Thousands of people pay their respects to the British monarch in overwhelming silence as the funeral procession arrives at the Palace of Holyroodhouse.
Jean stood looking out from behind the wire mesh fence that had been erected in front of the gate to the Palace of Holyroodhouse, as if it were a horizon. There was still plenty of time left for Elizabeth II’s coffin-carrying procession to descend Edinburgh’s Royal Mile. Flower offerings and loving messages to the late Queen surrounded him.
She was at home with her ailing daughter when doctors’ concerns for the frost’s health were revealed on Thursday, and she believed it would be something temporary. He had noticed over the past months and weeks that the Queen had grown older, but the voice was still strong. When the death was announced, he burst into tears. “It was a shock, a big shock,” Jeane said. “He’s had a good life, yes.” It doesn’t identify Elizabeth II’s great achievements, as she hasn’t followed the kingship either, except when she appeared on television, but the reaction in the rest of the world has stood out. “He was a good person. A great person,” he repeats.
Jean states that she feels fit at age 76. She adds that her husband died four years ago, they had two children, and she now walks around Edinburgh and other places in Scotland. A good life too, because he is not jealous of the wealth of the royal family or anyone else.
The lonely silence of Jean, who believed she would not stay with her family until the arrival of the procession, had depth, but also among those who began to gather around the palace, there was peace and quiet. Numerous bouquets of roses, sunflowers or delias were displayed next to the gates or around the trees in the garden bordering the walls of the house. A police officer greeted the three children of a Romanian couple who were carrying bouquets of red roses.
The flower offerings were accompanied by children’s drawings, photographs of the Queen with her husband, Philip of Edinburgh, with prints of butterflies and acknowledgments. Some were more elaborate: ‘Queen of Scots, grandmother of all of us, you will be missed forever. Like every rainbow that colors the sky, you were unique.”
The Scottish Parliament was designed by Spanish Enric Miralles, who died building it, for Holyroodhouse. He had the idea to connect the foot of Arthur’s Seat, a two hundred meter high mountain that is the highest in the city, with his building, as a sign that the parliamentary political form would be born from nature.
From the top channel of the concrete and garden structure Miralles devised to make this connection, Moira and David observed the general scene, both in their fifties, she a banker (banker, according to the Anglo-Saxons) and he, retired. What David said about Elizabeth II’s death had a close echo of Jean’s words.
His mother is 85 years old and is dismayed after the death of the Queen. David thinks that for that generation, in which Jean can also be counted, it is the end of his time. “It seemed to them that I would live forever,” he says. The couple walked along the royal mile and observed what was happening in their town. Moira is surprised when her husband notes that he was very emotional when the death was announced.
Both believe that Carlos will be a good king, a king who resembles his mother, “because the monarchy always does the same thing.” And they see it positively for their desire to preserve the unity of the whole kingdom, which Scottish independence supporters advocated in the 2014 referendum for the preservation of the monarchy in an independent Scotland, and they are finding it now.
The Scottish Government’s first minister, Nicola Surgeon, who plans to call a new meeting in 2023, has sent her fellow citizens a warm message about the late monarch: “Her Majesty’s death at Balmoral means Scotland has one of her most devoted and beloved servants. The mourning we have seen around the world has been deep and moving.”
Elizabeth II, however, did not seem impartial about independence. He underlined the benefits of unions in a speech in 1977, when the Labor Party promoted the organization of a referendum on house rules. The proposal was rejected because the condition of the amendment required at least 40% of those registered to vote for the reinstatement of parliament.
Autonomy was restored in 1997 at the initiative of the Tony Blair government with a large majority in London and Edinburgh. The Queen rejoined in 2014. Six days before the last consultation, she approached people waiting for her to leave the small Balmoral parish church and told them on BBC cameras to “think carefully about the future”.
It was interpreted as a message favorable to the ‘no’ campaign for independence. And that the Queen had responded to Prime Minister David Cameron’s request, concerned about the possibility of defeat. After the win, Cameron boasted that when he informed her of the result, her happiness could be detected over the phone. The monarch would have been angry with him for breaking the confidentiality of conversations with the monarch.
The Queen’s parish when she lived in Holyrood was Canongate Kirk. It is a small church with white walls, simple windows, blue benches and military banners. The first row was reserved for the palace’s tenants, with a carved crown on the edge of the backrest. Parishioners yesterday placed in the Queen’s seat a center of small white roses, freesias and green leaves of a plant known as sea lavender.
It is a parish of the Church of Scotland, Presbyterian, whose independence rights – including the fact that the monarch does not rule them as he does in the Church of England – were the subject of a pledge of protection by Charles III at his confirmation ceremony. But the Queen went to that church when she was in Edinburgh.
Very close there is a room of the United Augustinian Church. These ‘lower churches’, with structures that often do not extend much beyond the local community of parishioners, are unaffected by the change of king. “Carlos is the king now, but our king is God,” said a man who repaired a sign on the door. «It is said: ‘To Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s’».
A young French couple, osteopaths, Axel and Armande, departed from their journey yesterday to participate in what they describe as a historic event. She described Elizabeth II’s career as “beautiful, impressive,” but at age 25, she is said to have refused to become monarch. He explained that he couldn’t understand ‘how there can be so much love for someone who doesn’t rule the country’.
The funeral procession carrying Elizabeth II’s remains departed Balmoral Castle at 10am (11am Spanish time) this Sunday and arrived at the Palace of Holyroodhouse at 4pm. It was a six-hour journey, covering nearly 300 kilometers in a slow caravan, allowing thousands of citizens to bid the Queen one last farewell.
Princess Anne accompanied the procession and on arrival at Edinburgh Palace the coffin – covered with the Scottish standard – was received with a nod by the Earls of Wessex and the Duke of York. Tomorrow he will be flown to nearby St. Giles Cathedral for a farewell day.
Edinburgh, as well as the capitals of Wales and Northern Ireland, was also the scene of Charles III’s formal proclamation as King of the entire United Kingdom. The formal lecture in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast concluded with ‘God save the king’. 21 gun salvos were also fired.
In the case of the Scottish capital, the moment of the lecture was interrupted by some boos in Parliament Square after the phrase “God save the king”. The British national anthem immediately began to be played, sung by many in attendance, including Prime Minister Nicola Sturgeon.
In Northern Ireland, which Charles III will visit on Tuesday after traveling through Edinburgh, the proclamation was held at Hillsborough Castle, the monarch’s official residence and also the seat of the British Government’s Northern Ireland Secretariat. The ceremony had wide political representation, except for Sinn Féin, who had already announced that there would be no deputy of their own because the act was for “those who have their political allegiance in the British Crown”. However, the president, Mary Lou McDonald, acknowledged that Elizabeth II “worked for peace among our islands and the reconciliation of all our people.”
Source: La Verdad
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