Charles became the new British monarch automatically with the death of his mother on Thursday, but his new role will be officially proclaimed on Saturday at 10 a.m. London time in a ceremony at St. James’s Palace.
For the first time, the ceremony at the palace, a Tudor royal residence near Buckingham Palace, will be televised, the royal family confirmed to the Press Association.
It will be held in two parts, the first of which includes a meeting of the king’s Privy Council, a group of advisers to the monarch who have typically reached high levels of public office. The king will not be present at that meeting, according to Buckingham Palace.
During that ceremony, the council will proclaim him the sovereign and then formally approve various arrangements for the upcoming proclamation of his rule. In the second part of the ceremony, King Charles III will meet with his Privy Council.
The new king then will make four traditional public statements that generations of monarchs have made before him. He will give personal and political inaugural declarations, both of which in the past would have happened in a closed ceremony with the text later published in the London Gazette, the official government record.
On this occasion, for the first time, it will be televised, as will the formalities that follow. Charles will also make an oath to uphold the Church of Scotland.
Then, at 11 a.m., a proclamation will be read out officially declaring the reign of King Charles III. The first will be made from the balcony at St. James’s Palace.
Heralds will arrive on horseback, wearing uniforms that have roots in clothing from the Middle Ages, and will begin passing the proclamation across the country, but the news will first be read in Trafalgar Square and then the Royal Exchange in London.
The pomp and ceremony can often feel like a holdover of an earlier time, and the procedures, enshrined in law, give a nod to the foundations of the modern British state.
