It is one of the most difficult decisions that the Queen has faced since the death of the Duke of Edinburgh: who will attend his funeral at St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle on Saturday.
Coronavirus restrictions mean there can only be 30 mourners at the ceremony instead of the 800 envisaged in the original plans.
It has emerged that some of the Queen’s cousins, including members of the family who were close to Prince Philip, are unlikely to attend. Insiders believe that the Duke and Duchess of Kent, Prince and Princess Michael of Kent, the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester and Princess Alexandra are all unlikely to be there.
Prince Philip was very close to Princess Alexandra, a granddaughter of George V who was also a first cousin once removed on her mother’s side, and also to the Duke of Kent. It is understood that they will be able to follow the ceremony on a special streaming service rather than having to watch it on television. All have accepted the decision, according to one source, and understand that priority must go to those who were closest to the duke and his work.
However, that still leaves open the question of who will be at the service. As well as the Queen, all the duke’s children and grandchildren should be there, according to Buckingham Palace. Meghan, who is due to give birth in the summer, has been told by her doctor not to travel. If all spouses are included, such as Mike Tindall, the husband of Zara, the Queen’s granddaughter, and the husbands of Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, that would take numbers up to about 20.
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Brigadier Archie Miller-Bakewell, the duke’s private secretary, will be among the mourners in the chapel, and the Earl of Snowdon and Lady Sarah Chatto, the children of Princess Margaret, are also expected. The prime minister is said to have given up his place.
Speculation is rife as to who will fill the remaining places. It has been suggested that Countess Mountbatten of Burma, a close friend of Prince Philip who would often stay with him at Wood Farm on the Sandringham estate, will attend. Countess Mountbatten is also a good friend of the Queen.
It has been suggested that Prince Philip would have wanted a number of figures to represent some of the many organisations with which he worked and the causes he supported.
Ingrid Seward, a writer on the royal family, said that in normal circumstances it would be unthinkable that the former king Constantine of Greece would not attend. “They were always together,” she said. However, he now lives in Greece and has been seen using a wheelchair since suffering a stroke in 2018.
Seward said that Prince Philip’s closest relations were the descendants of his four sisters, who all married German princes. “They would very much want to come, and the Queen would very much want to invite them. She would want some of them there, otherwise it is just her thing. Philip was very fond of his German relations.”
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The Queen and Prince Philip’s ten great-grandchildren — Savannah and Isla Phillips; Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis of Cambridge; Mia, Lena and Lucas Tindall; Archie Mountbatten-Windsor; and August Brooksbank — are considered too young to attend the televised proceedings as all are aged ten and under.
Stephen Cottrell, the Archbishop of York, said that during the duke’s funeral the public will be “remembering those we loved who have died” during the coronavirus crisis.
“I think that we all know that, first of all, every death reminds of us of our own death and our own mortality,” he told Today on BBC Radio 4.
“In this past year, we have been face to face with our human frailty more than we usually are. And every death also reminds us of the death of our loved ones. So, this funeral will also be a funeral where I think all of us will be, at the same time, quite naturally and understandably, remembering those we loved who have died.”
Coffin made of English oak
The Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral will, it is clear, be unlike any royal funeral held in Britain. Mourners will be in facemasks and the coffin will be borne from Windsor Castle to St George’s Chapel on a Land Rover modified according to instructions laid down by Philip himself (Valentine Low and Emma Yeomans write).
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One aspect, however, will be utterly traditional: the coffin itself. It is of English oak and lined with lead and was made several decades ago so that the royal family would not be caught out in the event of the duke’s sudden and unexpected death. It is being supplied by the royal family’s undertakers, Leverton & Sons, an independent family company in Camden, north London, that dates back to 1789.
No one at Leverton’s is entirely sure how old it is, because the coffin pre-dates their involvement with the royal family. They took over from JH Kenyon in 1991 and inherited the coffins of the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh. “It is not something you can just make in a day, or a few hours,” Andrew Leverton, the director, said. “It was felt that it was important to have it available.”
He added that English oak was now “very difficult to get hold of” and most oak coffins were made from American oak. It is lined with lead because it will be laid in a crypt rather than buried.
The duke’s unique Land Rover hearse was prepared by the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, the corps responsible for maintaining army equipment.
