Hundreds of thousands of Britons are expected to say goodbye to their late Queen Elizabeth II, who is very popular in London, about a week after her death in Scotland.
The coffin with the body of the queen, who died on Thursday at the age of 96, arrived in the British capital on Tuesday evening.
After a night at Buckingham Palace, the body will be taken to Westminster Hall, the oldest hall in the British Parliament, in an official procession through central London. For five days, from 1700 (1600 GMT) today until 0630 Monday National Funeral, Britons can come to pay their last respects to the Queen, who is unanimous in praising her dedication for over seventy years.
The crowd is expected to be larger this time around for the “Funeral of the Century”, the first national funeral since 1965 – the funeral of Winston Churchill – to be organized on Monday, September 19, in the presence of some 500 foreign dignitaries and many members of the royal family. But Russia, Belarus, Burma and North Korea were not invited.
The coffin with the body of Elizabeth II was kept from Monday evening to Tuesday evening at St. Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh. Some 33,000 people, some of them weeping, waited for hours to see the coffin draped in the royal flag.
On Tuesday evening, Princess Anne, the only daughter of Queen Elizabeth, accompanied the coffin on the plane that took it from Edinburgh to London. The new king, Charles III, was present to receive the coffin upon his arrival at Buckingham Palace, having spent the day in Northern Ireland, a decisive stop on his accession to the throne.
The Queen played a key role in reconciliation in Scotland, the bloody province. But almost a quarter of a century after the reestablishment of a shaky peace between mostly Catholic Republicans and mostly Protestant Unionists, Brexit tensions have intensified, sparking the idea of secession from the United Kingdom and reunification with the Republic of Ireland.
“With a brilliant example before me and with God’s help, I take on my new duties, determined to fight for the well-being of all the people of Northern Ireland,” the king told the local parliament, which was suspended for several months.
After London, Edinburgh and Belfast, Charles III heads to Cardiff, Wales, on Friday for the last leg of his tour of the four British provinces. According to a YouGov poll released on Tuesday, the king’s popularity has skyrocketed since taking the throne.
Three out of five people think he will be a good king, up from just over 30% a few months ago.
