News

Nov 14, 2023

King Charles III Coronation: U.K. Prepares for Crowning of King Charles III

The royal ceremony on Saturday, the first in 70 years, will aim to show the

The royal ceremony on Saturday, the first in 70 years, will aim to show the solidity of Britain, even as many in the country have met the coronation with indifference.

Follow our live updates on King Charles's coronation.

Peter Robins

LONDON — Britain is making its final preparations for a ceremony and celebration that have been decades in the planning and replanning: the coronation of King Charles III on Saturday.

A ritual both ancient and made-for-television, the coronation service and its surrounding events will summon the world's gaze on behalf of a royal family that has undergone a sometimes uneasy transition from imperial power to global celebrity.

In narrow political terms, not much is changing: Charles became Britain's head of state immediately after the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, last year. But all the feathers and finery add up to a crucial test of the new king's capacity to sustain the mystique that Elizabeth dedicated over 70 years to maintaining — and a chance to advertise the solidity of a country that in recent years has looked less than predictable.

Britain's hospitality industry is also counting on an enormous party. The holiday weekend, with street celebrations and a gala concert, will last three days. Some of the hangovers may last longer.

Those following along in the United States, which is at least five time zones behind London, will have to wake up early. Saturday's livestream will begin at 5 a.m. Eastern time, with the procession starting at 5:20 a.m. The coronation service in Westminster Abbey in London will begin at 6 a.m., and the second procession around 8 a.m. The events will wrap up with a six-minute flyover at 9:30 a.m.

New York Times journalists in Britain and beyond are covering the coronation and its ramifications. Stop back throughout the day for more coverage of the event, its meaning for Britons and the world, and how to follow the weekend's developments.

Here are some highlights:

The festivities will continue through the weekend and into Monday, which is a public holiday in Britain. Here is a schedule of events and a look at the guest list.

After years of family tensions, Prince Harry will attend his father's coronation — alone. Harry's wife, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, is staying at home in California with the couple's children, Prince Archie, who turns 4 on Saturday, and Princess Lilibet, 1.

While Charles is obviously the focus on Saturday, the ceremony will also be a triumph of image transformation for Camilla, his wife, who was vilified for years in the British news media but is now poised to be crowned queen.

The Coronation Chair, which has been used for hundreds of years, underwent a restoration before Saturday's ceremony.

Daniel Victor

Saturday's main events will be starting in the late morning in London, making for a very early rise for Americans who wish to follow along.

A livestream, which will be carried by The New York Times, is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. in London, or 5 a.m. Eastern time in the United States. The procession is set to start at 5:20 a.m. Eastern time.

The coronation service in Westminster Abbey in London will begin at 6 a.m. Eastern time, and the second procession around 8 a.m. The events will wrap up with a six-minute flyover at 9:30 a.m.

But festivities will continue through the weekend and into Monday, which is a public holiday in Britain. Here is a schedule of events.

Megan Specia

A group of London children who were preparing for the coronation this weekend had some extra festivities in their school on Friday when the first lady, Jill Biden, and Akshata Murty, the wife of Britain's Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, came to their classrooms.

Sitting among the students, the guests praised some young musicians after a string-instrument performance of "Lovely" by Billie Eilish.

"It was incredible," Dr. Biden said, adding, "Thank you for sharing your talent with us."

"You made it look so easy," Ms. Murty said.

The performance at Charles Dickens Primary School, in the Borough neighborhood of London, was just one of a series of events on Friday linked to issues that have long been a priority for Dr. Biden.

President Biden will not be attending the coronation of King Charles III this weekend, but the first lady arrived in London on Thursday night with one of her granddaughters, Finnegan Biden. The pair spent Friday visiting with children and veterans.

The sun was shining as Dr. Biden and Ms. Murty arrived at the school on Friday afternoon and met in the cafeteria with children, who were wearing golden paper crowns in honor of the coronation.

Dr. Biden sat at a table between some of the students, who were eating small sandwiches cut into tidy triangles, and told one of the teachers about her own role as an educator. Dr. Biden has been a classroom teacher for over 30 years and is currently a professor of English at Northern Virginia Community College.

"Are you excited about tomorrow?" she asked one girl, who nodded her head enthusiastically. "And how was your lunch? Do you like that coronation sandwich?"

Earlier in the day, Dr. Biden had arrived in the rain at the prime minister's offices at 10 Downing Street for a private meeting with Ms. Murty, who greeted the first lady with an embrace and a kiss on each cheek. It was the first time that the pair have met, and it kicked off a weekend of public appearances for Dr. Biden.

After a private meeting, Dr. Biden and Ms. Murty joined Jane Hartley, the U.S. ambassador to Britain, and Johnny Mercer, Britain's Veterans’ Affairs minister, for a boxing demonstration by veterans involved with The Fighting Chance, a London-based organization that provides boxing training and employment support to veterans.

Under a glittering chandelier in a 10 Downing Street meeting room, a group from the organization was sparring in boxing gloves under portraits of Henry VIII, Shakespeare, and Ada Lovelace.

One of the women taking part in the boxing demonstration, who was throwing punches at the gloves of her sparring partner, was Maurillia Simpson, a veteran and gold medal winner in the Invictus Games. She is also a wheelchair user after injuring her left leg while training for deployment to Afghanistan.

She had previously done three tours in Iraq. Dr. Biden hugged her, and both she and Ms. Murty thanked her repeatedly for her service.

