The royals - Kitty Kelley [67]
As her coach glided past her subjects, she said, “So kind, so nice, so very, very loyal,” and she raised her arm in an elegant wave. “So very, very loyal.”
She repeated the refrain over and over as the Duke of Edinburgh, sitting by her side, smiled easily and returned the salute of soldiers standing at attention under the Admiralty Arch.
Inside the Abbey, the peers of the realm began their stately procession down the long aisle. The measured line was broken when the Prime Minister, stooped from the weight of his seventy-eight years, saw his old friend, George C. Marshall, former Chief of the U.S. General Staff in World War II and now chief of the U.S. delegation to the coronation. Marshall had been assigned the most prestigious seat in the Abbey out of respect for the rebuilding plan for Europe that bore his name and later won him the Nobel Peace prize. Churchill was so moved to see the seventy-two-year-old General that he impulsively broke ranks to clasp his hand. Flushed and happy, the Prime Minister looked like a big red tomato.
The lords and ladies took their places on their little gold chairs with tufted velvet cushions. Outside, the populace camped on the curb or sat in one of the $14 stadium seats erected to watch the Queen pass in her golden carriage, wearing her heavy crown and holding her orb, a jeweled globe, in one hand and her scepter, a jeweled rod, in the other.
Heralded by trumpets and the voices of four hundred young Westminster choirboys, the Queen made her way down the aisle of the Abbey to begin the ancient ritual of her coronation. Throughout the ceremony, the Duke of Edinburgh, sitting with the Princes of the Blood Royal, the Duke of Gloucester and the young Duke of Kent, never for one moment took his eyes off her. At times he leaned forward tensely as she went through the elaborate ceremony.
The supreme moment of the day was timed for 12:30 P.M., when the Archbishop of Canterbury anointed Her Majesty with sacred holy oil and placed the crown on her head, proclaiming her Queen Elizabeth II “by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith, Sovereign of the British Orders of Knighthood, Captain General of the Royal Regiment of Artillery.”
Those words enthroned the monarch, whose blood flows from the Saxon King Egbert through Henry VIII and Mary Queen of Scots, linking Elizabeth II to almost* every English sovereign since William the Conqueror. As Queen, she became Supreme Governor of the Church of England and Defender of the Faith. Her royal prerogative gave her ten powers: dismiss the government; declare war; disband the army; sell all the ships in the navy; dismiss the civil service; give territory away to a foreign power; make anyone a peer; declare a state of emergency; pardon all offenders; establish a university in any parish.
As a constitutional monarch, she reigns but does not rule. Her only rights are to be consulted, to be informed, to encourage, and to warn, and even those are more limited than they were in the days of her ancestors. Her role is mostly ceremonial, and her activities—opening Parliament, signing legislation, appointing officials, bestowing medals and titles—are ritual. In practice, her official actions are no more than mandatory approvals of her government’s wishes. Still, her symbolic power is considerable, for as “the Queen” she personifies Great Britain. The government is “Her Majesty’s Government,” not Britain’s government. British passports are issued “in the Name of Her Majesty,” not in the name of the state. Her face appears on stamps and coins. Her royal arms dominate the judiciary. Her royal insignia governs the church. Cabinet ministers are her ministers, state departments are her agencies, and