Array
Nine-year old Prince George and Princess Charlotte, seven, were the youngest mourners following the Queen’s coffin as they marched through a nave packed with world leaders in an expression of continuity of the British monarchy.
The Queen’s great-grandson, who became second in line to the throne after her death on 8 September, wore a dark blue suit and black tie as he walked alongside his father, the Prince of Wales, King Charles III’s immediate heir, in his RAF No1 uniform. Alongside him walked his younger sister, in a black dress and wide-brimmed hat, and her mother, the Princess of Wales.
The siblings started a new school in Berkshire only days before the nation went into mourning for its longest-serving monarch. But on Monday they joined the core royal party, behind the King and Queen Consort as the Queen’s body was borne into the Abbey. Their younger brother Louis, four, was not present.
The children’s role in the hour-long ceremony only emerged on Sunday night and is certain to have been the subject of considerable deliberation.
At previous state funerals for monarchs, grandchildren, let alone great-grandchildren, have not typically played a formal role. That change is in part a consequence of the Queen’s 70-year reign and long life, but also as part of the current monarchy’s desire to project stability to the UK and Commonwealth.
Two days after the Queen’s death, the Prince of Wales reportedly told a member of the public on a walkabout at Windsor that “they were trying to keep some sense of continuity for them at school and keep things as normal as possible”.