Saskia Solomon

Ringing bells to herald royal and military events is a centuries-old tradition in Britain, but the country's thousands of churches until recently faced a problem when it came to King Charles's coronation: A dearth of bell ringers had turned many belfries into "silent towers."

So glaring was the problem that the Central Council for Bell Ringers kicked off a "Ring for the King" campaign in October to try to attract 8,000 new recruits. All ages were welcome, it said, no experience was required, and the opportunity was billed as a "hands-on practical exercise for the body, the mind and the spirit."

The appeal initially attracted few recruits, but it gained traction when the British news media drew attention to the issue in early March. By April, an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 people had come forward, according to said Simon Linford, the council's president.

"It's fantastic," he said in a recent interview. "There's one place that's teaching 14 new ringers."

Yet many still feared that the effort it was too little, too late: There was concern that recruits would not reach the required level of proficiency in time for the coronation.

"It takes an awful lot of time to acquire the skill," Stephen Jakeman, the tower captain at St. John at Hackney, a church in East London, said during a recent practice session in which the participants ranged in age from 14 to 86. "It's not a ‘plug and play’ technology."

Mr. Jakeman, 66, has been ringing for five decades, and has seen similar recruitment drives over the years — the most recent in 2018, to mark the centenary of the end of World War I. "What we really hope for are the ones that are lapsed ringers, because they’re the quick wins," he said. "You can just dust them off, and off they go."

For the newly joined, the prospect of ringing for the coronation was exciting. Andrea Szabolcsi, 42, who works in information technology and moved to London from her native Hungary seven years ago, said that she had signed up after her partner heard about it on the radio.

"In Hungary, everything is taken over by politics," she said, adding, "But here, whether it was the queen's birthday, or the queen's coronation, or now the king's coronation, I think it really pulls people together."

For the coronation, the more advanced ringers at St. John at Hackney will perform a "peal" — a three-hour, nonstop ring — with the less experienced sounding a quarter peal lasting 45 minutes.

A television mounted high on the belfry wall will allow the ringers to watch the coronation live, helping them stick to the schedule. Another screen shows what the ringers cannot see: the bells swinging on their hinges above.

Afterward, their names will be engraved in gold on a wooden plaque, to be displayed in the belfry along with others commemorating past events such as royal weddings, jubilees and funerals.

Mr. Jakeman said that the bell ringers wanted to make the most of the occasion and hopefully build momentum for the future. "This is what we’ve always done as a nation," he said. "The bells have rung out in good times and bad times — and this is a good time."

"We won't just be ringing on May 6," he added. "We’ll be ringing the whole weekend, and beyond."

Chevaz Clarke

Usually the monarch has a new glove and sword belt made for the coronation, but King Charles III is departing from tradition and reusing the ones worn by his grandfather, King George VI, 86 years ago.

Michael M. Grynbaum

Max Foster, the CNN anchor and royal correspondent, was reflecting the other day on the insistence of some of his fellow Britons that Saturday's coronation of King Charles III was, simply, no big deal.

"This is scarred in my memory," Mr. Foster said, reclining in a glassy conference room inside CNN's London headquarters. "When Prince George was born, there was a camera — it was in the early days of streaming, really — one of the newspapers trained a camera on the door of the hospital, and it was livestreamed for a week."

He paused.

"It was the most-viewed video stream they’ve ever had. And these are Brits — watching a door open. And meanwhile, you go out and ask them questions about Prince George and they’re ‘not’ interested."

Mr. Foster, who acknowledged that even he had been skeptical when his CNN superiors first assigned him the royal beat, smiled. In the years since, he has traveled extensively with the Windsors and scored a rare interview with press-shy Camilla, who was then the Duchess of Cornwall.

"The audiences," Mr. Foster said, "are always there."

He has a point. In 2018, the marriage of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle was watched live by 29.2 million Americans — up from the 23 million who watched the nuptials of Prince William and Catherine, now Princess of Wales, in 2011. (And this was after the rise of online streaming services.) Tens of millions more tuned in around the world, seduced by an irresistible royal blend of centuries-old tradition and tawdry soap opera.

Indeed, the drama of Britain's royals has long seemed ready-made for television, dating from Queen Elizabeth II's use of BBC cameras in 1953 to elevate her own coronation into a global event. "Her whole empire was declining, and she reinvented it through the media," Mr. Foster observed. "The way she remained relevant was by inviting cameras in."

Few mass events remain in an increasingly fractured media landscape. The audience for awards shows like the Oscars and Grammys has plummeted. Appointment viewing has been mostly usurped by on-demand programming, with the occasional exceptions of major sporting events and spoiler-sensitive water-cooler dramas.

So a British king's coronation stands out as one of the last live spectacles that can unite polarized crowds for a collective experience: television as hearth. And the big networks have planned accordingly.

American channels have flown in their top morning-show talent from New York: Savannah Guthrie is anchoring for NBC, and Michael Strahan for ABC. CBS is sending its "Saturday Morning" co-anchors and boasts Tina Brown as an on-set royal analyst.

Fox News, taking advantage of some Murdoch corporate synergy, is pairing the anchors Martha MacCallum and Ainsley Earhardt with the British star Piers Morgan. On CNN, Mr. Foster will narrate the proceedings alongside Christiane Amanpour and Anderson Cooper. (For New Yorkers who prefer local personalities, the NY1 anchor Jamie Stelter is anchoring from London for Spectrum News.) British networks like the BBC and Sky are planning nonstop coverage.

