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Queen Elizabeth’s funeral on Monday will follow an elaborate and meticulously detailed plan – one that the monarch will have signed off on herself.
More than 2,000 people are expected at Westminster Abbey in central London for the hour-long service, which will begin promptly — as royal events do — at 11 a.m. local time (6 a.m. ET) and will be broadcast to a worldwide audience.
It is based on the traditional Church of England funeral service, along with elements of military pomp and circumstance that find their roots in the way Queen Victoria wanted her funeral to be conducted more than a century ago.
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You can watch live coverage of the Queen’s funeral starting at 5 a.m. ET Monday on CBC TV, CBC News Network, CBC Gem, CBCNews.ca and the CBC News app. At noon ET, the broadcast will head to Ottawa for a national memorial service. CBC News Network will rebroadcast the funeral at 7:00 PM ET.
Live coverage of the funeral on CBC Radio One will begin at 5:30 a.m. ET, which will also be available on the CBC Listen app.
Still, there is potential for a surprise, whether in the music, the readings or anything else the Queen – who died on September 8 aged 96 – may have thought of as she planned for the inevitable day.
“She would listen to advice, she would take her children’s input, but essentially hers would be the final vote,” Judith Rowbotham, a social and cultural scientist and visiting research professor at the University of Plymouth in southwest England, said in an interview.
Elizabeth’s funeral was the first for a monarch at Westminster Abbey since 1760, a fact Rowbotham attributed to the sheer scale of the event and how it simply wouldn’t have been possible at the more common — and recent — venue for royal burials, 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. (Associated Press)
“Just to include 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 can’t to lodge them at Windsor and afterwards at St. George’s Chapel.
A lot speculation circulates about who will be inside the abbey. Canada will have a delegation (more on that below) and many world leaders are confirmed to attend.
Some are said to be traveling together to the service from several kilometers away to ease the potential for traffic jams around the historic church, but at least one leader will reportedly make his way there: US President Joe Biden and his wife Jill are expected to arrive The beasthis heavily armored limousine.
The main pomp and ceremony of Monday’s events begin at 10:44 a.m. 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 transported on a carriage pulled by navy sailors.
The fact that there would be such military pomp dates back to the time of Victoria, who died in 1901 and who, says Rowbotham, wanted to avoid the way previous royal funerals had gone.
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 casket during her funeral at Westminster Abbey on April 9, 2002. (Ben Curtis/Associated press)
When Princess Charlotte, King George IV’s only child, was buried in a nighttime state funeral in 1817, “the undertakers were so drunk they dropped the coffin,” Rowbotham said.
“William IV’s funeral was by all accounts absolutely hambolic, and Victoria was determined that it would not be like that for her.”
She also liked the concept of a military state funeral, which happened 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 VII [in 1910]Georgi Peti [in 1936] George the Sixth [in 1952]Rowbotham said.
WATCH | The Prince and Princess of Wales meet Commonwealth soldiers who will take part in the Queen’s funeral:
William and Kate meet 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 service and those elements will be there,” said Craig Prescott, a constitutional expert at Bangor University in Wales.
“Prayers will be offered. We will sing the national anthem.’
Where there is flexibility, he said, is in music and readings.
“I think you’ll see choices there that the Queen will have made and thought about deeply, that reflect her life, and I think that can be very, very exciting.”
Musical moments have stood out at previous funerals, including Elton John singing a reworked version of his song Candle in the Wind at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997, which also took place 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 be held at the Abbey on Monday. (Paul Hackett/Associated Press)
Buckingham Palace said the service for the Queen would be led by the Dean of Westminster and readings would be given by British Prime Minister Liz Truss and Commonwealth Secretary-General Patricia Scotland. Prayers will also be offered by other church leaders.
The funeral is the first of a monarch to be televised in its entirety. 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 was the first funeral of a monarch to be televised, “because she gave the go-ahead for her mother’s state funeral to be televised. She approved the televising of Diana’s funeral, so she knew it 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 will be buried in King George VI’s Chapel at Windsor Castle, alongside her husband. Prince Philip, his parents and the ashes of his sister Princess Margaret.
Canada remembers – abroad and at home
Queen Elizabeth, left, welcomes Governor General Mary Simon and her husband Whit Fraser to 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/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 appear in the funeral procession.
“The fact that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police is leading the parade, that would be her opinion,” royal biographer Robert Hardman told the CBC in London. “She loved the precision element. She loved playing the Mounties.”
A memorial service will be held at Christ Church Cathedral in Ottawa on Monday, starting at 1 p.m.
The final resting place
Royal family members and guests sit physically distanced as Prince Philip’s flag-draped coffin sits on a blanket 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 in 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 – notably the massive and elaborate Royal Mausoleum at nearby Frogmore, where Queen Victoria and Prince Albert are buried.
In a private family service on Monday evening, Elizabeth will be buried alongside Prince Philip, who died last year, in the small 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 could rest in peace with his wife. It was finally built and he was buried there in 1969. It is the only structural addition to St George’s Chapel in over 600 years.
The King George VI Memorial Chapel is a quiet and relatively unassuming place – you actually look down on it from an aisle in St George’s Chapel to see the names of Elizabeth’s parents engraved on a black marble slab in the stone floor. It also holds the ashes of Elizabeth’s sister, Princess Margaret, who died in 2002.
The fact that it will be Elizabeth’s choice carries a personal poignancy.
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 state visit to South Africa. Elizabeth and her husband, Prince Philip, will be buried in a chapel at Windsor Castle alongside her parents and her sister’s ashes. (Sport and General Press Agency Limited/AFP/Getty Images)
“I think it just reflects the closeness that…
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