Queen set to defy mobility struggles with two Jubilee appearances on palace balcony
Monarch is determined she will stay involved in celebrations
IN A show of the resilience that has marked her record-breaking reign, Britain’s queen has vowed to make two appearances on the Buckingham Palace balcony on Thursday, the first day of her Jubilee celebrations.
The appearances – which come despite recent mobility problems – will take place during Queen Elizabeth’s official Birthday Parade, the start of the four-day bank holiday weekend.
A royal source said: ‘The Queen is determined to take part in the Jubilee celebrations. Trooping was brought forward by one week to be part of the Jubilee this year and the Queen very much wants to be part of it.’
Crowds are expected to line the Mall to watch as the colour – or flag
‘She very much wants to be part of it’
– is trooped by the 1st Battalion Irish Guards plus more than 1,200 officers and soldiers from the Household Division.
More than 240 horses and hundreds of military musicians will be involved in the procession, in which members of the British royal family will travel on horseback and in carriages down the Mall to Horse Guards Parade, where the ceremony takes place.
This year marks a radical departure from the usual traditions that govern the 260-year-old occasion. Rather than inspecting the troops herself – a duty the queen has undertaken every year of her reign – she has reluctantly agreed to scale back her involvement and instead plans to appear on the balcony of Buckingham Palace beside her cousin the Duke of Kent to take the salute as the guards return to barracks.
The Prince of Wales will stand in for the Queen, inspecting the troops on horseback.
The Queen will later return to the balcony with more family members joining her to watch the RAF fly past at the close of the parade.
Buckingham Palace announced that ‘after careful consideration’ the Queen would not invite the Duke of York or the Duke and Duchess of Sussex to join her as they were no longer working members of the royal family.
A palace spokesman said the royal balcony appearances would be limited to members of the royal family ‘who are currently undertaking official public duties on behalf of the Queen’.
They include the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge with their children Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis, the Earl and Countess of Wessex with their children Lady Louise and Viscount James, Princess Anne and her husband Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence, the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, the Duke of Kent and Princess Alexandra. The first clear sign of a change to the traditional arrangements came yesterday when Prince William carried out the Colonel’s Review of the Irish Guards, regarded as a dress rehearsal for the main trooping ceremony.
The Queen’s dais, from which she would have been expected to watch the ceremony, was missing.
It will be a source of sadness to the Queen not to play her usual role in what will be the first full-scale Trooping the Colour since 2019.
The past two years have seen a dramatically reduced trooping ceremony staged in the quadrangle at Windsor Castle rather than at Horse Guards Parade, a result of Covid restrictions. Tonight, Queen Elizabeth’s late husband Prince Philip will be remembered in a feature-length BBC documentary to celebrate the Jubilee.
The Queen, who has watched the documentary and is believed to have given it approval, has provided a voiceover for the film. Other sections of audio are spliced over private home videos provided by her to make the film.
In one section, she can be heard saying of Philip: ‘That mischievous, inquiring twinkle was as bright at the end as when I first set eyes on him.’
Prince of Wales will stand in and inspect the troops