The American broadcasts go live at 5 a.m. Eastern time, with a significant viewership expected.

In a common practice for major events, networks around the world will mostly air the same set of sounds and images emanating from a central broadcast feed. Any distinctions will be forged via on-air analysis, feature segments (expect lots of on-the-street interviews with Union Jack-clad onlookers), and perhaps which hosts engage in the wittiest banter about coronation quiche.

Mr. Foster called the coronation both "a massive show" and "a branding exercise." But as he prepared to head to Buckingham Palace, where officials were briefing journalists on what to expect on Saturday, he allowed for the deeper meanings that a royal event can engender in the populace.

"Monarchy is a reflection of us in many ways," he said. "We judge it as a family, and we place it ourselves in our families. I do think there's a mirror there somewhere, which is why we connect with it."

Chevaz Clarke

Here's a look at the Imperial Mantle that King Charles III will be wearing tomorrow. He’ll be the fifth monarch to wear the mantle during a coronation ceremony.

Elisabetta Povoledo

The coronation of King Charles III on Saturday will feature a processional cross containing what are said to be two pieces of the cross on which Jesus was crucified. Pope Francis recently gave the pieces to the new British monarch.

These "fragments of the Relic of the True Cross" were donated by the Vatican in early April "as an ecumenical gesture," the Vatican spokesman, Matteo Bruni, said in a statement.

The pieces were set, under glass, at the center of a cross that was commissioned by Charles, as Prince of Wales, to celebrate the centenary of the Church in Wales, which split off from the Church of England in 1920.

Of the many Christian relics that have been venerated over the centuries, the True Cross has been among the most important. The first historical references to it date to the fourth century, and adoration of the relic grew over the centuries — as did the number of fragments said to be from the cross. The theologian John Calvin wrote in a 1543 treatise, "If we were to collect all these pieces of the True Cross exhibited in various parts, they would form a whole ship's cargo."

The history of the True Cross is complicated, said Chiara Mercuri, a historian who has written a book on the relic.

The legend that Helena, the mother of the Roman emperor Constantine who decriminalized Christianity in 313, brought pieces of the cross back from the Holy Land, became wrapped up in the Roman Catholic Church's efforts to give political legitimacy to Christian rulers. Charlemagne, the first Holy Roman Emperor, sought relics of the cross for his cathedral at Aachen (and, as the story goes, for a talisman amulet that he wore around his neck, though that, too, may be a legend).

"The idea developed that the cross was a relic tied to political power and to religious power," Professor Mercuri said.

It became common practice for European rulers to ask the pope in power for fragments of the cross, which the Holy See safeguarded in several locations in Rome, including the Sancta Sanctorum, a private papal chapel that held venerated relics, said Professor Mercuri, who teaches at a theological institute in Assisi.

The Vatican did not say where the fragments given to King Charles had come from.

After the coronation, the processional cross — which took more than "267,000 hammer blows" to craft, according to its maker, the silversmith Michael Lloyd — "will be shared between the Anglican and Catholic Churches in Wales," the Church in Wales said on its website.

An inscription, in Welsh, on the back of the cross reads: "Be joyful. Keep the faith. Do the little things," from the last sermon of Saint David, the patron saint of Wales.

Andrew Testa

Across central London, homages to the royal family are appearing on many street corners, from photographs in cafes to giant chalk paintings of King Charles III.

Saskia Solomon

King Charles III has long been the butt of jokes by comedians, and they aren't wasting the opportunity provided by the coronation to poke further fun at the monarch.

"Charles has been hanging around a long time, waiting for the top job, so we’ve all had lots of time to prepare," said Al Murray, a comedian. "He's let us know what he's like, and has had plenty of time to color his character."

Mr. Murray is one of the writers for an upcoming West End musical based on "Spitting Image," a satirical TV show that has used puppets to caricature topical cultural figures since the 1980s. Boasting a roster of high-profile celebrities, the musical follows Charles in the week before his coronation as he frets about "the fabric of society" and wears a government ankle monitor because he has been deemed "too woke."

Many have taken a stab at finding the humor in the coronation, but some take it one step further, using laughs to raise debate. Frankie Boyle, the famously acerbic Scottish comedian, released "Farewell to the Monarchy," a documentary promoted as a "wry, spiky look at the state of the royal family" that argues for its dissolution by examining the institution's "checkered past."

"The royal family is as much a part of our nation's history as steam trains and genocide," Mr. Boyle says in the film, adding that the royals increasingly "appear like animals in a zoo that has fallen on hard times. Fidgety, balding, pacing up and down their marble cage."

It's not just celebrity comedians who are taking the opportunity to poke fun at the strangeness of the occasion, as many on social media offer their own takes. Peter Rugman, an actor and musician who regularly posts comedic jingles and sketches on Instagram, has started making coronation-related material.

"Charles himself is certainly an easy target for satire, but I don't think it's really about him," said Mr. Rugman, who said there is a slight darkness to be extracted from the event. "It's more the entire situation that we’re all blindly following. From the Platinum Jubilee, to the coronation, it's just ripe for so much criticism at a time marked by a cost of living crisis."

