When Queen Elizabeth II’s grandfather, King George V, died 86 years in the past, many houses in Britain had little or no electrical energy and huge elements of the inhabitants nonetheless lived in slums.
Life in 1936 is unrecognisable to Britons in the present day. But despite virtually a century of change, the photographs from the queen’s lying in state this week are virtually actual copies of these from when George V lay in state.
Both used the identical huge, medieval Westminster Hall with the coffin resting on a royal purple platform in the center. A brass cross is at one finish of the coffin, the royal commonplace is draped on high, and tall candlesticks and scarlet and gold-clad ceremonial guards are fastidiously positioned round it.
Historians say sustaining such traditions constantly by means of time is essential to preserving reverence for the monarchy.
“When you look at the photographs, it’s like spot the difference isn’t it?” stated historian Tracy Borman, creator of Crown And Sceptre: 1000 years Of Kings And Queens.
“People want to see a crown and scepter, they like to see these ceremonies played out the same way,” she added. “People derive some sort of comfort and security from that unchanging nature. It seems to be what people value about the monarchy: nothing changing.”
The queen, Britain’s longest-reigning monarch who dominated for 70 years, was the fixed rock of stability in British life earlier than she died on Sept 8 in Scotland. Even in demise, the pomp and pageantry to mark her passing evokes elaborate mourning rituals that appear to be frozen in time.
Before the queen, 5 British kings and queens have lain in state at Westminster Hall, a 900-year-old constructing on the centre of British politics and energy for hundreds of years. The corridor hosted quite a few medieval coronation banquets, in addition to the trials of Guy Fawkes and Charles I in the seventeenth century.
The custom of lying in state stretches again to the time of the Stuarts — who reigned from 1603 to 1714 — when sovereigns lay in state for a lot of days.
But Edward VII was the monarch who set the fashionable custom of lying in state in Westminster Hall in 1910. Archival footage confirmed that identical to in the present day, crowds fashioned enormous strains snaking by means of central London for an opportunity to file previous their sovereign’s coffin.
Historian Ed Owens believes it was a canny transfer by Edward VII to strengthen the bond between the crown and its topics.
“He saw the lying in state as a key moment that would bring him as monarch into close contact with his subjects, a final opportunity for them to bid farewell,” stated Owens, creator of The Family Firm: Monarchy, Mass Media And The British Public, 1932-1953.
“This was a moment that would be captured by the new technologies of photography and film,” Owens added. “And it was a way of saying to the wider country and the wider world, that monarch and people were in a kind of spiritual communion.”
Other royals who lay in state at Westminster Hall had been King George VI, Elizabeth’s father, in 1952, and Queen Mary, Elizabeth’s grandmother, in 1953. George VI’s spouse Queen Elizabeth, recognized in later years because the Queen Mother after her daughter turned monarch, was the final individual to lie in state in Britain. Each time, the events drew tens of 1000’s of individuals.
Two former prime ministers — William Gladstone in 1898 and Winston Churchill in 1965 — additionally lay in state at Westminster Hall. Churchill additionally had a state funeral — the final one staged in Britain till Monday, when the state funeral for the queen takes place.
Such pageantry continues to fascinate as a result of it appears to play into a permanent longing for ritual, Borman stated.
The monarchy holds “a kind of magnetism” as a result of “you’re staring history in the face, they represent that ancient line stretching back,” she stated.
That attraction fits the royals simply high quality — and certainly, she identified that the royal family has been “absolutely dedicated” to upholding the unchanging nature of such ceremonies.
“That is very deliberate, I think,” Borman stated. “I guess the heart of that is to stop people getting rid of the monarchy.” – AP
