25 years on from Diana, the rituals of royal death remain the same...
ANOTHER death in the House of Windsor, another long walk in public behind the flag-draped coffin of a much-loved mother, another sad day in the history of this family. yesterday, the Queen’s four children walked through Edinburgh behind the hearse carrying their beloved Mama on one of her last journeys.
And as they slow-marched through the silent streets of the Scottish capital, it brought to mind another September funeral a long time ago.
The deaths of Elizabeth II and Princess Diana may be a quarter-century apart, but many watching this melancholy progression were reminded that the rituals of royal death remain the same.
On that morning in 1997, it was the Windsor men who walked through London behind Diana’s coffin. Many years later, Prince Harry would claim that the ordeal damaged him for life.
He has been vocal with his criticism that no child should have been asked to do what he did, to have his ‘grief observed by thousands of people.’
He was just 12 years old at the time, and looked tiny and vulnerable in his grown-up lounge suit. Perhaps he is right – and we certainly live in more enlightened times when it comes to the provision of mental health safeguards for all ages.
yet different standards are demanded of royal mourners. If grief is the price we pay for love, as the Queen once famously said, then public exposure at times of peak personal grief is an unfortunate part of the royal bargain.
Unlike the little prince, Charles, Anne, Andrew and Edward may have age and wisdom on their side, but the ordeal must have been no less painful.
As the procession wound through the medieval heart of the city, from the palace of Holyrood up the cobbled hill to the cathedral of St Giles, the four of them marched in lockstep behind the cortege, their gazes trained forward like gundogs, a certain grim resolution in every difficult step.
THERE was Charles staunchly shuffling onwards, his hand on his ceremonial sword; Anne rinsed out by grief and suddenly looking older; Edward pale and hollowed-eyed.
The three of them were in military uniform; baled up in gold braid and ribbons like gift-wrapped emissaries from the army of latelife orphans; each of them sorrowing under their gilt-edged caps and complicated epaulettes.
Prince Andrew, the only one of the quartet to have actually served on active duty in a war, was not in uniform. ‘That is because he is no longer a working royal,’ whispered James Naughtie, who was providing the live narration for Scotland: A Service For HM The Queen (BBC1). We all know that is true and also not true, but it was a nice bit of treacled tact from a broadcaster not always known for his diplomacy.
Undaunted, burly Andrew marched onwards past the whisky bars and the fudge shops of the royal Mile, his bare head and plain clothes a mark of disgrace and a symbol of the riven relationship with his family and the narrowing of his life as a royal.
Did he deserve such a public walk of shame? It is hard to imagine it is what his mother would have wanted.
Earlier in the programme there had been interviews with ordinary Scots who had met the Queen. It was absolutely lovely.
There was a man called Hector, an engineer on the Forth road Bridge. A secretary who was invited to the opening of the bridge just because she was a local. And those who remembered the Queen coming to Dunblane in the aftermath of the school shooting tragedy. Someone spoke of HM’s ability to ‘personify a nation’s feelings’ in a way that represent us all.
‘We all felt uplifted,’ said another contributor.
Scotland did not expect to have a starring role in the death of the Queen, but the country looked beautiful when her cortege first began the long journey to London, when it moved from the Highlands of Balmoral to the lowlands over the weekend.
Now it was Edinburgh’s turn to put on a show, and the city did not disappoint. On this sunny but saddest of September days, a stiff breeze blowing in from the river Forth ruffled the crimson cassocks of the assembled clergy, fluttered the eagle feathers tucked into the Balmoral caps of the royal Company of Archers and rippled across the bearskins of the Queen’s Guard.
YESTERDAY’S entire procession was poignant but beautiful; the swinging sporrans, the muffled drums, the pageantry played out against the medieval architecture of the Old Town.
The only thing that spoiled it was James Naughtie, who noted the silence and solemnity of the crowds gathered on the royal Mile, but just wouldn’t stop talking.
He chuntered on about John Knox and delivered a history lesson to viewers who were witnessing history for themselves. We didn’t need him going on about the ‘difficult and bloody upheavals of the 16th and 17th centuries that meant so much to the Queen’.
What? We were also informed that St Giles was a ‘centrifugal building,’ directed to note ‘the unicorn that sits atop the Mercat Cross’ and even told what the gathered crowds were thinking.
‘They are touched by the knowledge this is a sight they won’t see again,’ he pronounced, rather pompously. Were they?
How could he have known? Off with his microphone, if not his head.