Tens of thousands of people, including royalists, “soft republicans” and the plain curious, have queued through the night in Edinburgh to view the Queen’s coffin lying at rest.
The queues stretched several kilometres from St Giles’ Cathedral on the Royal Mile – with the route winding past security checks, Scotland’s national museum, Edinburgh university’s student union and library on George Square, then on to The Meadows, a tree-lined park on the city’s south side – in an event without modern parallel in Scotland.
Over Monday night, the queues were eight to 10 people abreast in places, with mourners and well-wishers – helped by dry and temperate weather – waiting more than five hours to reach the Queen’s coffin.
At 5am on Tuesday, they queued in the open for more than hour to view the coffin, which was guarded by four green-garbed members of the Royal Company of Archers, each holding an upright bow, and four police officers wearing white gloves.
The Scottish government expects the queue – remarkable in its size – to grow again on Tuesday morning, before public viewing ends at 3pm. At about 5pm, the Queen’s coffin will be taken by hearse to Edinburgh airport, accompanied by Princess Anne, the Princess Royal, then flown by military aircraft to RAF Northolt, before being driven to Buckingham Palace.
Ross Tinsley, 45, a tourism lecturer originally from Belfast, and his friend Linda Eriksson, 33, originally from Sweden, were among those who rose before dawn in an effort to beat the longest queues.
Tinsley, who brought his son Luke, 8, had travelled by cab with Eriksson, and her daughter Finnley, 7, from Pilrig in north Edinburgh. Tinsley’s wife had been to St Giles the previous evening, queueing for five hours after arriving at The Meadows at 8.15pm.
For Tinsley, who places himself politically as a “non-monarchist moderate”, said the event, in a Scottish context, was unique and that its setting in the city’s medieval old town was ideal.
“I think we’re very privileged that she died in Balmoral, and she came to Edinburgh,” he said. “I think it’s going to be a much more intimate experience; it will not have that scale of London. This is what Edinburgh’s Royal Mile was made for.”
Eriksson felt a cultural connection. “We have a monarchy in Sweden, which I grew up loving,” she said. “It’s a big thing in Sweden.” She and her daughter wanted to see the Queen’s coffin, in person.
Victoria, 53, an artist, and her daughter Grace, 20, an art and philosophy student, woke up at 3.45am to come from Linlithgow, West Lothian, by train. Both women said they had an emotional response to the Queen’s death, which contradicted their republican sympathies.
“We’re not royalists but it has been a very strange thing, to be affected by the Queen dying,” Victoria said. “And Grace was very affected too, so we thought: ‘Let’s go.’
“From a political point of view, I’m just a bit confused because it’s what I’m against politically, but I just felt an emotional desire to come. I wasn’t expecting to feel this way.”
Grace, an art and philosophy student, remembers learning about the Queen in primary school. “I’m not a royalist; I don’t feel particularly connected with the monarchy,” she said. “[Yet] now she’s gone, it feels almost like I have lost a distant relative or something.”
Brian Todd, 51, who had joined the Royal Navy at 16 before serving as a fire fighter, and his partner, Allison Pearson, 55, a property manager, travelled from Livingston, West Lothian, getting up at 3.30am. They said they were monarchists, born to monarchist parents.
“She was my boss for nine and a half years,” said Todd, his chest decorated with several medals. “I was brought up very fond of the royal family, so we’ve just come to pay our respects. It’s the end of an era for the royal family but it’s also an end of era for us too, particularly if you’re 50 years old. It’s all we’ve ever known – Queen Elizabeth being on the throne.”
Pearson believes the Queen deserves undiluted praise. “I have lived my whole life with the Queen on the throne, and at a very young age she pledged to do everything for the country and she 100% has carried through. You can’t fault her. I don’t think there will ever be a woman like her who will serve her country so well,” she said.
For Todd, originally from County Durham, the three days of events in Scotland attached to the Queen’s death at Balmoral – events which began with the funeral cortege’s slow 170-mile drive through eastern Scotland to Edinburgh on Sunday – were significant and resonant.
“Scotland needed this as well,” he said. “Everything seems to be London-centric and set down south. It’s not great that the queen has passed away, but it has been great for Scotland. At least we can say we did her proud. It’s not just about London.”
