Rows erupt between late Queen and new King’s courtiers over transition at Buckingham Palace

An internal tussle has flared up between officials in the two main Royal households, Buckingham Palace and Clarence House.

Courtiers, diplomats and government officials revised and refined “London Bridge”, the operation that was to swing into place at the death of the Queen, for more than 60 years, updated three times annually and even more often in recent months.

So why then, behind the scenes, has there been confusion and uncertainty that saw a long delay in the announcement of the Queen’s funeral and haphazard and late details about the movement of both the Queen’s coffin and the new King’s program?

Palace sources have told The Australian there had been an internal tussle between officials in the two main royal households: Buckingham Palace, which dealt with the Queen’s business, and Clarence House, which dealt with Charles’s time as Prince of Wales and now as His Majesty.

Both Edward Young, the Queen’s private secretary, and Clive Alderton, the King’s private secretary, have had to co-ordinate and integrate the various programs, in conjunction with the cabinet office of the Liz Truss led-British government, just days old.

Complicating the lines of demarcation, the recent and coming days involved a death of a monarch, as well as the accession of a new monarch, which required some adjustments.

Just who had ultimate authority has been a point of contention, The Australian has been told. “This is a classic power struggle: Sir Clive and Sir Edward are battling to have their own plans adopted,” the source said.

A grieving King has had to sign off much of the paperwork.

The funeral date, always pencilled in as D-day (death day) plus 10, in the extraordinarily detailed Operation London Bridge, has taken 72 hours after the Queen’s death to confirm.

Buckingham Palace finally announced the date on Saturday evening. The funeral will be held at 11am London time (8pm Sydney time) on September 19 at Westminster Abbey.

The sub-plan Operation Unicorn, which deals with the Queen dying in Scotland – and given she spent three months a year at Balmoral, there was always strong odds of that happening – was detailed to the Scottish public the evening before it was carried out.

For several days, broadcasters had become practised at talking about forthcoming events without detail – such as the Queen’s body will be taken from Balmoral to Edinburgh in “coming days” or “expected over the weekend”, or “will be notified in due course”.

Finally on Saturday evening, they could relay that the Queen’s hearse was to leave Balmoral, with the first public viewing area at Ballatier in Aberdeenshire the next day, Sunday, at 10.12am.

Confounding the confusion was a late change to the D-days.

The death of the monarch was signified as D-day zero, so Friday was to have been D+1, up until D+10, the day of the funeral.

It all looked organised, except that the plans for D-day plus one didn’t happen as scheduled.

The Accession Council meetings that so gallantly proclaimed Charles as King happened on Saturday, not on Friday.

“Are they just cherry picking bits and pieces (of the pre-prepared plan)?’’ inquired one frustrated journalist on a foreign media WhatsApp group.

The 24-hour push back was explained that as the Queen died so late in the day, D-day zero would actually be Friday.

The Queen died before 4.30pm local time, with the news broadcast to the public some two hours later.

For three days, the public was perplexed about what was happening on which day. Finally it appeared that by late Saturday plans had been whipped into shape, with details issued by the UK government, the Scottish government, the cabinet office and the royal communications office.