Never work with children or animals is an old adage, but someone forgot to tell King Charles. From the unruly horses that insisted on walking sideways, to five-year-old Prince Louis’s double-handed balcony waves, it was a coronation day of pomp and solemnity punctuated with moments of unintended mirth.
Fashion provided some early talking points. Penny Mordaunt, widely considered to have stolen the show with her sword-holding prowess, was dressed in a bespoke outfit which some said bore a striking resemblance to the colour and logo of the bargain-basement high street chain Poundland.
The much-admired Ascension Choir were mesmerising not just for their gospel harmonies and rhythmic swaying, but for the snug white trousers worn by the male members of the group.
Princess Anne arrived at Westminster Abbey wearing what some thought resembled a pirate’s hat with a large red plume that neatly blocked her nephew Harry’s view of proceedings. Later she discarded her floor-length green velvet cloak to ride a horse back to Buckingham Palace.
Princess Marie-Chantal of Greece introduced an intellectual note by carrying a novelty clutch bag made to look like a little light reading in case the archbishop’s sermon turned out to be a tad dull. Marcel Proust’s monumental novel, A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, or In Search of Lost Time, actually occupies seven volumes, but you too can own a handbag version, with a “hand-appliquéd silk thread exterior and a hand embroidered whimsical pattern” for just $1,790 (£1,415).
The star of the occasion, the king himself, went through more costume changes than a pantomime dame. He kicked off with the robe of state, adorned with ermine and gold lace. Before the anointing, two bishops – one with a firm hand on the royal collar – and a flunky delicately stripped him to reveal a plain white tunic. He later donned the gold supertunica and finally left the abbey in the imperial robe.
The crowning was a tense moment, as the archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, first checked the position of the jewels on St Edward’s crown to make sure he didn’t place it on Charles’s head back to front, then seemed to ram it on the royal head. Like a high-street optician adjusting a new pair of spectacles, he peered this way and that into Charles’s eyes. “Who will rid me of this troublesome priest?” you can imagine the king thinking.
Camilla looked alarmed as Welby approached bearing Queen Mary’s crown. Once he had wrestled it on to her head, a few moments of fiddling followed as she tried to sort out the interface of ermine and her own hair.
From then on, the crowns were a major risk factor for the royal couple. They focused so hard on keeping their necks rigid under the weight of gold and jewels that the royal osteopath is likely to be busy for months. Even on the Buckingham Palace balcony, they couldn’t truly enjoy - or even watch – the Red Arrows’ flypast for fear of a crown crashing to the ground.
Back in the abbey, the months of painstaking work that went into the seating plan didn’t help Katy Perry as she wandered between the pews in search of her place, not helped by the giant lilac fascinator blocking her vision. “Don’t worry, guys, I found my seat,” she later tweeted, a post that racked up 9.5m views within 24 hours.
The UK’s seven surviving former prime ministers arrived in a mini-convoy together, allowing for a scrum of awkward embraces and handshakes.
The 2,000 guests invited to the service had begun arriving early in the morning for the two-hour event, leaving many television viewers wondering if their bladders would hold out.
“For people of riper years, like myself, that was a major concern,” said the broadcaster and former MP Gyles Brandreth on BBC’s Coronation Kitchen Live on Sunday. “We were all thinking, ‘How are we going to manage?’ But there were loos aplenty. Well done the Abbey – because apparently in 1953 there were a few accidents.”
Charles, who looked morose for much of a ceremony that he had waited decades for, had to loiter outside the Abbey for five minutes after the diamond jubilee state coach arrived early.
“We can never be on time,” he complained to Camilla, according to a lip reader. “There’s always something … This is boring.”
