Some of the first members of the public have finally gained access to the Queen Elizabeth II’s lying-in-state Wednesday in the thousand-year-old Westminster Hall after a reportedly long and patient wait in the sun and the rain,
The hall in parliament had finally been opened for the public — many of whom had also braved downpours to camp out overnight — to pay their respects after the queen’s flag-shrouded coffin was brought from Buckingham Palace.
Read Also: Queen Elizabeth’s Crown Does Not Belong To Her – Uju Anya
“Inside it was really quite calm and incredibly emotional. A lot of people were in tears, but there was total silence,” 50-year-old accountant Sue Harvey said after emerging from the cavernous hall.
“She is everything I have known. I wanted to make sure I did see her, no matter how long the queue was going to be,” she told AFP.
Prior to the start of the public part, the lying-in-state for Queen Elizabeth began with a short Anglican service before some of the black-clad members of parliament including Prime Minister Liz Truss filed past the coffin, bowing their heads.
To the strains of a military band playing funeral marches, King Charles III had earlier led his family in procession behind a horse-drawn gun carriage which had been bearing the coffin of the well respected monarch, before it was placed on a platform which had been guarded by soldiers inside the most historic part of parliament.
The king, his siblings, and sons, princes William and Harry, walked at 75 steps a minute behind the gun carriage. Big Ben tolled out each minute as the casket — topped with the Imperial State Crown — passed in front of hushed crowds lining the route.
“I remember when (the queen’s father) King George VI died, it was in winter, I was nine,” Ian Gammie, 79, said after watching the procession.
“It’s like completing a journey: from watching the coronation of the queen in 1953 to paying tribute to her today,” he said.
The grand procession through the flag-lined heart of London represented the latest step in 11 days of intricately choreographed national mourning that will culminate with the funeral on Monday of the UK’s longest-reigning monarch.
The sight of the new king’s two grief-stricken sons inevitably evoked memories of 1997, when William and Harry, then aged just 15 and 12, walked, heads bowed, behind the coffin of their mother, Princess Diana. But it comes with the once-close brothers now estranged, after Harry’s move to the United States.