Nearly seventy years after his mother Elizabeth, he will, in turn, receive his monarch’s crown. The coronation ceremony of Charles III and his wife Camilla, the Queen consort, is announced for May 6, 2023, at Westminster Abbey, London, Buckingham Palace announced on Tuesday.
The ceremony promises to be future-oriented, while remaining attached to tradition and pomp, explains the palace.
Charles III was officially proclaimed king two days after the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II on September 8. This ceremony, which took place at St. James’s Palace in London, was organized in the presence of an Accession Council, in charge of announcing the death of a monarch and confirming his successor.
A long-prepared ceremony
Added to this proclamation is a religious ceremony, much more pompous and longer: the coronation of the king, at Westminster Abbey, still in London. “It’s an Anglican church service, led by the Archbishop of Canterbury,” says the BBC.
For more than 900 years, all the monarchs of the United Kingdom have been crowned in this abbey located behind the seat of the British Parliament. William the Conqueror, who became King William I, received the royal crown there in 1066.
During this service, “there will be music, readings and a rite of anointing of the new monarch, using oils composed of orange, roses, cinnamon, musk and ambergris”. , continues the BBC.
“At the climax of the ceremony, the Archbishop of Canterbury will place the Crown of Saint Edward, a golden crown dating from 1661, on Charles’s head,” adds the British public channel. This precious crown, housed in the Tower of London, is only used for coronation ceremonies. Camilla, Charles’s wife, will also be crowned queen consort alongside Charles, as requested by Queen Elizabeth II.
An event followed by millions of viewers
If the new monarch must wait several months between the death of his mother and his coronation, it is because a long period of mourning for Queen Elizabeth II must be observed, and the ceremony, financed by the British State, requires a long period of preparation.
For her own coronation, on June 2, 1953, Elizabeth had waited sixteen months after the death of her father George VI, which occurred in February 1952. The ceremony had been watched on television by millions of Britons across the country, but also in internationally, making this coronation the first historic event to be broadcast worldwide.