KEY POINTS
- King Charles’ coronation will take place in London on May 6
- Royal expert Jennie Bond said it will be a “big event”
- Queen Consort Camilla will reportedly help the monarch have a more inclusive and less traditional coronation
King Charles’ coronation in May is expected to be “more enormous” than Queen Elizabeth II‘s funeral, a royal expert has said.
Royal expert Jennie Bond shared her thoughts on King Charles’ upcoming coronation in a new interview with OK Magazine U.K. She said she believes it will be a bigger event than Queen Elizabeth’s funeral, which was attended by high-profile people, monarchs, leaders and representatives from around the globe on Sept. 19, days after she died at age 96 on Sept. 8.
According to Bond, the new year marked the end of an era and the beginning of a new one under King Charles’ reign. Bond said she believes he “will forge through the year with enormous enthusiasm.”
“He has such a strong work ethic, and he will clearly be looking toward the coronation,” she told the magazine. “Whether it’s actually an event he’ll enjoy is probably questionable.”
“It’s clearly going to be a big event, as witnessed by the Cabinet meeting recently that suggested it’s going to be even more enormous than the funeral of the Queen in terms of state attendees,” Bond predicted.
The royal expert said King Charles is putting in a lot of effort to make his coronation more “inclusive, relevant and less archaic” while ensuring it would still have the same gravity and solemnity his late mother’s investiture had in 1953.
Bond also praised Queen Consort Camilla’s efforts behind the scenes to make the coronation ceremony much more inclusive and less traditional than the previous investitures.
Bond said that the ceremony will unite the country the same way last year’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations did. According to her, unity is important to King Charles.
However, Dr. Bob Morris, a senior research associate at University College London’s Constitution Unit, suggested that King Charles’ coronation will likely be a “more modest affair” than Queen Elizabeth’s to reflect the societal changes that took place over the 70 years of his mother’s reign.
“But this is pure surmise,” he said, according to The Guardian. “We don’t know what the plans are. They have not made the sort of announcements one would have expected at this stage.”
Buckingham Palace announced on the Royal Family’s website that the coronation ceremony will take place on May 6 at Westminster Abbey in London. The date is less than a month before what would have been the 70th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation.
