More than 2,200 people will attend the coronation of King Charles III, Buckingham Palace has announced. They include international delegates from 203 countries, as well as community and charity workers.
The coronation ceremony, which will begin at 8pm Australian Eastern Standard Time on Saturday, will also be attended by 14 prominent Australians.
They include the Governor-General, David Hurley and his wife, Linda, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his partner, Jodie Haydon, and others such as composer and singer Nick Cave, Matilda’s captain Sam Kerr who will represent Australian women’s football, Indigenous artist Jasmine Coe and others.
The President of the Republic of Greece is also in London for the enthronement of the King. Katerina Sakellaropoulou is the official guest of the King of Britain as she is the first Citizen of Greece.
Ms Sakellaropoulou will attend the coronation of the King at Westminster Abbey and immediately afterwards, she will be present at the reception organised by the British Foreign Secretary, James Cleverley, for foreign guests at Church House in Westminster.
The coronation of King Charles III will include an invitation to the public to swear allegiance to the monarch and his successors, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s office announced, releasing the exact coronation ritual.
An invitation to citizens to pay tribute by joining a “chorus of a million voices” is included in the new elements that will be added from an old ceremony, according to a statement from the office of Canterbury Archbishop Justin Welby.
That section states: “All those who wish to do so, in the Abbey and elsewhere, say together: I swear true allegiance to Your Excellency and to Your successors according to law. My God is my witness.”
Among those who will swear “true allegiance” to the new king is the Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, which has caused some backlash, considering he is a committed republican.
Charles, who became monarch of the United Kingdom and the other 14 Commonwealth countries (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Jamaica, Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Antigua and Barbuda, Belize and St. Kitts and Nevis) following the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth in September, is to be officially crowned on Saturday 6 May at Westminster Abbey in London during a ceremony full of luxury, symbolism and religious significance.
The service at Westminster Abbey will also be attended by Nobel Prize winners, religious representatives, heads of state and foreign ministers, the Palace said.
In addition to these guests, 400 young people representing charities will attend the coronation ceremony and processions through St Margaret’s Church, next to the Abbey.
Charles wants the ceremony to be much more austere than the coronation of Queen Elizabeth in 1953, but there will be a strong Greek presence among the just 2,200 guests, a quarter of Elizabeth’s invitees.
Present at the coronation will be former Queen of Greece Anna Maria, with her eldest son Prince Pavlos and his wife Marie Chantal.
King Charles III and Queen Camilla will be joined by the Greek-born princely couple of Serbia at Westminster Abbey.
The former prince, Crown Prince Alexander, whose mother was Princess Alexandra of Greece, daughter of King Alexander I of Greece and Aspasia Manos, will be accompanied by his Athens-born wife, Princess Ekaterina, née Bati.
The Greek and Orthodoxy
Alexandros Ligas, a Greek-Canadian musicologist, expert in Byzantine music and founder of the Cappella Romana choir, will take part in Charles’ enthronement ceremony, as the latter expressed his wish to have Greek Orthodox music at his coronation.
The British monarch wanted to honour his close connection with Orthodoxy and the Greek origin of his father, Philip, who was born in Corfu. Coincidentally, his father Liga, from the village of Mazeika, near Kalavryta, had found himself watching the coronation of Queen Elizabeth in 1953. Here, then, are father and son, exactly seventy years apart, to witness two iconic events of the British monarchy. But how did this happen?
“My grandfather, also born in Mazica, went to Athens to work as a lawyer and returned to his homeland when World War II broke out with my Corfiot grandmother, to be safer,” Ligas told Kathimerini magazine “K” in a recent phone interview.
“Conditions were such after the war, especially during the Civil War, that he decided to send his son to Canada so he could finish school and go to university there. So my father found himself abroad at an early age. He went into medicine, then he met and fell in love with my Canadian mother. While he was studying, he was also serving his service in the Canadian Navy. So, in 1953 he went to England as a reserve officer to be present at the coronation with the honorary processions sent by the Commonwealth countries. In fact, the members of the Canadian contingent were inspected by Prince Philip himself. You should see the pride he has, as another member of the family will attend Charles’ coronation,” Ligas concluded to “K”.