One royal tradition seen when the Queen died left viewers truly disturbed
Topics: Royal Family, Prince Charles, The Queen
Jess Hardiman
Featured Image Credit: Christopher Furlong/Dominic Lipinski/Jane Barlow - WPA Pool/Getty Images
Topics: Royal Family, Prince Charles, The Queen
The Queen’s death plunged the UK into an official 10-day mourning period in 2022, with many people queuing up to see the late monarch lying in state in Westminster Palace’s Westminster Hall.
Along with the general public, a number of famous faces were seen tackling ‘the queue’ so that they could pay their respects before her state funeral.
Elizabeth II’s own family members also made their way into the hall on several occasions, with Prince Harry travelling over from the US to join his relatives in the moments before she died.
Before her body was transported to the capital, however, Queen Elizabeth lay at rest in Scotland at St Giles' Cathedral in Edinburgh, where she had been taken after passing away at Balmoral Castle.
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She remained here for 24 hours, constantly guarded by the Royal Company of Archers as around 30,000 people came through to say their goodbyes.
But there was one detail of this stage’s proceedings that the public found particularly strange.
A 10-minute period saw the Queens’ four children stand around her coffin alongside four members of the Royal Company of Archers – a tradition known as the Vigil of the Princes.
Charles, Anne, Andrew and Edward could be seen standing around the coffin, their backs turned to it with their heads bowed.
One person said they found it 'weird' that the new King and his family were standing in silence around the coffin as the public walked by ‘staring’.
Another added they wanted to know ‘who decided it was a good idea’ to have the Queen’s children standing around the coffin’.
As a tradition, the Vigil of the Princes is actually relatively new, as it’s less than a century old.
This instance was only the third time it had been performed, having first been done for King George V's funeral in 1936 - with King Edward VIII, Prince Albert (later King George VI), Prince Henry and Prince George standing vigil over their father's body.
That time, Westminster Hall was closed to the public, making it a moment of privacy for the late monarch's children to pay tribute to their father.
There was no vigil for King George VI, the late Queen's father, when he died in 1952, as he had daughters and his grandchildren were very young at the time.
The second Vigil of the Princes was held in 2002 for his wife, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, where Charles, Andrew, Edward and David Armstrong-Jones, Princess Margaret's son, stood vigil over her body.
For the third, most recent vigil, Princess Anne became the first woman to participate in the tradition, while – unlike the previous two occasions – the public were allowed in while members of the Royal family stood their vigil.