Talkative Finn

I think they only give up those royal honorary colonelships when they really have to for health reasons. The time Prince Philip gave up his was about the last time we saw him walking.

I agree and was quite shocked to see him like that really. He looked rather dishevelled both in attire and grooming departments. he certainly could afford having someone make him look dapper. In his age it's a great thing still to be able to put on clothes by yourself, but you shouldn't look only just like that when you are out in public.

He made a point of appearing with several Korean war veterans in officially produced pictures looking remarkably healthy: https://people.com/king-charles-meets-korean-war-veterans-buckingham-palace-amid-cancer-treatment-online-conspiracy-theories-8610904 I think they might be letting him to meet more people, which should be a good sign. (Edited stupid typos and made the link a proper one)

Cancer is no automatic death sentence nowadays. Let's remember how almost a decade ago some American expert claimed that fussing about Jimmy Carter's immunotherapy cancer treatment was just stupid, since "it probably only would prolong his life by a month or two"... I could not find the link but remember it vividly.

But at least he (very sensibly) IS using a walking stick. And a real one, not one of those strange things the late Queen insisted of using.

About those fingers of his, just look this photo from 2005 and you clearly see whom he inherited them from. And since Prince Philip almost reached 100 years, I wouldn't be so overly worried about them...

Just saw a glimpse of the Queen's last Christmas message last year and noticed again how frail she looked. Especially so as her dress was clearly too big for her, hanging loosely around her. I remember having wondered at the time why they didn't just use the usual trick of the fashion photo shoots (tightening the dress from the backside with clothespins) if that dress really was the only possible one to be used. But now I wonder if they actually did it on purpose: letting as all see that the Queen was ill and gently preparing us for the idea that this would be her last Christmas message. I mean, she definitely could have afforded a new dress, made to the measure. Maybe she really wanted us all to see that she had lost a lot of weight and shrunk.

There is also a chance that she kept a long list of possible candidates in case of older holders of the Order of Merit suddenly kicking the bucket.

Will there be some kind of memorial service for the late Queen next year or sooner? Like the one Philip got? Or was that due to covid restrictions at his funeral?

Now, to get back to the topic (more or less), the date for next coronation has now been set.

If we really want to reach 200 pages, let's speculate a bit about the actual burial arrangements at the George VI Memorial Chapel. The received wisdom seems to be that George VI was placed there first and then several decades later Queen Mother above his coffin. And then the late Queen and Philip would have been stacked beside them one on top of the other. But wouldn't it have been about million times easier to place the first two coffins side by side? And then place the last two again side by side above the first ones? That way both couples could rest together more naturally. Also, shouldn't the chapel's name be changed to eg. George VI & Elizabeth II Memorial Chapel?

I knew that theories of her having died at noon were impossible. When the Sovereign dies the Prime Minister has a need and right to know ASAP. And they had told earlier that she was informed at 15:30. Edit. The PM was told only at 16:30! Had they really right to withhold that information so long? But then again, she had been told already by noon that the Queen would die within hours. Second edit. It seems the PM was informed already "early on Thursday morning", well before she gave her energy plan statement at the parliament.

I have started to wonder about that, since according this Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_George_VI_Memorial_Chapel the chapel's measurements are "18 feet high, 10 feet in width with a depth of 14 feet". What if the tabloid which commissioned the graphic just copied that information from there and mistook it to mean the measurements of the vault below? As Windsor wrote earlier, no-one except the Royal family really knows what lies down there. Would they really build 18 feet high chapel and 18 feet deep vault under it just to be symmetrical?

It says in Wikipedia that originally the memorial chapel was ordered to have room for three monarchs and their spouses. But maybe they changed their mind and retconned it just to be meant for these four. 18 feet is a real overkill, over here 2.1 meters is considered a deep grave suitable for two coffins (to a 2.7 meters deep grave you could fit three coffins) . And especially when they must have given some thought about preventing moisture seeping from the ground etc. It would probably have been difficult enough to build a 10 feet high vault, especially when it had to be added to a very old historical building.

I think I finally found that graphic (took some serious googling):