Humor is not lost on the royals themselves. Queen Elizabeth II's husband, Prince Philip, who died in 2021, was famous for his often risqué comments, and even the queen, that stalwart of measured authority, occasionally joined in the fun.

She joined Daniel Craig, the James Bond actor, in a sketch for the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics in which she pretended to parachute out of a helicopter and appeared in a video during last year's Platinum Jubilee celebrations in which she shared tea with Paddington Bear.

Charles, who acted in student productions during his time at Cambridge University, memorably appeared a few years ago with some of Britain's leading actors in an extended sketch about how best to pronounce Hamlet's famous line, "To be or not to be."

Mr. Murray said that when it comes to the royal family and satire, "it's a bit like Mount Everest."

"It's because they’re there, that you have to do it," he said. "There's no avoiding them."

Megan Specia

Thousands of additional police officers and security workers will be on the streets of London, there will be little tolerance for disruptive protests and the authorities may use live facial recognition systems in public spaces, the police said this week as the British capital prepared to host the coronation of King Charles III.

It will be "one of the largest security operations that the Met has held for quite some time," Ade Adelekan, a deputy assistant commissioner with the city's Metropolitan Police, told reporters at a briefing on Wednesday.

About 29,000 officers will be in London over the coronation celebration through Monday, Mr. Adelekan said, including 9,000 on Saturday alone, the day Charles will be formally crowned.

There has also been a heightened, visible police presence in central London in recent days as the Metropolitan Police implements its security plan, code-named "Operation Golden Orb." At a bustling special operations center, officers gathered at clusters of desks as video streamed in from security cameras across the city.

"Our main focus of this is to deliver what is a safe and secure coronation for everyone," Mr. Adelekan said at the operations center, adding that the service was teaming up with other police forces in the capital and around Britain to carry out a "multilayer protective security operation."

He said that the police had learned from Queen Elizabeth II's Platinum Jubilee celebrations honoring her seven decades on the throne last June and her funeral in September, both of which drew hundreds of thousands of people into the city streets.

Mr. Adelekan said that the police also intended to use facial recognition technology, though they hadn't made a final decision. The technology is designed to capture images of people in a specific area — such as a major event site — and compare them to those on a "watch list" of people wanted by the police or the courts, or those seen by law enforcement agencies as a threat.

The force has used the technology before, including for events like the queen's funeral, but privacy rights groups have widely criticized it and have brought court cases over its use in Britain.

With several protests expected on the sidelines of the coronation, Mr. Adelekan indicated that the police would be ready to halt any action deemed a threat to security. "We will have a very low tolerance of anything or anyone who would interfere at any level with the safe and secure delivery of this event," he said.

He also said the police welcomed legislation that came into force on Wednesday that gives them additional authority to crack down on demonstrations that cause "serious disruption," including instances when protesters attach themselves to objects, buildings or other people.

The law also classifies obstructing construction on transportation networks or interfering with major infrastructure as offenses. Many activist groups believe that the legislation violates the right to protest.

One of the most significant protests around the coronation could be a demonstration planned for Saturday by Republic, an anti-monarchy group. The group plans to gather at Trafalgar Square near the route of the coronation procession for a "Not My King" rally.

Graham Smith, the group's chief executive, told The Guardian newspaper that Republic had been "in direct contact with liaison officers and have met with senior commanders, who we have been very clear with about what we intend to do."

"Their response is that they are happy for us to proceed," he said.

The police had a test of their security operations outside Buckingham Palace on Tuesday evening when a man approached an officer there and asked to speak to a soldier before throwing shotgun shells over a fence onto the palace grounds.

After the man was found to be carrying a knife and told officers that his bag "needed to be handled correctly," the police carried out a controlled explosion to destroy the bag, Mr. Adelekan said.

Christopher F. Schuetze

King Charles III, Prince William and Catherine, Princess of Wales, greeted eager fans in front of Buckingham Palace in London today. The short walk around the Mall was not on the official coronation schedule.

Derrick Bryson Taylor

LONDON — There is a piece of furniture so famous and so important to British history that it sits in its own chapel at Westminster Abbey, behind an iron gate so that onlookers may gawk at it but never touch it.

The item, the Coronation Chair, was commissioned by King Edward I of England to accommodate the Stone of Scone, which was captured from the Scots in 1296. The chair was constructed in the early 1300s, and the stone sits directly under its seat.

The Abbey says that the chair is the oldest piece of furniture in Europe still being used for its original purpose, and that 26 monarchs have been crowned on it since the coronation of Edward II in 1308. Although scholars have questioned whether the chair's original purpose was to be used in coronations, they agree that it has been a centerpiece of such ceremonies for centuries.

Last month, the Abbey announced that the chair, which was last used during Queen Elizabeth II's coronation in 1953, would undergo conservation work ahead of King Charles III's coronation on Saturday. The chair last underwent a restoration from 2010 to 2012.

According to the Abbey, the conservation work will concentrate on cleaning the surface of the chair, which is made of oak and stands at 6 feet 9 inches. Sponges and cotton swabs will be used to remove dirt and stabilize the remaining layers of gilding on both the chair and its base, which was built in the early 18th century.

Krista Blessley, Westminster Abbey's paintings conservator, is responsible for the restoration of the chair, which is also called St. Edward's Chair. While the Abbey declined to offer an interview with Ms. Blessley, citing her need to focus on her work, last fall she told Channel 5, a British broadcasting company, that the chair was "very fragile" and that its gilded layers were prone to flaking. Its seat is also covered in graffiti from visitors and Westminster students in the 18th and 19th centuries, she said.

