The royals - Kitty Kelley [68]
Her greatest power as Queen is the emotional hold she exerts on her people, who toast her health at every formal banquet and dinner and whose National Anthem beseeches God to protect her. As the fountainhead of such honor, she is a sacred symbol that elevates her above criticism. From this pinnacle she commands absolute fealty.
“Because of her exalted position,” wrote the Duke of Windsor in his coronation article for an American magazine, “it is possible for the monarch by the influence of example and personality to impart a character and coloring to an era in a manner that lies quite outside the day-to-day functions of government.”
After the Archbishop set the crown on her head, Prince Philip rose to be the first to pay her homage. In the full dress uniform of Admiral of the Fleet, he walked to the foot of the throne, took off his coronet, and bowed. He walked up the five steps and knelt at his wife’s feet. She took his hands in her own as he said:
I, Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, do become your liege man of life and limb, and of earthly worship; and faith and truth I will bear unto you, to live and die, against all manner of folks. So help me God.
He touched her crown and kissed her left cheek before returning to his chair.
“It was a gesture which had all the humility of a subject and the tenderness of a husband,” wrote a British journalist, “and for a brief moment the Queen pressed her cheek close and firm to her husband.”
That night the young Queen paid public tribute to the man she had married. In a radio address to her loyal subjects, she pledged “with all my heart” to devote her life to the service of her people. “In this resolve,” she said, “I have my husband to support me.”
The Queen entered Westminster Abbey to the shouts of “Vivat Regina!” As she departed, trumpets sounded and church bells pealed. Enraptured crowds cheered as the stately coaches of seventy-four foreign powers made their way along the coronation route. Despite the downpour, Queen Salote of Tonga rode in an open carriage, the only head of state to do so. An enormous woman, she waved her huge, fleshy arms to greet bystanders and completely overshadowed the frail little man sharing her carriage.
“What’s sitting across from her?” someone asked.
“Her lunch,” said Noel Coward.
The Sultans of Brunei, Johore, Perak, Lahej, Kelantan, Selangor, and Zanzibar passed in colorful turbans, silk saris, and extravagant plumage. The native dress of the Zulus, Arabs, Indians, Chinese, and Nepalese dazzled bystanders. To heighten the drama of the parade, BBC technicians laid microphones on the ground to magnify the thundering beat of the horses’ hooves and tape-recorded nightingales to sing continuously in Berkeley Square.
The emotion reduced some men to tears. “When her carriage went past, I felt as if my heart were bursting,” said Richard Smith, a soldier on duty. “We were virtually crying as we presented arms to the Queen. We were no more than ten yards away, and I don’t think I’ve seen anything as beautiful in all my life.”
Similar feelings swept through the Abbey. “Although our preparation was intense, the one thing the rehearsals hadn’t prepared us for was the emotion of the ceremony, especially the entry of the Queen and her procession,” said a radio announcer, John Snagge. “I was overwhelmed: Handel’s ‘Music for Royal Fireworks’ on the organ, everyone standing, then Parry’s anthem—Oh, it was the most moving moment.”
The BBC engineer, who was supposed to black out close-ups of the Queen during the coronation, was so transfixed that he could not bring himself to cut the lights and censor her image.
“Gorgeous, she was,” recalled the engineer, Ben Shaw. “I thought the close-up picture of her was so beautiful that I couldn’t press the button.”
As Queen, Elizabeth became the head of two separate churches—the Church of England, which is episcopalian, and the Church of