Queen Elizabeth’s funeral on Monday will follow an intricate and meticulously detailed plan – one that the monarch will have signed off on. 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 11am. local time (6 a.m. ET) and will be broadcast to a worldwide audience. At its heart is the traditional Church of England funeral, along with elements of military pomp and circumstance that find their roots in how Queen Victoria wanted her funeral to be conducted more than a century ago.
You can watch live coverage of the Queen’s funeral from 5am. ET Monday on CBC TV, the CBC News Network, CBC Gem, CBCNews.ca and the CBC News app. At noon ET, the show will turn to Ottawa for a national memorial service. CBC News Network and CBC Gem will broadcast the funeral at 7 p.m. ET. CBC Radio One’s live coverage of the funeral will begin at 5:30 a.m. ET, which will also be available on the CBC Listen app.
Still, there’s the possibility of a surprise, whether in music, readings or something else, the Queen — who died on September 8, aged 96 — could think of as she planned for the inevitable day. CBC Radio One’s live coverage of the funeral will begin at 5:30 a.m. ET, which will also be available on the CBC Listen app. “She would have listened to advice, she would have had input from her children, but essentially the final voice would have been hers,” said Judith Rowbotham, a social and cultural scholar and visiting research professor at the University of Plymouth in southwest England. he said in an interview. Elizabeth’s funeral is the first for a monarch at Westminster Abbey since 1760, which Rowbotham attributes to the sheer scale of the event and how it simply would not have been possible at the most frequent – and recent – site for royal funerals, St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle, west of London. Queen Elizabeth shakes hands with the Dean of Windsor, Eric Knightley Chetwood Hamilton, after the funeral of her father, King George VI, at St. George’s Chapel on February 15, 1952. (The Associated Press) “Just to get into the representatives of the Armed Forces, the reserves, all the organizations that the Queen has been associated with … then this huge phalanx of visiting Commonwealth leaders, members of princely families from all over Europe who are related, things like that. you could not host them at Windsor and then at St. George’s Chapel.’ Very speculation has been circulated as to who will be inside the abbey. Canada will have a delegation (more on that below), and many world leaders are confirmed to attend. Some will reportedly travel together for the service from a location a few kilometers away to reduce the potential for congestion around the historic church, but at least one leader will reportedly make his own way there: US President Joe Biden and his wife Jill expected to arrive the monsterhis heavily armored limousine. The main pomp and ceremony of Monday’s events begins at 10:44 am. local time (5:44 a.m. ET), when a procession will begin to carry the casket from Westminster Hall to the abbey. Senior members of the royal family are expected to walk behind as the casket is carried 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, says Rowbotham, wanted to avoid the way previous royal funerals had unfolded. Members of the royal family, front row, from left, Queen Elizabeth, Prince Philip, Prince William, Prince Charles and Prince Harry, sit in front of the Queen Mother’s coffin during her funeral at Westminster Abbey on April 9, 2002. (Ben Curtis/The Associated Press) When Princess Charlotte, the only child of King George IV, was buried at a nighttime state funeral in 1817, “the undertakers were so drunk they dropped the coffin,” Rowbotham said. “William the Fourth’s funeral was by all accounts completely dark, and Victoria was determined that it would not be so for her.” She also liked the idea of a military state funeral, which had been held 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 perfected by Edward the Seventh [in 1910]George the Fifth [in 1936] George the Sixth [in 1952]Rowbotham said. WATCHES | The Prince and Princess of Wales meet Commonwealth soldiers who will be attending the Queen’s funeral:
William and Kate encounter Commonwealth troops
The Prince and Princess of Wales are greeted by New Zealand troops performing the Maori haka as they visit Commonwealth soldiers near Pirbright, England, who will be taking part in the Queen’s funeral. The service itself is built from a basic template. “At its core, it will be a Church of England funeral, and so those elements will be there,” said Craig Prescott, a constitutional scholar at Bangor University in Wales. “Prayers will be said. We will sing the national anthem.” Where there is flexibility, he said, is in music and readings. “I think that’s where you’ll see choices that the Queen has made and thought deeply about, that reflect her life, and I think that could be very, very moving.” Musical moments 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, also held at Westminster Abbey. Elton John plays a specially rewritten version of his song Candle in the Wind during the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, at Westminster Abbey on September 6, 1997. Queen Elizabeth’s funeral will take place at the abbey on Monday. (Paul Hackett/The Associated Press) 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, television cameras followed his coffin to the doors of St George’s Chapel, but did not go inside. Rowbotham said Elizabeth would have been “so conscious” that hers is the first televised funeral of a monarch, “because she gave the green light for her mother’s state funeral to be televised. He supported televising Diana’s funeral. he knew 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 ceremony and finally a private service for members of the royal family when she is buried in King George VI’s Chapel at Windsor Castle. , next to her husband Prince Philip, her parents and the ashes of her sister Princess Margaret.
Canada remembers — abroad and at home
Queen Elizabeth, left, welcomes Governor General Mary Simon and her husband Whit Fraser for tea at Windsor Castle in Windsor, England, on March 15. Simon will be part of the Canadian delegation at Elizabeth’s funeral on Monday. (Steve Parsons/Pool/The Associated Press) Canada’s delegation to Queen Elizabeth’s funeral includes Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Governor General 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 perform in the funeral procession. “The fact that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are at the front of the parade, that would be their reason,” royal biographer Robert Hardman told the CBC in London. “She loved the precision element. She loved the Mounties role.” In Ottawa on Monday, a memorial service will be held at Christ Church Cathedral, beginning at 1 p.m.
The final resting place
Members of the royal family and guests sit physically distanced as Prince Philip’s flag-draped coffin sits in a dais during his funeral at St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle on April 17, 2021. (Yui Mok/The Associated press) Queen Elizabeth’s final resting place is in a quiet spot within the chapel where she so often went to worship while living at Windsor Castle. In many ways, it stands in stark contrast to the final resting places of other monarchs – particularly the vast and elaborate Royal Mausoleum at nearby Frogmore, where Queen Victoria and Prince Albert are buried. In a private family service on Monday afternoon, Elizabeth will be buried alongside Prince Philip, who died last year, in the tiny chapel where her parents are buried. After King George VI died in 1952, his coffin was placed in the Royal Vault at St George’s Chapel, along with the remains of other monarchs. But ultimately he wanted his own chapel where he would rest in peace with his wife. He was finally built and buried there in 1969. It is the only structural addition to St George’s Chapel in over 600 years. The King George VI Memorial is a quiet and relatively unassuming place — you actually look down a corridor into St George’s Chapel to see the names of Elizabeth’s parents carved into a black marble slab on the stone floor. There are also the ashes of Elizabeth’s sister, Princess Margaret, who died in 2002. That it would be Elizabeth’s choice has personal weight. Princess Elizabeth, second from left, poses with her father, King George VI, her mother, Queen Elizabeth, and her sister, Princess Margaret, left, in February 1947 in Cape Town during her first official visit to the South Africa. Elizabeth and her husband, Prince Philip, will be buried in a chapel at Windsor Castle with her parents and her sister’s ashes. (Sport and General Press Agency Limited/AFP/Getty Images) “I think it just reflects the…