In an interview this spring with The Royal Family Channel, Ms. Blessley said the chair originally had gilded glasswork and would have appeared to be metallic. The chair is also decorated with punchwork — tiny dots used to makes patterns and images — of birds, saints, kings and foliage.

The Stone of Scone, sometimes called the Stone of Destiny, weighs 336 pounds. Over the years, it has been the subject of intense rivalry between Scotland and England. It was stolen by Scottish nationalists on Christmas Day 1950 but recovered months later. The stone was returned to Edinburgh Castle in Scotland in 1996 and will be brought down to London for the coronation.

"It's actually not a very remarkable looking thing," David Torrance, a monarchy specialist at the House of Commons Library, said of the stone. "It is, at the end of the day, a sort of crudely cut rectangle of sandstone" that has been damaged and pinned back together, he said.

Because the chair has not been used in decades, it has deteriorated to some degree, Mr. Torrance said. He added that the restoration should ensure that the chair can accommodate both the weight of the stone and the weight of the king, neither of which are regularly in the chair.

The restoration costs have not been disclosed, but Mr. Torrance said he expected the conservation efforts continued until a few days before this weekend's ceremony.

The other objects in the ceremony, including an orb and a scepter that will be held by King Charles, "symbolize power and authority in a monarchy," said Anna Whitelock, a professor of the history of monarchy at City, University of London.

Charles will be crowned with the St. Edward's Crown, which was removed from the Tower of London last year to allow for modifications to it, according to the official website of the British royal family. The king will also wear the Imperial State Crown during the ceremony.

Queen Camilla, who will also be crowned during the ceremony, will have a less grand seat, Professor Whitelock said.

"It won't be the Coronation Chair, but she will be sitting next to Charles," she said. "She's not the main event, but she will be there, both symbolically and sort of in every other sense, in a supporting role."

While the Coronation Chair has been a fixture in coronations for centuries, it may not always be that way. Professor Whitelock said it was not integral to the ceremony. "Much of the monarchy's popularity — in some sense, legitimacy today — has been based on the fact that it is this age-old institution," she said. "It's always been done like this." Future monarchs could make changes as they please.

"I think many people see things like the Coronation Chair and the history around it, being the thing that makes the coronation, and indeed the British monarchy, so special," Professor Whitelock said. "If you start to strip those things out, you wonder what's left and, indeed, whether what's left justifies some of the other issues with having an unelected head of state."

The New York Times

King Charles III will arrive at his coronation on Saturday after nearly three quarters of a century in the public eye. Born in the final years of his grandfather's reign, he became heir apparent to the British throne at age 3, a prince in an era when Britain's mass media was growing and its culture of deference was fading alongside the vestiges of its empire.

Cameras have shadowed him from the start. Often they were invited and tightly controlled, though sometimes with undesirable results nonetheless. And sometimes they were entirely unwelcome: Tabloids feasted on the drawn-out implosion of his first marriage, to Diana, Princess of Wales.

Over the decades, Charles also learned to use that ceaseless attention in the service of the causes he championed, such as traditional architecture and organic farming — a record of activism that he promised to leave behind as he assumed the role of monarch.

Click the link below for a selection of the most memorable images from his decadeslong life as a prince and his new life as king.

Marc Santora

Olena Zelenska, Ukraine's first lady, has arrived in London to attend the coronation at the invitation of Akshata Murthy, the wife of the British prime minister. Britain has been a steadfast supporter of Ukraine since Russia's invasion, offering both military and financial support.

Marc Santora

Ms. Zelenska offtered thanks to Britain for organizing the Eurovision Song Contest, which Ukraine won last year but will not take up the requisite duties as host of this year because of the war. The English city of Liverpool is hosting it this month instead.

"The inability of the winning country to host this competition should be another reminder to the world of Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine," she said.

Megan Specia

The coronation will mark the formal ascension of King Charles III as the British head of state and Defender of the Faith. But it is also a triumph of image transformation, with his wife, Camilla — who was vilified for years in the British news media — crowned as queen.

While Charles's crowning has long seemed inevitable, the public's acceptance of Camilla — let alone her holding the title of queen — once seemed extremely unlikely. In the public's eye, she was cast as the villain who broke up Charles's marriage to his first wife, Diana, the Princess of Wales, who died in a car crash in 1997. And intimate details of Charles's and Camilla's relationship have long made for tabloid fare.

Some historians and public image consultants say the speed of her metamorphosis is staggering.

"There was that moment after Diana's death when most people said, ‘We can't have Camilla,’" said Jennifer Purcell, a professor of modern British history at Saint Michael's College in Vermont. "‘First, we don't want him to marry her. Second of all, if he does marry her, then she should never be queen.’"

Tell-all interviews and the publication of a tapped phone call between Charles and Camilla — the graphic details of which had faded from the nation's contemporary collective memory but were recently revived for watchers of "The Crown" — brought out embarrassing details of the pair's private life splashed across front pages.

That is all in the past now.

Camilla's branding overhaul has been a huge effort, said Cele Otnes, a professor and co-author of "Royal Fever: The British Monarchy in Consumer Culture," that began long before Camilla's marriage to Charles.

