Queen Elizabeth II’s flag-draped coffin arrived at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh after a six-hour journey from Balmoral Castle, where Britain’s longest-reigning monarch died on Thursday. Thousands of people lined the route in Scotland to pay their last respects to the late monarch, the only one most Britons ever knew. Earlier on Sunday, flowers and other tributes piled up outside the gates of Balmoral and Holyroodhouse. The coffin will be moved from Holyroodhouse to nearby St Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh on Monday, where it will lie before being flown to London for a state funeral on September 19. He will then be moved from Buckingham Palace on Wednesday to the Houses of Parliament to lie in state until the funeral at Westminster Abbey. Elizabeth Alexander, 69, who was born on the Queen’s coronation day in 1953, was in the village of Ballater to watch the coffin pass. “I think it will be very emotional for whoever says goodbye. He’s like a family member, he’s overwhelmed – the sadness – that he’s not going to be with us,” Alexander said. The Queen ascended the throne after the death of her father, King George VI, on 6 February 1952, when she was just 25 years old. Her coronation took place a year later. “Many people who have gathered here for so long are standing and not leaving – this moment is not over,” Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher said, reporting from the front of the Palace of Holyroodhouse where people were laying flowers. from the early hours of the morning. “It gives people a chance to collectively say goodbye to a woman who was loved and admired and loved by the Scots … and let’s face it the Scots tend not to be liked by everyone, but they had a special love for the Queen,” Fisher. he said.
“Heavy responsibilities of sovereignty”
Sunday’s official drive in Scotland comes a day after the Queen’s first-born son was officially named the new monarch – King Charles III – in a lavish accession ceremony steeped in ancient tradition and political symbolism. “I am deeply aware of this great heritage and the duties and heavy responsibilities of sovereignty that have now passed to me,” Charles said as he assumed the duties of monarch. He was proclaimed king in other nations of the United Kingdom – Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – and in cities across the country. Earlier, proclamations were made in other parts of the Commonwealth – the group of former colonies of the British Empire – including Australia and New Zealand. Even as he mourned his late mother, Charles began to work. He met the Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, a group of nations struggling with affection for the Queen and lingering bitterness over their own colonial legacies, at Buckingham Palace. This ranged from slavery to corporal punishment in African schools to looted items being held in British institutions.
