Queen Elizabeth II live updates: Prince Andrew to join leading royals behind monarch’s coffin
The disgraced Duke of York will reportedly join leading royals behind Queen Elizabeth’s coffin in Edinburgh.
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Disgraced Prince Andrew will reportedly join leading royal members in a procession behind Queen Elizabeth II’s coffin later today.
The Duke of York, 62, will join his siblings in Edinburgh as he prepares to play a key role in national mourning.
According to the UK Telegraph, Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle will also appear at relevant events involving leading members of the royal family.
A palace source said that for any of them to be excluded from the upcoming events would be “out of the question”.
“These plans will be signed off by the King in accordance with his mother’s wishes,” the source said.
The Duke of York travelled with Prince William, the Princess Royal Anne and Prince Edward the Earl of Wessex when they touched down in Aberdeen on Thursday afternoon.
He was also in attendance when the Queen’s coffin entered the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh.
A procession will be formed on the forecourt of the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh to transport the coffin to St Giles’ Cathedral.
“The King and members of the royal family will take part in the procession and attend a Service in St Giles’ Cathedral to receive the coffin,” a statement from the Palace read.
“Her Majesty’s coffin will then lie at rest in St Giles’ Cathedral, guarded by Vigils from The Royal Company of Archers, to allow the people of Scotland to pay their respects.”
Prince Andrew was stripped of his military titles and royal patronages, and is no longer a working royal representing the Crown, after his links to paedophile businessman Jeffrey Epstein were revealed.
Australian-based Virginia Giuffre had claimed she was trafficked by Epstein to have sex with the Duke on multiple occasions. The case was settled out of court in February, with the prince paying an undisclosed settlement to stop it from going to court.
PRINCES WILLIAM, HARRY COULD WALK TOGETHER BEHIND QUEEN’S COFFIN
Princes William and Harry could walk together behind the Queen’s coffin, according to a report.
They were separated by cousin Peter Phillips as they followed Prince Philip’s cortege at his funeral but in plans to be discussed over the next couple of days the brothers could walk side by side, The Sun reports.
Palace planners are finalising arrangements for two royal family processions behind the Queen’s coffin in London. According to The Sun, there will be discussions about whether the brothers could again be seen at each other’s side.
On Saturday, Prince William, 40, extended a peace branch when he invited Prince Harry and Meghan Markle to “show unity for the Queen” and see the floral tributes laid outside Windsor Castle with Kate Middleton.
The surprising joint walkabout reportedly only happened after “extended and tense” negotiations, which delayed the quartet’s arrival to greet the public at Windsor by 45 minutes, according to UK reports.
Prince William and Princess Kate were originally expected to meet the public from 4.30pm local time in Windsor, but they were delayed by 45 minutes as negotiations went on around whether the Duke and Duchess of Sussex would join them.
Ultimately, the foursome emerged from the same car at 5.15pm local time to the surprise of the waiting crowds.
AUSSIE PARLIAMENT TO HONOUR QUEEN
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has revealed Australia will honour the late Queen Elizabeth II in a memorial service at Parliament House.
Mr Albanese said he will also hold the heads of mission from the Commonwealth at the Lodge on Tuesday morning to commemorate the Queen’s legacy.
The national memorial will be held on September 22 — to coincide with the one-off public holiday for a national day of mourning.
A motion of condolence will also be moved in September 23 in both Houses of Parliament.
The motion will be moved by Mr Albanese and supported by Opposition Leader Peter Dutton.
Parliament will sit from 26 to 28 September as early as possible while the Prime Minister will leave for Japan on September 26 along with John Howard, Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull to attend the memorial service for former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
MOMENT PRINCESS ANNE CURTSIES TO BELOVED MUM
Three of the Queen’s children, Prince Andrew, Princess Anne and Prince Edward, have watched on in silence as their mother’s coffin was carried into the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh.
Princess Anne curtsied to her beloved mother after the Queen’s coffin travelled a six-hour journey from her beloved Balmoral estate to Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh.
The Queen’s oak coffin will now remain in the throne room, which is familiar to her, overnight.
Prince Andrew, Prince Edward, Sophie, Countess of Wessex and Sir Timothy Laurence bowed their heads as the coffin passed by.
The cortege also received a guard of honour by the King’s Bodyguard for Scotland (Royal Company of Archers) as it entered the Palace.
Huge crowds packed the streets of Scotland’s capital as the hearse bearing Britain’s longest-serving monarch completed the first leg of a sombre odyssey that will culminate with her state funeral in London on September 19.
A silence fell on the usually-bustling city as the cortege travelled towards the Palace of Holyroodhouse.
There was a round of respectful applause from the waiting crowds, while some mourners threw white flowers on the cobblestones in front of the cortege while others were in tears as the convoy including the Queen’s only daughter Princess Anne went by.
