Queen Camilla will be the first Queen Consort crowned at Westminster Abbey in nearly a century
Queen Camilla will be taking her place beside the King.
On Tuesday, Buckingham Palace announced that King Charles III will be coronated on May 6, 2023, and confirmed that the Queen Consort, 75, will be honored during the service.
“The Ceremony will see His Majesty King Charles III crowned alongside The Queen Consort,” the palace said in a statement.
King Charles’ coronation will take place on the first Saturday in May at Westminster Abbey in London, where British monarchs have been crowned for the last 900 years. The service will be conducted by the Archbishop of Canterbury and is expected to be modernized while still honoring the religious roots of the serious royal ritual.
“The Coronation will reflect the monarch’s role today and look towards the future, while being rooted in longstanding traditions and pageantry,” courtiers said.
Camilla will be the first Queen Consort crowned in Westminster in nearly a century, following the coronation of King George VI in 1937. There, his wife, Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, was invested beside her husband as the new Queen Consort and bequeathed a bespoke crown featuring 2,800 diamonds, according to the Royal Collection Trust.
When their daughter, Queen Elizabeth, celebrated her coronation 16 years later, her husband Prince Philip was not crowned beside her. Though the wives of male monarchs become Queen Consorts, the husbands of female monarchs do not receive the distinction of King Consort — instead, the correct term is “Prince Consort” or “Consort to the Queen.” Philip, then 31, became just the fifth Prince Consort to a reigning Queen in British history, as Prince Albert was to Queen Victoria, Buckingham Palace said.
“The husband of a reigning Queen, unlike a Queen Consort, is not crowned or anointed at the coronation ceremony,” the palace states. “In 1953 The Duke of Edinburgh was, however, the first peer to ‘do homage’ or pay his respects to The Queen, immediately after the Archbishops and Bishops.”
More information about Charles’ upcoming investiture is expected to be released in the coming months.
Over the weekend, The Mail on Sunday reported that the new King is will be crowned in an hour-long ceremony before 2,000 guests, a decrease from the precedent set at Queen Elizabeth’s three-hour coronation in 1953 attended by 8,000 guests.
King Charles reportedly plans to do away with rites like the traditional presentation of gold ingots to the monarch and nix a Court of Claims (to determine coronation duties for members of the gentry) in the run-up to the big event.
As Prince Philip steered much of the organizing for the Queen’s historic coronation 70 years ago, heir to the throne Prince William will reportedly play an important role in helping his father plan the ceremony.
“The King has stripped back a lot of the Coronation in recognition that the world has changed in the past 70 years,” a source told the Mail.
The public can still look forward to some classic fairytale elements, however. King Charles is expected to ride in the Gold State Coach, recently refurbished for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, in a ceremony televised as his mother’s coronation was in 1953. The royal family will also come out to support the final and most formal step of King Charles’ accession as sovereign.
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