On September 8, 2022, Buckingham Palace issued a two-sentence statement:
The Queen died peacefully at Balmoral this afternoon. The King and The Queen Consort will remain at Balmoral this evening and will return to London tomorrow.
These few words expressed grief and consolation. After more than seventy years on the throne, Elizabeth II had died. Nevertheless, the royal standard still flew; Their Majesties King Charles III and Queen Consort Camilla would, amid their grief, get to work.
On September 10, even though Charles had assumed the throne immediately upon the death of the late Queen, a council of leading figures of the realm, including privy counselors, great officers of state, and the Lord Mayor of London, met at St. James’s Palace to announce the death of Elizabeth and the accession of Charles. After the King swore an oath to maintain and preserve the Church of Scotland, the Garter King of Arms, alongside the Earl Marshal, proclaimed Charles as King. Proclamations were then read at the Royal Exchange in the City of London and at locations in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Similar proclamations were read throughout the new King’s other realms and territories.
“According to the pure idea of constitutional royalty, the prince reigns, and does not govern.”
Although the powers of a constitutional sovereign are extremely limited, the political and cultural influence of the House of Windsor remains strong. Where other European nations rejected their monarchs (often violently) in the last three centuries,