Soldiers in kilts stood to attention as the seven-car cortege arrived at its destination where the
Queen will lie in state for 24 hours, allowing Scots to come to pay their respects.
King Charles - formally proclaimed monarch on Saturday - will travel to Edinburgh on Monday local time for a prayer service and to mount a vigil by her coffin along with other members of the royal family.
The body of the Queen, again accompanied by Princess Anne, will be flown to London on Tuesday to lie in state for four days where at least a million people are expected to file past and pay their respects.
The September 19 funeral is set to be watched worldwide and attended by numerous heads of state, including US President Joe Biden who accepted a formal invitation to the service on Sunday, local time.
ROYAL UNDERTAKER REMOVES AD FROM QUEEN’S HEARSE
Mystery surrounds the reason the royal undertaker removed an ad for their business from the window of the Queen's hearse as it made it’s way through Edinburgh.
The William Purves ad could be seen on the hearse as it left Balmoral but by the time it reached Edinburgh it was gone.
The ad saw the firm’s website crash, The Sun reports.
After the website was up and working again it posted a message: “When you place your trust in William Purves you can expect the highest standards of professionalism, compassionate care and a truly distinct service.
“Whatever you need, whatever your plans, lean on our experience, wherever and whenever you need us.”
QUEEN LEAVES BALMORAL FOR FINAL TIME
Earlier, in an incredibly emotional and solemn moment, the Queen’s coffin left her beloved Scottish estate Balmoral Castle as she embarked on her last journey back to London for a state funeral.
At precisely 10.07am (UK time) her oak coffin, draped in the royal standard and adorned with a wreath of flowers, slowly emerged from Balmoral Castle having been carried by six gamekeepers from her Scottish estate.
Flowers from the Balmoral estate were picked for the coffin wreath and included Dahlias, Sweet peas (one of the Queen’s favourite flowers), Phlox, White heather and Pine Fir.
The minister of Crathie Kirk and a representative of the Lord Chamberlain’s office, are also in the convoy accompanying the hearse.
Followed by a convoy of six cars, one of them carrying Princess Anne and her husband Sir Timothy Laurence, the hearse slowly wound its way east to the village of Ballater, where thousands of mourners waited to pay tribute to the longest and oldest serving monarch in British history.
Silence hung in the air as mourners dressed almost ubiquitously in black witnessed the royal cortege file through the village on its way to Edinburgh.
The Queen’s final journey begins with hundreds of thousands of loyal subjects expected to line the roads through country towns and cities across Scotland as her coffin is moved from Balmoral Castle to the capital, Edinburgh.
The mood in the city was sombre and dignified in advance of the elaborate and meticulously planned five hour funeral process that will pass through the town of Ballater, then Aberdeen then along the A90 to arrive in Dundee then Edinburgh and the Throne Room at the Palace of Holyroodhouse.
Workers toiled through the night to hastily erect crash barriers and blockade roads to motorists in advance of the procession that transport bosses branded as “unprecedented”.
Police carried out security sweeps in the forecourt of the Palace, the official residence of Her Majesty, as it prepared for an influx of mourners on Sunday morning, local time.
The grim procession will be sombre but many Britons will also see it as a celebration of sorts to mark the passing of a beloved figure who has had left such an indelible mark on their lives.
“Her Majesty’s death at Balmoral Castle means Scotland has lost one of its most dedicated and beloved servants,” Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said.
“The grief we have seen across the world has been profound and deeply touching. It will be especially poignant to see Her Majesty’s coffin begin its journey from her Aberdeenshire home to the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh.”
WHERE THE QUEEN’S JOURNEY BEGINS
Queen Elizabeth has died, but she cannot yet rest in peace.
In service in death, as in life, she has embarked on another tour, her most grim, in departing Balmoral Castle in Scotland.
Here was her happy place, where she left her crown at the gates, to be a wife, mother and great grandmother, where she wore tartans and drove herself and washed the dishes and walked the dogs.
Queen Elizabeth passed through the castle’s black and gold gates for the final time.
Her simple convoy was headed to Edinburgh, to “rest’, as the commentators put it, at the Palace of Holyrood House, for the first night of eight before she will, finally, be permanently farewelled in the most public and private of services.
Along that city’s Royal Mile, people stood a dozen or more deep, just for a glimpse. A lack of animation marked their vigil.
There was clapping, as her coffin passed. But the barking of a lone dog amplified the unusual lack of volume from such a large gathering.
There was pomp, naturally, in the neat symmetry of assembled tartan uniforms and the sight of the Queen’s children Anne, Andrew and Edward. They shared the grief – if not the eagle-eyed worldwide gaze – of all children who lose a parent (or, in their case, both parents within 17 months).
At Balmoral, locals had started turning up at dawn, to farewell an understated local about whom everyone seemed to have a personal tale in generosity and kindness.