"It's not just his coronation, it's their coronation," Professor Otnes said. "We are now understanding Charles and Camilla as a brand just as we understood the queen and Prince Philip as a brand. And I think that is a strengthening factor for them both."

In the nearly two decades since her marriage to Charles in 2005 — after both of their divorces and the subsequent death of Diana — the new king and queen have cultivated their personas with a focus on public service, the stability of their relationship and, above all, discretion.

"Now, even if people may not like it, they are accepting of it," Professor Purcell said. "She's just done a great job at hanging in there and trying not to make missteps."

In the latest polls on the royal family's standing among the British public from the analytics group YouGov, Camilla outranks both Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan.

Queen Elizabeth II is partly responsible for the public acceptance of Camilla as queen. At the time of her Platinum Jubilee last year, she cleared a path for her daughter-in-law with a public letter expressing her wish that Camilla would become queen consort when Charles ascended to the throne, putting to rest years of uncertainty.

"With the royal family, especially if you think of it as a brand, there are so many recent examples of tainted-ness," Professor Otnes said, pointing to Prince Harry's very public airing of the family's dirty laundry and Prince Andrew's settling of a sexual assault lawsuit. "Camilla is not one of those examples anymore. She is now on the value-adding side."

Still, the seven months since the death of Elizabeth, Britain's longest-serving monarch, haven't been entirely trouble free for the soon-to-be-crowned queen. In his widely publicized memoir, "Spare," and the series of interviews promoting it, Prince Harry singled out Camilla for some of his most cutting comments, accusing her of planting negative stories about him in the press to boost her own image.

He also criticized his stepmother and father in a recent legal filing as part of a lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch's News Group Newspapers. Harry accused the tabloids of intercepting his calls for many years, and later reneging on an agreement with the royal family to apologize, but also laid out a secret agreement between the family and the publisher.

He expressed frustration over that agreement and said the staff of his father and Camilla "had a specific long-term strategy" to keep the news media on their side, "to smooth the way" for Camilla's acceptance.

Arianne Chernock, a professor of history at Boston University who is an expert in the modern British monarchy, said that despite the most recent vitriol, Camilla had already shown an ability to draw on her own complex past to forge a new identity.

"It's surmountable," Professor Chernock said, "but that's more baggage that Camilla carries with her into this role as she tried to cement her position as queen, establish herself and set this tone for what their kingship and queenship are going to look like."

Andrew Testa

Visitors, hoping to get a good spot to watch the coronation procession, are lining the Mall. Royal fans are bringing tents, chairs and supplies so they can remain in their spots until Saturday afternoon.

Alex Marshall

This year, Britain has gotten used to having protesters invading major events.

In April, animal rights activists tried to run onto the course of the Grand National, one of Britain's most renowned horse races, leading to over 100 arrests. Days later, climate protesters belonging to Just Stop Oil, an activist group that seeks an end to oil and gas exploration, interrupted a televised match at the World Snooker Championship. One protester climbed onto a table and threw orange powdered paint into the air.

Could such groups try to disrupt Saturday's coronation, too?

There was fevered speculation in recent weeks that they would, after James Skeet, a Just Stop Oil member, refused to rule it out during an appearance on daytime television. Activists "will do whatever is nonviolently necessary" to draw attention to the terrible effects of climate change, Mr. Skeet said.

Sarah Pickard, a professor at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle in France who studies climate protesters, said in a telephone interview that members of groups like Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion felt compelled to perform stunts so that climate change appeared prominently in the news.

Last summer, activists stuck themselves to the frames of famous paintings and glued themselves to roads in an effort to make headlines.

A protest at the coronation might attract negative publicity, especially because King Charles III is a well-known environmentalist who has co-written a book on climate change and built a town meant to have a low climate impact.

But Ms. Pickard said that activists were unlikely to be deterred. She has interviewed numerous members of such groups, and she noted that "for them, this is an almost existential crisis," and gaining publicity for their cause is what matters above all else.

Even if climate and animal rights groups avoid the coronation, protesters will appear along the route that Charles will take from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey. Republic, a British anti-monarchist organization, has asked its members to attend and hold up bright yellow placards featuring the slogan "Not My King."

As the coronation approached, Britain's government moved to clamp down on protests. This week, legislation came into force effectively making any protest that disrupts an event a criminal offense. But many activist groups, including Just Stop Oil, pledged to continue, saying that the legislation violated their right to protest.

Tina Jordan and Elisabeth Egan

As King Charles III, the man formerly known as the Prince of Wales, is crowned on Saturday, some royal watchers will simply tune in and enjoy the pageantry; others prefer to come prepared. If you’re in the latter category, you may want to read up on who's who, what to expect and what the Stone of Scone is.

Roy Strong, a historian and former director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, was only 16 when he stood on the Victoria Embankment in London on June 2, 1953, and watched the "encrusted golden coach" carrying Queen Elizabeth II to her coronation: "The queen's smiling features and the glitter of her diamonds remain firmly fixed in my memory."

Here, in novelistic prose, he whisks readers through every coronation since that of Edgar in A.D. 973, plucking fabulous tales of jewels, skulduggery and ceremony from the historical record. Some of the richly embroidered traditions that will be on view at King Charles's coronation, he shows, can be traced back to Edgar's 10th-century ritual.

