Live Updates: Queen Elizabeth II Funeral

The state hearse is minutes away from Windsor where tens of thousands of royal supporters have gathered behind barriers along the Long Walk in Windsor Great Park to pay their respects to the late monarch.

Earlier, the crowd sang “God Save the King” in unison with the Westminster Abbey service that was was broadcast on big screens.

Marching bands proceeded from the castle down the Long Walk to Shaw Farm Gate, followed by cheers and applause from the crowds.

The royal standard has been raised above Windsor Castle, signifying that King Charles has arrived before the committal service for the Queen.

Loui Glasse, 62, from Steyning, Sussex, travelled to Windsor to meet with her friend Susie Macmillan to watch the procession.

“I wanted to pay my respects to the Queen and the monarchy,” Glasse said. “She meant stability. She was like a member of your own family, a mother, a grandmother. She represented a positive future.”

The Windsors may, unsurprisingly, have been the focus for most people watching the Queen’s funeral today, but the presence in Westminster Abbey of another royal family did not go unnoticed or unremarked in Spain.

For the first time in more than two years, Spain’s scandal-mired former king Juan Carlos was pictured alongside his wife, Queen Sofía, his son, King Felipe, and his daughter-in-law, Queen Letizia.

Juan Carlos, who abdicated in 2014 amid waning popularity, has suffered an inexorable fall from grace in recent years.

He left Spain for Abu Dhabi in August 2020 after a series of damaging allegations were made about his business dealings that further dented his already battered reputation and embarrassed King Felipe.

In March 2020, Felipe stripped Juan Carlos of his annual stipend and renounced his own personal inheritance from his father after reports that he was in line to receive millions of euros from a secret offshore fund with ties to Saudi Arabia.

Although prosecutors have now shelved three separate investigations into the former king’s financial affairs, the high court in London has ruled that Juan Carlos does not have sovereign immunity in the case brought against him by an ex-lover who has accused the royal of using Spain’s national intelligence agency to harass and threaten her after they broke up.

The awkward family reunion – the first time all four royals have been pictured together in public since the funeral of Juan Carlos’s elder sister in January 2020 – drew comment from Spain’s press and politicians.

Writing in El País, Luz Sánchez-Mellado said Queen Elizabeth’s ability to get “all four of those crestfallen faces together in one place” would have counted as a posthumous miracle and a step towards sainthood had the late monarch been Catholic.

She added:

A father repudiated by his son and heir because of his recklessness. An old man bent on redemption and recognition. A wife humiliated before the entire planet grinning and bearing it for the umpteenth time in her life for her son, for her kingdom, for herself. And a dumbfounded daughter-in-law split between two worlds, perfectly aware of being the centre of the news.

In Windsor, Avana Chan, 44, is waiting to pay her respects to the Queen. She moved to the UK a year ago from her home of Hong Kong and was able to enter the country on a special fast-track visa introduced by the UK after China imposed a new security law in the former Commonwealth territory.

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“She has always been there since I was small, a child,” she said. “She sacrificed her life in service to the Commonwealth. She is an amazing woman.”

Last Updated: 14:54 Monday, 19 September 2022

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49m ago

The Queen’s great-grandchildren Prince George, nine, and Princess Charlotte, seven,joined other members of the royal family at the state funeral of the Queen.

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The two eldest children of the heir to the throne, Prince William, and the Princess of Wales accompanied their parents to the service at Westminster Abbey.