I was replying to a post that said, “The Royal Navy is the senior service” and recognizing that in an island nation, no army is going to come marching in, at least not without naval support. So obviously a strong navy is really important.
It is “God Save the King” from the moment of QE II’s death. The music is identical. You will not have heard “God Save the Queen” in this ceremony.
Prince George & Princess Charlotte are both under 10 and had to keep it together at their great-grandmother’s funeral with billions of people watching.
It could hardly be otherwise, given that the second line is ‘Long live our noble King/Queen’.
Not to mention the future-focussed warning/conditionality in the second verse:
May he defend our laws
And ever give us cause
To sing with heart and voice…
Now that rhyme, cause/voice, upset me when I had to learn the song in Wolf Cubs in 1958. And it still does
…
There is no future and England’s dreaming.
Y’know really can’t blame them if some people were all Queened out by now… it has been kind of hard to escape. But it’s done now.
And you gotta give it to the Brits, they are good at this sort of thing.
Well there’s one more event yet to come; the formal coronation ceremony, which I expect will happen next summer. So for those of us who enjoy the pageantry, parades and so forth, there will be a happier occasion for that sort of thing.
My sister was watching it in the other room, and dang it was loooooooong. Just two reactions: The sound of the marching feet was giving me a headache, and the music all sounded like movie villain theme music. The music in the church was … o.k. I guess. If you like church music.
I know people with vivid memories from when they were 3, and others with no memories of early childhood. If Charles is one of the former, it’s possible that he has memories of singing God Save the King for his grandfather George VI. Charles was 3 when George VI died, old enough to learn to sing it.
At the end of the service at Windsor…
The ornate service ended on a simple note, as the Queen’s Piper, Warrant Officer Class 1 (Pipe Major) Paul Burns, played a traditional song on the bagpipe: “Sleep, dearie, sleep.”
Cite
He saw more of his grandfather in those years than his mother. His grandfather couldn’t travel and his mother and father would be away for months.
I’m not sure why by I wanted to hear the wand when it was snapped.
June 2nd, 2023, is the 70th anniversary of his mother’s coronation. It’s also a Friday.
I don’t know if you saw it. I was thinking he would literally break it, but actually the two parts of the stick were connected in the middle-- sort of snapped together, so they could just be un-snapped. No real breaking involved.
Me too! It looked like he just took it apart like a pool cue. He should have snapped it in two across his knee.
It looks like metal bands on both side of the break. I’m guessing they pre-cut it so it didn’t turn into one of those champagne bottle moments where it never breaks during a ship christening. It was probably so thin it was like breaking a toothpick. And then ends can’t look like a pool cue in a bar fight. it’s got to be a dignified break. Still… a little more snap would have been a dramatic end to the funeral.
From the New York Times today:
He [Charles] marched behind it [the coffin] on its procession up Whitehall, down The Mall and past Buckingham Palace, before reaching Wellington Arch, where an honor guard transferred the coffin to the hearse. And he saluted as a military band played a wistful last rendition of “God Save the Queen” when she departed.
Ahem.
If it was just a band, the tune is the same. Were they singing “God Save the Queen”?