If you’d like more details about the coronation regalia — the official term for the orb, crowns, ampulla, spoon, swords and the like that are part of the ceremony — try this illustrated, gossip-studded explainer, originally published in 1883 and still available. William Jones was quite opinionated: Queen Victoria's crown, he wrote, "is exceedingly costly and elegant; the design is in much better taste than that of the crowns of George IV and William IV."

Or you could just read this piece written for The Times in 1911, shortly before the coronation of George V, by the "Keeper of the Crown Jewels."

Since 1066, every British monarch except Edward V and Edward VII has been crowned at Westminster Abbey, the medieval church in London that is at the very heart of British culture. (The Prince and Princess of Wales married there in 2011.)

This book, which sketches its remarkable history, brims with wonderful photos: not just sweeping views of the church's interior, but stunning close-ups of richly filigreed altar screens, intricate floor mosaics, jewel-hued stained-glass windows, bronze and marble tomb effigies, the delicately vaulted ceiling of the nave and, of course, the Coronation Chair, which is more than 700 years old.

Beheadings, follies, trysts and plague: Can 12 centuries’ worth of monarchs be crammed into 500 pages, about the size of a standard biography? Improbably, yes.

Tracy Borman's short, lively sketches of kings and queens sparkle with diamond-bright detail that may inspire you to dive into more comprehensive histories. Some of the coronations she describes were particularly memorable: Seven-year-old Henry VI "looked around ‘sadly and wisely’ as the crown was placed on his head"; Edward I, according to one account, "removed his crown during the ceremony and swore he would never wear it again until he had won back everything his father had lost"; George II became angry during the procession because "his crimson velvet cap, which was also lined with ermine, was too large for his head and kept falling over his bulbous eyes"; George IV, one witness said, made his entry into Westminster Abbey "‘buried in satin, feathers and diamonds … like some gorgeous bird of the East.’"

"I found," Sally Bedell Smith writes in the preface to her sympathetic 2017 biography, "that much about Prince Charles was poorly understood, not least the extent of his originality." She reminds us that "his every step" has been "inspected and analyzed: his promise, his awkwardness, his happiness, his suffering, his betrayals and embarrassments and mistakes, his loneliness, his success." According to our reviewer William Boyd, who went to school with Charles, Bedell presents him as "complex, somewhat troubled, sincere and questioning individual."

Originally published "The Duchess: Camilla Parker Bowles and the Love Affair That Rocked the Crown," Penny Junor's book is a measured biography of the queen and her relationship with King Charles. Ms. Junor, a British journalist, traces the arc of their relationship from the 1970s on, touching on divorce, scandals and tragedies as she explores the couple's abiding affection. "The Duchess" includes basic explanations of titles and a short glossary of important locations that will help rookie royal watchers find their bearings in time for the big day.

Remy Tumin

After several years of very public family fallouts, a question mark hovered for months over whether Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, would make the journey from California to London for the coronation.

But last month, Buckingham Palace said in a clipped statement that Prince Harry would attend — alone. Meghan is remaining in the United States with the couple's children, Prince Archie, who turns 4 on Saturday, and Princess Lilibet, 1.

Since Harry and Meghan withdrew from royal duties in 2020 and moved to the United States, the Duke of Sussex has attended a few royal events, including the funerals of his grandmother Queen Elizabeth II in September and his grandfather Prince Philip in 2021.

But his attendance at his father's coronation, and that of Harry's wife and children, had been a subject of constant speculation after interviews, documentaries and Harry's memoir, "Spare," portrayed a growing rift in the royal family.

News of Harry's brief return to the royal fold came one month after he and Meghan were asked to move out of Frogmore Cottage, their five-bedroom house on the grounds of Windsor Castle. Queen Elizabeth had offered the house to the couple at the time of their wedding in 2018, and it served as their home base when they visited Britain after moving to Montecito, Calif.

Emma Bubola

The approximately 2,300 people who have been invited to attend the coronation ceremony for King Charles III of Britain on Saturday in London includes a mix of new faces, old lineages, world leaders, pop icons and a dash of controversy.

Among those to receive the invitation — a hand-painted card by an heraldic artist, reproduced and printed on recycled paper with gold-foil details — are Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain, Jill Biden, European aristocrats, Nobel Prize winners, the actress Joanna Lumley, and famed musicians like Lionel Richie and Nick Cave, but also a magician, a hairstylist and a Syrian refugee.

It's a coterie that speaks to Charles's efforts to embrace a modern, multicultural Britain, but also of the monarchy's very identity as a traditional, in many ways anachronistic dynasty.

The in-person audience at Charles's coronation will be only about a quarter of the size of that in attendance for the crowning of his mother, Elizabeth II. But unlike previous such ceremonies, when it was uncommon for foreign monarchs to attend, several from around the world have confirmed their plans to be present this weekend.

Prince Albert of Monaco said in an interview with People magazine that he and his wife, Charlene, would be attending. He also said he expected the ceremony to be "very moving." Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark and his wife, Princess Mary, confirmed their presence, as did members of the royal families of Belgium, Norway and Sweden.

Representatives from Greece's glamorous but deposed royal family, now based on New York's Upper East Side, will also be there. King Felipe VI of Spain, who ascended to the throne in 2014 after his father's abdication, will attend, according to the Spanish news media.

Emanuele Filiberto of Savoy, the grandson of the last king of Italy — and himself a winner of Italy's "Dancing With the Stars" — told the Italian news agency Adnkronos last year that he would be attending, but he was not immediately available to confirm that this week.

