What to expect at the Queen's funeral
Hour-long service will be first funeral for a monarch held in Westminster Abbey since 18th century
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Queen Elizabeth's funeral on Monday will follow an elaborate and precisely detailed plan — one the monarch will have signed off on herself.
More than 2,000 people are expected inside Westminster Abbey in central London for the hour-long service, which will begin precisely — as royal events do — at 11 a.m. local time (6 a.m. ET) and be broadcast to an audience around the world.
At its heart is the traditional Church of England funeral service, along with elements of military pomp and circumstance that find their roots in how Queen Victoria wished to have her funeral unfold more than a century ago.
Still, there is the potential for surprise, whether in the music, the readings or something else the Queen — who died on Sept. 8, at the age of 96 — might have thought of as she planned for the inevitable day.
"She would have listened to advice, she'll have taken input from her children, but essentially hers will have been the final voice," Judith Rowbotham, a social and cultural scholar and visiting research professor at the University of Plymouth in southwestern England, said in an interview.
Elizabeth's funeral is the first for a monarch in Westminster Abbey since 1760, a fact Rowbotham attributes to the sheer scale of the event, and how it just wouldn't have been possible in the more frequent — and recent — locale for royal funerals, St. George's Chapel at Windsor Castle, west of London.
"Simply to get in the representatives of the Armed Forces, the reserves, all the organizations with which the Queen has been associated … then this huge phalanx of visiting Commonwealth leaders, members of princely families from across Europe who are related, things like that — you couldn't accommodate them in Windsor and then in St. George's Chapel."
Much speculation has circulated around just who will be inside the abbey. Canada will have a delegation (more on that below), and numerous world leaders are confirmed to be attending.
Some will reportedly travel together to the service from a location a few kilometres away to ease the potential for congestion around the historic church, but at least one leader will reportedly make his own way there: U.S. President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, are expected to arrive in the Beast, his heavily armoured limousine.
The main pomp and ceremony of Monday's events begins at 10:44 a.m. local time (5:44 a.m. ET), when a procession to carry the coffin from Westminster Hall to the abbey will begin. Senior members of the Royal Family are expected to walk behind as the casket is transported on a gun carriage pulled by navy sailors.
The fact that there will be such military pomp goes back to the time of Victoria, who died in 1901 and who, Rowbotham says, wanted to avoid the way in which previous royal funerals had unfolded.
When Princess Charlotte, the only child of King George the Fourth, was buried in a nighttime state funeral in 1817, "the undertakers were so drunk they dropped the coffin," Rowbotham said.
"William the Fourth's funeral by all accounts was absolutely shambolic and Victoria was determined that it wasn't going to be like that for her."
She also liked the concept of a military state funeral, which had occurred earlier in her reign, for the Duke of Wellington.
"The idea of a military state funeral for a monarch — it starts with Victoria and that means you've seen it refined by Edward the Seventh [in 1910], George the Fifth [in 1936] , George the Sixth [in 1952]," said Rowbotham.
WATCH | Prince and Princess of Wales meet Commonwealth soldiers who will take part in Queen's funeral:
The service itself is built from a basic template.
"At its core, it will be a Church of England funeral service, and so those elements will be there," said Craig Prescott, a constitutional expert at Bangor University in Wales.
"Prayers will be said. We will sing the national anthem."
Where there's flexibility, he said, is in the music and the readings.
"I think there you will see choices that the Queen will have made and will have thought about deeply that reflect her life, and I think that could be very, very moving."
Moments of music have stood out at previous funerals, including Elton John singing a revised version of his song Candle in the Wind at the 1997 funeral for Diana, Princess of Wales, which also took place at Westminster Abbey.
Buckingham Palace has said the service for the Queen will be conducted by the Dean of Westminster, and readings will be given by British Prime Minister Liz Truss and Commonwealth Secretary General Patricia Scotland. Prayers will also be said by other church leaders.
The funeral is the first of a monarch to be fully televised. For the Queen's father in 1952, TV cameras followed his casket to the doors of St. George's Chapel, but didn't go inside.
