The Queen Consort Invitation to the Coronation of Their Majesties King Charles III and Queen Camilla – History and Implications for Princess Camilla
The intricate invitation, which is printed on recycled card and includes an illustrated border of wild flowers and the Green Man from British folklore, was headed with the text: “The coronation of their majesties King Charles III and Queen Camilla.”
The palace argued it made sense to call Camilla “queen consort” before Queen Elizabeth died to more clearly distinguish between the two, Gullace tells NPR. However, she adds, this invitation confirms that won’t be the case going forward.
According to the press release there will be 2000 guests who form the congregation in Westminster Abbey for the service.
The release said that prince George would be one of eight boys chosen to attend the service. According to a release, there are three people in the group.
A portrait of the couple was taken last month in Buckingham Palace by British photographer Hugo Burnand and was released by the palace on Tuesday.
Over the years, her approval ratings have gone up, with many Britons seeing her as a calming influence on her husband. And she’s gradually taken on a more public role with her royal duties, including charity work focused on empowering women and promoting literacy.
In February 2022, the late Queen Elizabeth used her Platinum Jubilee to grant her blessings, indicating that when Charles succeeds her, she will be known as the Queen Consort.
But attitudes towards Camilla have softened over the years. In 2015, a CNN poll found that one in four Britons had grown to like her more and fewer people opposed her becoming known as queen.
First Lady Jill Biden’s Invitation to the Coronation: Some eyebrows raised by the case of the Queen of the Most Noble Order of the Garter
According to a White House readout of the call between Biden and King Charles, the President said First Lady Jill Biden will attend the coronation on behalf of the US and congratulated Charles on the upcoming event.
That’s raised some eyebrows, in large part because of Camilla and Charles’ controversial relationship and the palace’s previous stance on her position (more on all that below).
“It’s mostly symbolic, but when you think about it, the monarchy itself is mostly symbolic,” Gullace says, noting that titles have long been a point of contention for the family of Prince Harry and Meghan, for example. These symbolics end up being very important.
In 2021, Queen Elizabeth appointed Camilla a “Royal Lady of the Most Noble Order of the Garter,” the most senior order of knighthood in the British honors system.
“Charles’ insistence that he should remove it is an attempt to assert his legitimacy and hers in the face of all the different criticisms that they have had,” she says. “So I do think it is actually a fairly significant thing that happened, the dropping of that word, and I think that is why it has gotten a fair amount of attention.”
There are actually several different types of queens in U.K. history, depending on their ancestry and marital status (for example, queen dowager and queen mother).
Within weeks, she said, most mentions of those queens, including in news coverage, called them just that. For instance, the 1937 coronation invitation for King George VI said “King George VI and Queen Elizabeth.”
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/04/05/1168260561/king-charles-coronation-invitation-camilla-queen-consort
The Queen’s Last Royal Regime: Prince Koening, Princess Elizabeth, and the Future of King Charles’s Monads
Koening describes the change as the last step in a gradual process of undoing the stipulations the palace put on Camilla at the time of her marriage to Charles.
“So already, allowing Charles to be king while divorced himself and married to a divorced woman is a sign of tremendous change, the removal of the word consort legitimating that is really a highly modern gesture that conforms much more realistically to modern marriage practices and to the king’s new role,” Gullace says.
King Charles is said to be modernizing and “cleaning up” the monarchy after decades of preparation. He’s long been passionate about philanthropic causes, particularly environmental ones, and many Brits are waiting to see what that means for his reign.
How the monarchy will fare withoutQueen Elizabeth, who reigned over seven turbulent decades and had something special about her, is the biggest unknown, according to Gullace.
She says it is not certain whether Charles and Camilla have it, and how that might influence public opinion about the institution.
“So I think that is going to be the big question that we’re left with,” she says. “We’ll see how well the coronation is received, how widely watched it is, and how Charles’s monarchy fares after that.”