Crown Prince Fumihito of Japan and Crown Princess Kiko, on behalf of Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako, will attend, according to the Japanese news media. The Maori royals from New Zealand are on the list, as are kings and queens from Thailand, Bhutan and Tonga, according to news media reports. And the sultan of Brunei, an absolute monarch who imposes a hard-line interpretation of Islam, will also be among the guests.

Several members of Britain's government will attend, as will about 100 heads of state from around the world, according to Buckingham Palace. But at a time when ties with fellow United Kingdom nations Scotland and Northern Ireland are strained, the invitations also caused some backlash.

Humza Yousaf, Scotland's newly appointed first minister, who favors independence for the Scots and who has declared a wish to replace the monarchy with an elected head of state, elicited criticism when he confirmed his intention to attend. He was also denounced for escorting the stone of destiny, a 330-pound red sandstone slab that for centuries was used in the coronation of Scottish kings, as it was taken out of Edinburgh Castle to be transported to Westminster Abbey for Saturday's ceremony.

In Northern Ireland, Michelle O’Neill, who is vice president of Sinn Fein, the region's largest party that wants to leave the United Kingdom and unite with the Republic of Ireland, said on Twitter that she had accepted an invitation to attend in recognition that "there are many people on our island for whom the coronation is a hugely important occasion." Although the move reflected improved relations between Buckingham Palace and the Irish nationalist movement in the region, some commentators pointed to recent polls showing that zero percent of her party's members supported the monarchy.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of Australia and his Canadian counterpart, Justin Trudeau, will be there, according to news media reports.

Representing China for the occasion will be Han Zheng, the Chinese vice president, who has been denounced in Britain for his prominent role in the 2019 anti-democracy crackdown in Hong Kong, a former British colony. "Having this man here given his role is outrageous," Iain Duncan Smith, the former Conservative Party leader, told the Telegraph newspaper.

President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. of the Philippines, the son of the dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos, also confirmed that he planned to attend.

Prince William, the heir to the throne, will be there along with his wife, Catherine, Princess of Wales, and their children, as well as marquesses, dukes, baronesses, lords and earls.

Charles's brother Andrew, who last year was forced to step back from royal duties over his multimillion-dollar legal settlement with a woman who accused him of raping her when she was a teenager and his association with Jeffrey Epstein, the financier and sexual predator, will also be present, according to British news media reports.

Andrew is not expected to appear on the Buckingham Palace balcony after the ceremony, however.

Representatives of the Bahá’í, Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh and Zoroastrian faiths will be part of the procession into Westminster Abbey, the palace said.

Several people who have taken part in programs sponsored by the Prince's Trust, a charity that Charles founded in 1976, will also attend, and 400 young people representing charitable organizations will be able to watch the service and processions from St. Margaret's Church inside Westminster Abbey, the palace said.

Others on the guest list include a presenter of a BBC show about restoration and recycling, the owner of a sustainable fashion line, a young man working in a solar power start-up in Sierra Leone, and a leading British Ghanaian hairstylist.

The hairstylist, Charlotte Mensah, spoke at the Prince's Trust gala last week in New York. "His Majesty couldn't be with us tonight," she said during the event. "I think he has something next week."

Although Prince Harry will attend, despite a family rift that has played out in a highly public manner in recent years, his wife, Meghan, and their children will remain at home in California.

President Biden, who last month visited both Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom, and the Republic of Ireland, will not be there. Instead he is sending the first lady, Jill Biden, to be present "on behalf of the United States."

Pope Francis will not be in attendance; the Vatican said on Thursday that its secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, would represent the pontiff at the coronation.

Buckingham Palace did not issue an invitation to leaders representing several countries, according to Reuters, including Afghanistan, Belarus, Russia and Venezuela.

Isabella Kwai

The bunting is hung, the Union Jack flags are hoisted, and the royal emblems have been rolled out as Britain gets ready for a weekend of celebrations for the coronation of King Charles III. The monarch will be formally crowned in a ceremony on Saturday, and the festive agenda will run through the weekend, including a nationwide day off on Monday.

Here's the official schedule of events:

Saturday

The coronation service will take place at 11 a.m. in Westminster Abbey. King Charles III and Camilla, the queen consort, will travel in a horse-drawn coach from Buckingham Palace through central London to arrive at Westminster Abbey. Crowds are expected to line the route, and the service will be broadcast on screens at several of London's major parks.

The royal couple will then travel back to Buckingham Palace, accompanied by a mile-long procession of 4,000 troops. After an official salute from the armed forces, they will appear on the balcony of Buckingham Palace to greet the public.

Sunday

People in neighborhoods across Britain will gather during the day to share coronation lunches in what Buckingham Palace has called a "nationwide act of celebration and friendship." Many of the country's street parties, spread across the weekend, will also take place on Sunday.

At night, Windsor Castle will host a coronation concert for 20,000 people, and online viewers can watch it live via the BBC. Musical artists including Take That, Katy Perry, Tiwa Savage and Andrea Bocelli will take to the stage, as will performers from the Royal Ballet, the Royal Opera House and the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Monday

Capping off the official agenda for the weekend is "The Big Help Out," an initiative in which charities and other organizations across Britain will offer volunteering opportunities for people who want to get involved.

Given that the initiative is intended as a tribute to King Charles III's own public service, members of the royal family will also take part in charity events, Buckingham Palace said.