Corona Daily 119: The Unusual Royal Funeral

British planners excel at contingency planning for the death of a Royal. When the Queen eventually passes away, the Prime Minister will get a code-worded call saying “London Bridge is down” which will trigger press releases, BBC protocols, the lowering of flags in Canada and New Zealand, and detailed funeral arrangements. Loyal watchers of The Crown know this. The code for Prince Philip’s death was “operation Forth Bridge”. Had the British planners shown such zeal and meticulousness during Brexit or Covid-19 planning, Britain would be a much better place now.

Unfortunately, the best-laid plans of men often go awry in a pandemic.

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The original plan called for the coffin of the Duke of Edinburgh to move through the streets of London on a gun carriage with hundreds of thousands lining up on both sides to bid goodbye. This is normally a journey of 22 miles from Buckingham palace to Windsor castle. Instead, Prince Philip’s converted Land Rover made a trip of only a few hundred yards.

The protocol number of attendees is 800. The pandemic reduced it to 30. That meant mainly the immediate family. Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip are third cousins, with Queen Victoria as their common great-great-grandmother. That could have eased some pressure on the list. Boris Johnson wisely withdrew, and pregnant Meghan was advised not to travel by her doctors and counsellors. The vacant seats allowed the Queen to invite the German relatives of Philip (his mother was German). In 1947, as a consequence of WWII, Germans could not be invited to the royal wedding. The German royals and Harry flying from abroad went into quarantine. There were enough palaces for each of them to isolate in. A small print exception allows mourners to exit quarantine on the funeral day.

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The Queen had to decide on the dress code. Usually, male royals wear military uniforms. The Queen opted for civilian clothes. Black. Black. Black. Queen Victoria, after her husband’s death wore black every day for forty years.

Avoiding military uniforms, though prescribed in the planning book, was a shrewd decision. Harry has sort of renounced royal life, so despite serving in Afghanistan he was no longer eligible. And Prince Andrew exiled for his association with a sex predator didn’t qualify either.

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When operation Forth Bridge was activated, on BBC, presenter Martine Croxall interrupted the programme to announce the Duke’s death. While the channel showed his photographs, she quickly removed her necklace, and changed into a black dress.

Over the next week, you could switch from one BBC channel to another, but couldn’t escape knowing more about the life of the Royal Consort. The civilized kingdom has a platform for people to complain about BBC. This week BBC received more than 100,000 complaints, an all time record, for its wall-to-wall coverage. Some people, presumably anti-monarchists, likened the programming to what might be expected in North Korea.

This is surprising. The Duke’s death was a respite from the wall-to-wall coronavirus coverage. Like sport events played to empty stadiums, but televised worldwide, the BBC coverage offered the worldwide mourners a live viewing opportunity.  

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Inside the castle’s St George’s chapel, every attendee was required to wear a black mask, and not sing. They needed to keep a gap of two meters. The queen dressed in black, wearing a mask, sitting alone in a corner, looked more a widow than a queen.

There was no eulogy and no sermon. A choir of four, the number cut seriously by the pandemic, standing far from the attendees, sang hymns.

Viewers glued to their TVs scrutinised the royal family members to see how much each of them was faithful to the Netflix series.

Prince Philip’s casket was lowered in the royal vault. Only a living royal or a dead royal is allowed to enter the vault. This is a transit stop for Philip. When his wife dies, he will be moved and the couple will be buried side-by-side at the King George VI memorial.

Ravi