Where one dies can be just as significant, and telling, as where one decides to live. And when one is royal — by ancient definition a symbol, the state itself embodied in human form — this act takes on even larger, more powerful and political dimensions.
The death of Queen Elizabeth II at 96 on Thursday at Balmoral Castle in the highlands of Scotland initiated four successive days of Scottish ritual. On Friday and Saturday, her oak coffin, draped with the royal standard of Scotland, lay at rest in the castle's ballroom. When she left Balmoral for the final time on a 175 mile, six-hour procession to Edinburgh, the Scots turned out for her. There they were first in nearby Ballater — the butchers and confectioners and fishermen who knew her as their neighbor. In the countryside, farmers steered their tractors to the carriageway and raised their diggers in salute. The sidewalks of Dundee, a nationalist stronghold, were clogged with onlookers. Some 60,000 people, 20 deep in places, lined the narrow confines of Edinburgh's Royal Mile. They applauded softly, respectfully, and held their smartphones aloft to record the history passing before them. As the cortege approached the Palace of Holyroodhouse, the Queen's official residence in Scotland where she would rest for the night, a lone dog was heard barking its own tribute. Today she was carried back up the Royal Mile to St. Giles's Cathedral. There, before she lies in state later this week as Queen of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in the medieval Westminster Hall in London, thousands will have filed past Elizabeth, Queen of Scots.