A lone piper signalled the Queen’s exit before her convoy hit nearby Ballater, a village where almost every shop boasts a royal crest. Onlookers clasped their hands and bowed their heads after being discouraged from throwing flowers at the passing hearse.
They were farewelling a kindly neighbour who offered lifts to those who needed them, and who offered to intercede when flood insurance claims were going unanswered in 2015.
There were few histrionics. Lots of iPhones. Little applause, as if all carried the stoicism gene from highlander forebears. It appeared that the Queen was to be sent off with statue-like silence, though the crowds did loosen the collective mask when her hearse later passed through Dundee.
London, in contrast, promises something rowdier after the Queen arrives at Buckingham Palace on Tuesday. Here, the embrace of the new era, featuring impromptu walkabouts by King Charles, sits alongside a solemn salute to the old.
Buckingham Palace is already a no-go zone, a scrum of bodies not unlike Derby Day at Melbourne’s Flemington racecourse in those times before sanity – and crowd limits – prevailed.
In the Sunday sun, the streets from Trafalgar Square to Big Ben heaved, as if London was hosting the world’s most oversubscribed family outing.
Floral tributes spilled across nearby Green Park. Crowds bottle-necked at sets of wrought iron gates, heading to and from a cathedral of oaks, where autumnal leaves crunched underfoot and competing perfumes filled the air.
There was hardly a tear; rather, a hush of quiet reverence. Many here, amid the prams and dogs, were visiting from elsewhere, as if a kingdom was coming together by unspoken solidarity.
They couldn’t always express their reasons; some seemed put out that the question was even being asked – who needs words for the most natural of community urges?
The hordes – and their mannered approach which precluded jostling or impatience – couldn’t be categorised.
There were the very young, hanging off parents, but also the very elderly. The well-to-do appeared to be well represented, as did a working class that brought to mind singlets, footy shorts and sunburn of Aussie bloke in the 1970s.
They were as one. It wasn’t a choice to be here so much as a state of mind.
Some people spent hours wandering from one mushrooming tribute to the next. In one area, hundreds of floral posies were carefully arranged to spell: “ER Thank you”. If the wider floral messages told a story, it was a collective acknowledgment for decades of service.
There were few Union Jacks in the personal farewells; the only political tone, if there was one, lay in the dozens of messages speaking of the Queen’s empowerment of women.
The notes were largely handwritten by children, completed with drawings of corgis. They were not addressed to her job title.
Entire classrooms, from Bedfordshire to Wormholt Primary School, may have forfeited a day’s curriculum to create a single tribute. Their thoughts honoured a radiant presence who sounded like everyone’s grandma.
Many kids favoured the Queen’s signature image with Paddington Bear, depicting them hand-in-hand while walking away. “I’ve done my duties, Paddington, please take me to my husband,” a typed caption read.
These shows of loss are not unprecedented. National sentiment surged when the previous monarch, Elizabeth’s father, George VI, died so long ago.
He lay in state at Westminster Hall, where more than 300,000 people – stretching up to six kilometres – waited to pay their respects.
His was the first televised send-off to a monarch (if without the helicopters of today), and it would be dwarfed by the sudden loss of Princess Diana a couple of generations later.
The shock and rawness for Di cannot be compared to today’s scenes. Trauma and numbness for her loss contrasts with the respect and reflection for her once mother-in-law.
Yet Princess Di’s farewell, too, seems certain to be dwarfed by the Queen’s farewell tour, in moving shows of mass (and sometimes restrained) gratitude.
THE STATE FUNERAL
The Queen’s state funeral will take place at Westminster Abbey on September 19 at 11am.
Schools will close on the day of the funeral – giving thousands of youngsters the chance to watch the televised service and pay their respects.
A spokesman for the King said the monarch’s main focus will be leading the royal family and nation in mourning over the coming days.
“Whilst, in the next few days, the King will carry out all the necessary state duties, his main focus will be leading the Royal Family, the nation, the Realms and the Commonwealth in mourning Her Majesty The Queen. This will include meeting members of the public, to share in their grief,” the spokesman said.
The Earl Marshal, who has overall responsibility for delivering the funeral, said it would be chance to repay a heartfelt debt by carrying out the Queen’s last wishes.
He described how he and colleagues from within the Royal Household, the Armed Forces, the Police, and other institutions of Church and State would be carrying out their duties over the coming days with “heaviest of hearts” but with “the firmest of resolve to ensure a fitting farewell to one of the defining figures of our times”.
The duke added: “While His Majesty The King was speaking about his family, I think it applies to us all when he said in his broadcast yesterday that ‘We owe her the most heartfelt debt’.
“I think we can, in some way, repay that debt by carrying out her last wishes in delivering Her Majesty The Queen’s funeral.
Originally published as Queen Elizabeth II live updates: Prince Andrew to join leading royals behind monarch’s coffin
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