Prince Philip’s funeral began Saturday with plenty of pomp and pageantry — but all eyes are on his grandsons.
Ranks of troops stood with heads bowed stood in the quadrangle of Windsor Castle as the coffin, covered with Philip’s ceremonial standard, his naval service cap and sword, and a wreath laid by the Queen was borne out of the castle by eight guardsmen and laid in the bed of his specially designed Land Rover.
Members of the royal family, led by Prince Charles and Princess Anne, lined up behind the vehicle — all stone-faced as they prepared to walk in procession.
The bands played “God Save the Queen” as the monarch emerged in her royal Bentley — dressed in black and masked — to bring up the rear of the procession.
The dramatic breach between Prince Harry and the rest of the royal family, particularly his brother Prince William, is on global display during their solemn procession to St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle and throughout the 50-minute liturgy commemorating their grandfather’s long life.
But the woman who sparked the divide — Harry’s wife, Meghan Markle — is nowhere in sight.
The Duchess of Sussex, in the final months of pregnancy with the couple’s second child, remained at their California home under doctor’s orders. She was watching the services from home, a source confirmed, and the couple sent a memorial wreath created with local flowers.
The prince’s coffin was moved to the royal home at Windsor Castle earlier in the day by the Queen’s Company, 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards, where Philip was a colonel for 42 years. It is draped with his personal standard, his sword, naval cap and a wreath of flowers, The Sun reported.
Somber members of the royal family, including Prince Charles, Prince William, and his wife Kate the Duchess of Cambridge — wearing a striking pearl necklace belonging to the Queen — were seen arriving at Windsor Castle, where they were set to gather for a private prayer over the casket before setting off for the funeral procession.
Harry’s first meeting with the family is expected to take place behind those closed doors, according to reports.
Meanwhile, regimental bands played martial music on the grassy quadrangle within the castle grounds.
The scaled-down, COVID-secure ceremony will be attended by just 30 royals. Hundreds of spectators have already begun gathering, despite warnings urging the public to stay away. Police were prepared to start closing roads if crowds began getting too big.
Heightened security measures have created a “Ring of Steel,” including rooftop snipers and armed officers in body armor.
Harry’s return alone to the site of his lavish 2018 wedding to Markle to bury his grandfather is his first trip home since leaving the Royal Family. Philip’s compassionate strength sustained the prince through the wrenching funeral of his mother, Princess Diana, when Harry was only 12.
“I’ll walk if you’ll walk,” Philip told his grandsons when William, then 15, and Harry shied away from joining the procession that followed the gun carriage bearing their mother’s coffin as it traveled to Westminster Abbey in 1997.
Two decades later, the princes will echo that somber march as they walk behind the electric Land Rover — built to Prince Philip’s specifications — carrying him to his resting place beneath the chapel’s marble floor.
The funeral trip is Harry’s first visit to his homeland since he and Markle ditched royal life a year ago — and his first meeting with his 94-year-old grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II; his father, Prince Charles; brother William; sister-in-law Kate Middleton, and the rest of the clan since the Sussexes’ explosive Oprah Winfrey interview last month.
The royal rift, along with coronavirus considerations, forced the Queen to make a slew of last-minute changes to a funeral program — low-key for a royal — that her husband of 73 years had personally designed with military precision ahead of his April 9 death at age 99.
With only 30 mourners permitted under the British government’s strict COVID-19 rules, the Queen pared the original 800-strong guest list down to the closest of relatives: her children and grandchildren, their spouses, a favorite niece and nephew, and a few royal cousins. Philip’s “close confidante,” Penelope Eastwood, the Countess Mountbatten of Burma,” is also set to attend.
By the Queen’s decree, Harry and William will not walk side-by-side in the eight-minute funeral procession from Windsor Castle to the chapel’s imposing West Steps. Instead, they will be separated by their cousin Peter Phillips, the son of Princess Anne.
Inside the chapel, mourners will remain socially distanced throughout the service, a rule that will keep the feuding princes far apart — but will also force the Queen to sit alone as she bids farewell to the man she called “my strength and stay.”
And while 700 military personnel will throng the castle grounds to salute the prince — a Royal Navy veteran who served heroically in World War II — with fusillades, bands, buglers, and naval pipers, his sons and grandsons are barred from wearing their own military uniforms for the ceremonies.
That ban came down Thursday from Buckingham Palace to spare Harry the embarrassment of appearing in business attire after his departure from royal duties last year forced him to give up his military appointments.
It also keeps Prince Andrew, whose ties to multimillionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein led to his withdrawal from the Royal Navy in 2019, from wearing an admiral’s uniform to the observances.
The funeral begins at 10 a.m. Eastern time, while a nationwide minute of silence is observed in Britain as a military honor guard bears Philip’s woolen coffin — a nod to his passion for environmental causes — up the chapel’s entrance stairs.
The prince will be interred in the chapel’s Royal Vault, where his coffin will remain until the death of Queen Elizabeth — when they will be buried together in the George VI Memorial Chapel, the annex where the Queen’s father George VI, mother Queen Elizabeth, and sister Princess Margaret are entombed.
Source: New York Post
