visit as sovereign to Northern Ireland, a region plagued since Brexit by community tensions inherited from the bloody past of the “Troubles”.
“With a shining example before me, and with the help of God, I take up my new duties, determined to seek the well-being of all the people of Northern Ireland,” the monarch told the local Parliament, at the halt since the victory in the last elections of the Republicans of Sinn Féin, who do not recognize the authority of the monarchy.