Queen Elizabeth’s funeral today, top world leaders to attend
London September 19
Britain, world leaders and royalty from across the globe will on Monday bid a final farewell to Queen Elizabeth, the last towering figure of her era, at a state funeral of inimitable pageantry.
At 6.30 am (0530 GMT), an authority lying-in-state period closes following four days in which many thousands have lined to document past the coffin of England’s longest-supreme ruler at London’s memorable Westminster Corridor.
They, like many across the globe including US President Joe Biden, had wanted to pay tribute to the 96-year-old who had spent seven decades on the British throne.
“You were fortunate to have had her for 70 years,” Biden said. “We all were.”
Shortly before 11 a.m., the oak coffin, covered in the Royal Standard flag with the Imperial State Crown on top, will be placed on a gun carriage and pulled by naval personnel to Westminster Abbey for her funeral.
Among the 2,000 in the assembly will be exactly 500 world pioneers including Biden, Sovereign Naruhito of Japan, Chinese VP Wang Qishan, and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.
The queen’s great-grandchildren, Prince George, 9, and Princess Charlotte, 7, the two eldest children of now heir to the throne Prince William, will also be attending.
“Throughout recent days, my better half and I have been so profoundly contacted by the many messages of sympathy and support we have gotten from this nation and across the world,” Charles, Elizabeth’s child and the new ruler, said in a proclamation.
“As we all prepare to say our last farewell, I wanted simply to take this opportunity to say thank you to all those countless people who have been such a support and comfort to my family and myself in this time of grief.”
Elizabeth died on Sept. 8 at her Scottish summer home, Balmoral Castle.
Her wellbeing had been in decline, and for quite a long time the ruler who had completed many authority commitment a ways into her 90s had removed from public life, albeit only two days before her passing she had selected Liz Support her fifteenth and last state leader.
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Such was her longevity and her inextricable link with Britain that even her own family found her passing a shock.
“We all thought she was invincible,” Prince William told well-wishers.
The 40th sovereign in a line that traces its lineage back to 1066, Elizabeth came to the throne in 1952, Britain’s first post-imperial monarch.
She oversaw her nation trying to carve out a new place in the world, and she was instrumental in the emergence of the Commonwealth of Nations, now a grouping comprising 56 countries.
At the point when she succeeded her dad George VI, Winston Churchill was her most memorable state leader and Josef Stalin drove the Soviet Association. She met essentially every significant figure from legislative issues to amusement and game including Nelson Mandela, Pope John Paul II, the Beatles, Marilyn Monroe, Pele and Roger Federer.
Despite being reputedly just 5ft 3ins (1.6m) tall, she dominated rooms with her presence and became a towering global figure, praised in death from Paris and Washington to Moscow and Beijing. National mourning was observed in Brazil, Jordan and Cuba, countries with which she had little direct link.
“Sovereign Elizabeth II was with next to no shadow of an uncertainty the most popular figure on the planet, the most captured individual ever, the most unmistakable individual, and the way that world chiefs will be filling London for the burial service …
is saying a lot about this iconic figure,” historian Anthony Seldon told Reuters.
Transport bosses said 1,000,000 individuals were normal in focal London for the burial service, while police say it will be the greatest security activity ever in the capital.
King Charles, his siblings and sons Princes William and Harry and other members of the Windsor family will slowly walk behind the coffin as it is taken on the gun carriage to Westminster Abbey, led by some 200 pipers and drummers.
The tenor bell of the Abbey – the site of coronations, weddings and burials of English and then British kings and queens for almost 1,000 years – will toll 96 times.
“Here, where Queen Elizabeth was married and crowned, we gather from across the nation, from the Commonwealth, and from the nations of the world, to mourn our loss, to remember her long life of selfless service,” David Hoyle, the Dean of Westminster will say.
Notwithstanding dignitaries, the assembly will incorporate those granted England’s most noteworthy military and regular citizen decorations for heroism, agents from noble cause upheld by the sovereign, and the people who made “remarkable commitments” to managing the Coronavirus pandemic.
Two minute silence
Tens of millions in Britain and abroad are expected to watch the funeral of the monarch, something which has never been televised before https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/over-100-british-cinemas-big-city-screens-show-queens-funeral-2022-09-17/.
It will end with the Last Post trumpet salute before the church and the nation falls silent for two minutes.
A short time later, the final resting place will be brought through focal London, past the sovereign’s Buckingham Castle home to the Wellington Curve at Hyde Park Corner, with the ruler and the imperial family following again by walking during the 1.5 mile (2.4 km) parade.
From there, it will be placed on a hearse to be driven to Windsor Castle, west of London, for a service at St. George’s Chapel. This will conclude with the crown, orb and sceptre – symbols of the monarch’s power and governance – being removed from the coffin and placed on the altar.
The Lord Chamberlain, the most senior official in the royal household, will break his ‘Wand of Office’, signifying the end of his service to the sovereign, and place it on the casket.
It will then be brought down into the illustrious vault as the Sovereign’s Flautist plays a regret, gradually leaving until music in the church slowly blurs.
Later in the evening, in a private family service, the coffin of Elizabeth and her husband of more than seven decades Prince Philip, who died last year aged 99, will be buried together at the King George VI Memorial Chapel, where her parents and sister, Princess Margaret, also rest.
We’re so blissful you’re back with Granddad. Farewell dear grannie, it has been the distinction of our lives to have been your granddaughters and we’re so extremely glad for you,” grandkids Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie said.