Today is my mother’s coronation, and I’m bored. If it weren’t for my grandmother, Elizabeth the Queen Mother, who says I must behave properly, I wouldn’t have come to the coronation of the next Queen of England. If it weren’t for my aunt Margaret behind me, always telling me to smile, I’d never have deigned to attend this most traditional of celebrations. Traditions, indeed! If you ask me, all this to-do isn’t tradition at all. Leaving Buckingham Palace for Westminster Abbey in a golden carriage – the kind of carry on one would expect to find in a book of fairy stories – is a load of twaddle. The royal cortege escorting my mother, the queen, on her coronation day, is made up of the King’s Guard (or the Queen’s Guard, I suppose it shall now be called), contingents of the armed forces of Commonwealth nations, and carriages transporting other heads of state and royal persons. I do not much care for this coronation business. I do not believe in the reign of my mother, the future Queen of England. I mean, look at that embroidered white dress of hers. She may be beautiful, but what does that have to do with me, Prince Charles? The queen wears a white silk dress designed by Norman Hartnell, embroidered with the various floral emblems of the nations of the Commonwealth: the English rose, the Scottish thistle, the Canadian maple leaf, the New Zealand fern, the lotus flower for Ceylon...yes, I’ve learned them all. I wouldn’t forget to share these subtle details with you. It’s a fairly boring surprise, if you ask me. At least, it is from where I’m sitting. The seamstresses also embroidered a small four-leafed clover on one side of the dress, supposedly a symbol of good luck. How dreadfully dull! If you’d like to know the most tiresome thing about this whole affair, it was watching my mother practising how to move around with her train in the corridors of Buckingham Palace. Today, there are seven maids of honour to hold up the five-metre purple velvet cape that drags behind her.
“Behave yourself, Charles!” whispers Margaret.
“Charles, that’s enough! Straighten up, now,” murmurs my grandmother.
I’m bored. I should like to see that crown put on my mother’s head at once. There she goes now, making her coronation oath before the altar, promising to make her judgements justly and in accordance with the law, to defend the Protestant religion and to protect the Church of England, and swearing to govern each of the countries for which she is responsible according to its own laws and customs. My father, Edward, sitting beside her, receives anointment from the Archbishop of Canterbury. He then hands over the two royal sceptres, the orb and the cape. I’ve been waiting for this moment since the ceremony began. Ever since the parade through the streets of London, since the golden carriage, since the mass at Westminster Abbey...since the very start!
Then someone sets the crown of Saint Edward, a jewel adorned with over 400 precious stones and weighing almost five pounds, worn only after the monarch is officially crowned, on my mother’s head. My mother must now read her speech. She may not lower her head when reading; if she doesn’t keep it upright, her neck might break. Now it’s my duty to say: “God save the Queen!” My mother is now the Queen of England, and the ruler of the whole kingdom. This isn’t quite so boring.
“You see, Charles? Not so bad, was it?” asks my aunt Margaret, her eyes misty from the spectacle.
“Alright, to the balcony,” says my grandmamma, the Queen Mother.
A palace representative removes the crown from the Queen’s head and replaces it with a lighter crown for her appearance on the balcony. This crown is adorned with the Stuart Sapphire, the Black Prince’s Ruby and the legendary Cullinan II, a 300-carat diamond. Outside, millions of Britons have gathered to witness the emergence of the new queen. Flanked by members of the royal family, Queen Elizabeth II makes her first appearance on the balcony of Buckingham palace in the early afternoon, facing the crowd gathered to cheer her on.
“We want the queen!” cry the jubilant masses.
Alan Alfredo Geday
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