Camilla, Queen Consort, will be crowned alongside her husband, King Charles III, at His Majesty’s coronation in May. Kinda puts your couples massage to shame, huh?
“The ceremony will see His Majesty King Charles III crowned alongside the Queen Consort,” Buckingham Palace said in a statement, per People. Traditionally, when a man ascends to the throne, his wife becomes the queen consort; when a woman reigns, her husband isn’t king (that title is reserved only for men who inherit the throne) but prince consort or consort to the queen, according to BBC News. Or, in the case of the first Elizabethan age, the chick rules on her own and all the men in the realm are formally invited to deal with it! I will have one mistress here! And no master!
Sorry, back to the topic at hand. The ceremony, taking place on May 6, 2023, is expected to run about an hour and be attended by about 2,000 people; Charles’s mother’s coronation in 1953 went three times as long and was attended by four times as many people. The pared-down ceremony is reflective of the changing (cough cough, diminished) role of the monarchy in society, but if you’re still yearning for more, there’s about 1,200 hours of The Crown available.
The Archbishop of Canterbury will conduct the ceremony at Westminster Abbey in London, where British monarchs have been crowned for almost a thousand years. “The coronation will reflect the monarch’s role today and look toward the future, while being rooted in longstanding traditions and pageantry,” said the statement.
One element of that pageantry? The Gold State Coach that will carry King Charles and Queen Camilla to the abbey, the same one that ferried Charles’s parents. It’s a stunning and ornate vehicle decorated in gold with pastoral and mythical imagery. It is not to be confused with the Dutch royal family’s gold carriage, which is also ornate but pretty racist.
Soooo what’s everyone wearing to watch?
