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Spectacle and Ceremony: Honoring Tradition or Managing Expectation?

by Senior Analyst Talal Kapoor

Queen Elizabeth died on September 8, 2022, aged 96, after reigning for 70 years. Her death triggered a full set of planning arrangements already in place for her state funeral, dubbed Operation London Bridge, whilst the U.K. observed a national mourning period of ten days. Prior to the funeral, her coffin was carried to Westminster Hall, where she lay in state for four days while hundreds of thousands of people passed by to pay their respects, and her children and grandchildren held a series of ten minute vigils.

The funeral service at Westminster Abbey, attended by 2,000 people in total, was followed by two processions. The first, featuring seven military bands and 3,000 military personnel from the three armed forces, forming a guard of honor, led to Wellington Arch. Watched by over a million people as it wound through London, this stretched for over a mile. A final procession involving 1,000 military members took the coffin to Windsor. She was then buried in the King George VI Memorial Chapel at St George's Chapel in Windsor, after a committal service in the presence of 800 guests, which included not only the Queen's household and staff but also family members, dignitaries and foreign royals. This was followed by a private service attended only by her closest family. In total, the public expenditure was estimated to have been 162 million pounds.

Although former monarchs have been known to have had their bodies embalmed after death, it is not known whether the queen opted that she should be embalmed; nonetheless, she was not buried or cremated in the same way the majority of her subjects are. Instead, and for hundreds of years, royals have been buried in vaults and crypts, where their remains stay in lead lined coffins, their decomposition slowed by the heavy material in the coffin and the air-sealed vaults they are held in. The tradition is that it helps preserve the corpse for longer after its burial.

Her son immediately acceded to the British throne as King Charles III, avoiding any period of discontinuity in the monarchy, but an Accession Council assembled on September 10 at St James's Palace to formally proclaim the accession. Further spectacle followed, however, when the coronation of Charles III and Camilla took place on 6 May 2023 at Westminster Abbey in a two-hour ceremony. For this, 4,000 armed forces personnel and 19 military bands took part, and gun salutes were made across the U.K. Ninety heads of state as well as celebrity guests attended the deeply religious Coronation service at Westminster Abbey, which involved another huge procession through London. The new king was anointed with holy oils by the Archbishop of Canterbury, presented with various bits of ancient and obscure regalia, and led through a series of ritualized formalities already dramatically pared down from the last such ceremony, decades earlier.

More secular times demanded a less overtly religious show, however, and an implicit recognition that the monarchy had much less relevance in modern political or social life. It was significant that the traditional, and individual, pledge of allegiance from the noble class was omitted from the event, replaced by a "voluntary" (and widely mocked) pledge from those watching at home, to be recited aloud at an appointed time. The sombre formalities were later relieved by an airshow and celebrity concerts, while a small number of protesters was bundled off in police vans before they had a chance to unfurl their banners; the extent of public support for the monarchy is hard to gauge, being so far impossible to distinguish from the personal popularity of the late queen. Saudi's representative to the coronation, Turki bin Muhammad bin Fahd, seemed a diplomatic snub given the status of others who attended, but despite appearances he was still the grandson of a former king who could be relied upon to behave appropriately. Still, his relatively low rank came as a surprise.

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