Rowbotham said Elizabeth will have been "so conscious" that hers is the first funeral of a monarch to be televised, "because she gave the go-ahead for her mother's state funeral to be televised. She endorsed the televising of Diana's funeral, so she knew that this would be recorded for posterity … on screen."
After the funeral, there will be another procession to take the Queen's coffin to Windsor, where there will be a committal service, and, finally, a private service for Royal Family members when she will be buried in the King George VI Chapel of Windsor Castle, alongside her husband, Prince Philip, her parents and the ashes of her sister, Princess Margaret.
Canada remembers — abroad and at home
Canada's delegation to Queen Elizabeth's funeral includes Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Gov. Gen. Mary Simon, several of their predecessors and Indigenous leaders.
Members of more than a dozen Canadian Armed Forces regiments will also be there, along with four members of the RCMP's Musical Ride, who will appear in the funeral procession.
"The fact that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are at the front of the parade, that would have been her say," royal biographer Robert Hardman told CBC in London. "She loved the precision element of it. She loved the role of the Mounties."
In Ottawa on Monday, a commemorative ceremony will be held at Christ Church Cathedral, beginning at 1 p.m.
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To read more about Canada's delegation to London and the ceremony in Ottawa, please click here.
The final resting spot
Queen Elizabeth's final resting place is in a quiet spot inside the chapel where she so often went to worship while living at Windsor Castle.
In many ways, it is in marked contrast to the final resting places of other monarchs — notably the massive and elaborate Royal Mausoleum at nearby Frogmore, where Queen Victoria and Prince Albert are buried.
At a private family service Monday evening, Elizabeth will be buried along with Prince Philip, who died last year, in the tiny chapel where her parents are interred.
After King George VI died in 1952, his coffin was put in the Royal Vault at St. George's Chapel, along with the remains of other monarchs. But he ultimately wanted his own chapel where he would rest in peace with his wife. It was finally built and he was buried there in 1969. It is the only structural addition to St. George's Chapel in more than 600 years.
The King George VI Memorial Chapel is a peaceful and relatively modest place — you actually look down into it from an aisle in St. George's Chapel to see the names of Elizabeth's parents etched on a black marble slab in the stone floor. The ashes of Elizabeth's sister, Princess Margaret, who died in 2002, are also there.
That it would be Elizabeth's choice carries personal poignancy.
"I think it just reflects the closeness that the Queen had to both her parents," said Prescott, who noted how George VI spoke about "we four," referring to himself, his wife, Elizabeth, and their daughters, Elizabeth and Margaret.
"I don't think there would be anywhere else the Queen would want to be."
Rowbotham said Elizabeth knew "how to assume the robes of state."
"But left to herself, as you actually saw in the very last official photograph taken of her at Balmoral welcoming Liz Truss …. she's happiest in pretty low-key attire and that was Prince Philip's taste also."
Philip also understood "the importance of the public gaze," Rowbotham said.
"The George the Sixth Memorial Chapel … gives you a sight of her and Philip's personal taste and that is why she prefers that kind of modest final resting place."
St. George's Chapel was the Queen's favourite place of worship on a daily basis, Rowbotham said.
"That … speaks for itself. You don't need more."
Royally quotable
"Fel fy mam annwyl o'm blaen, rwy'n gwybod ein bod ni oll yn caru'r wlad arbennig hon," which translates from Welsh to: "Like my beloved mother before me, I know we all share a love for this special land."
— King Charles, speaking in Welsh during his first visit to Wales as monarch. David Deans, BBC Wales's political reporter, said the speech was an historic step for a British monarch. "While his mother, Elizabeth, spoke small phrases in the Welsh language, the King's speech on Friday was bilingual, switched from English to Welsh throughout," Deans wrote on the BBC website.
Royal reads
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The earliest moments of King Charles's reign raise the possibility that he will guide a monarchy that is, at least in some small measure, trying to be more open and accessible than it has before. [CBC]
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In a London borough facing poverty and inequality, locals remember the Queen as one of their own. [CBC]
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