The Lord Chamberlain, Lord Parker of Minsmere, a former director-general of MI5, snapped the wand (originally designed to provide discipline to courtiers) in two, marking the end of both his and the Queen’s service. Minutes earlier, the crown jeweler, wearing white gloves and sweating slightly under the lights, removed the orb, scepter and crown he handed to the Queen at her coronation 70 years ago from the top of the coffin and passed them to to place them in threes. purple cushions with gold fringes on the high altar of St George’s Chapel in Windsor. The four large pear-shaped pearls (probably once worn by an ancestor of Elizabeth I as earrings) hanging from the diamond-encrusted crown ball, which swayed so dangerously as the coffin was carried around the country over the past 10 days, it was still after all. Standing strong as the highlights of the Queen’s funeral procession, these were strangely unaffected, cryptic moments towards the end of a marathon, ceremony-filled funeral. Far more moving was the sight of the new king, looking tired and pale, biting his lip and closing his eyes as the national anthem began. The shriveled faces of the coffins convulsing up the chapel steps. and glimpses of the Queen’s beloved pets came to pay their respects as her coffin arrived at Windsor Castle. Emma’s pony, with her mane washed and swept neatly over one eye, stood by the side of the road, calmly unmoved by the thunderous noise made by the marching feet of several regiments of soldiers (unlike the restless horses on horseback of cavalry throwing cannon heads). Emma, the Queen’s pony, stands next to flowers from the public that have been laid along the funeral route in Windsor. Photo: Aaron Chown/AP A few hundred yards down, two of the Queen’s corgis, Sandy and Miwick, waited on pens, panting and looking expectantly toward the cemetery. The black hearse arrived in Windsor, decorated with flowers strewn by mourners lining the road during the slow journey from London. The same hypnotic, trance-inducing march played along Whitehall was repeated by young musicians, perfectly choreographed, but there was a momentarily different aesthetic to the London procession. The red uniforms of the Grenadier Guards of the first order and the black bearskin hats stood out sharply against the bright green fields on the approach to the castle. In the 24 hours leading up to the service, there was a peculiar somber atmosphere: pubs were unusually full and souvenir shops sold postcards with black-and-white images of the late queen and hastily made mugs decorated with slightly off-center photos of her face and the dates 1926-2022. . Estate agents had removed pictures of homes for sale from their shop windows and replaced them with images from the Queen’s life. Even the Thai massage parlor in Windsor’s high street (Thy Spa) had decorated its window with union jack bunting. Windsor realtor window display. Photo: Maureen McLean/Rex/Shutterstock At the castle at 8am, workers were plucking any stray leaves and making final adjustments to the flowers. Outside the castle grounds there seemed to be a lighter approach to getting the city’s homeless off the streets than before the recent royal weddings. A man with his dog and belongings was left to sleep undisturbed on the pavement outside the Duchess of Cambridge pub as people walked past wearing bowler hats adorned with jacks. The Windsor service was a smaller affair than the state funeral at Westminster Abbey, consisting of local friends and staff from the Queen’s various estates, as well as some former prime ministers and representatives of foreign royal families who had traveled from London to be in the second of the three ceremonies of the day. As they arrived at the chapel, mourners will have caught a blast of the heady smell of thousands of wilted bunches of flowers, carefully arranged in rows, stripped of cellophane, to create the impression of a fading flower bed. The largest, most extravagant bouquets of lilies, roses and orchids from European royal families, decorated with royal leaves, lined the entrance, next to a white wreath from the Archbishop of Canterbury with a handwritten card: “In gratitude, let His Majesty rest in peace and rise in glory.” The Dean of Windsor, the Right Reverend David Conner, paid tribute to the Queen at his offering, remembering her public and private personas, noting the monarch’s “kindness, concern and reassuring care for family and friends and neighbors her”. “In our rapidly changing and often turbulent world, her calm and dignified presence gave us the confidence to face the future, as she did, with courage and hope,” he said. The service felt peaceful after the wail of bagpipes and cannon blasts outside. The coffin was slowly lowered into the royal vault as the archbishop read Psalm 103, ending with the words: “Go on your journey out of this world.” Later, a smaller group of the Queen’s closest relatives were due to gather at 7.30pm. in the George VI Memorial, a small, bare stone room, for the final stage of burial. The Queen was to be buried next to her husband, Prince Philip, and near the remains of her father, George VI, the Queen Mother and her sister, Princess Margaret.
