I know that if nothing unexpected gets in the way, I'll be watching it all on my computer screen. During the Queen's funeral last year I followed it for several hours almost solid - I think I somehow found a link to watch the BBC version, even though I was watching from Norway.

Do you know Mark Twain's book "The Prince and the Pauper"? The Coronation plays a pivotal part in that book, and the text describes parts of what happens during the ceremony - or at least what would have happened at Henry VIII's time. There is one important moment that may, in a spectacular detail, differ from the old times (perhaps even from 1953): The moment when the Archbishop lifts the crown to place it on the King's head.

The book tells about almost a flash of lightning as all the nobles lift their coronets to place them on their own heads when the King is crowned. Alas, this year they may choose not to include all those coronets. I don't know whether it has been finally decided yet, but it was definitely considered, as a part of simplifying the ceremony. Perhaps they have changed their minds and will include them after all. It would be a great moment - but I can see how leaving them out would simplify things.

Yes, I have read The Prince and the Pauper, which, according to Wikipedia, was first published in Canada, in the 1880's, perhaps under the name Samuel Clemens, the author of the book I read as a child, & dedicated to his twin daughters, Susie and Clara Clemens, & which I understand, was his real name. Mark Twain's first stab at historical fiction, and now a classic English literature novel, revolves around how similar in age & appearance Tom Canty, the pauper, was to Prince Edward Tudor, the then Prince of Wales, & heir to the dying Henry VIII's throne.

Not so long ago, I read that King Henry VIII's crown had actually been located, though it looks rather plain compared to the Imperial State Crown or St Edward's Crown, both of which Charles III will be wearing on 6th of May. I thought much of the original English crown jewels had been destroyed by Cromwell's Roundheads, after they executed Charles I, on 30th January in 1649. When his son, Charles II, was restored, much had to be recreated, so that England still has them today, on display at the Tower of London.  

@ Varnafinde:  The book tells about almost a flash of lightning as all the nobles lift their coronets to place them on their own heads when the King is crowned.

I don't know about the "flash of lightning" mentioned in Mark Twain's book, when it was historical fiction. That "flash of lightning" he mentions as happening, when the dukes & duchesses all put on their coronets & tiaras, might have really happened at Queen Elizabeth's coronation, also, depending on the lighting inside Westminster Abbey, & the weather on the day. That was the first coronation to be televised, as I'm sure Charles III's coronation will be also, across the world, this time. We were able to watch Queen Elizabeth's funeral on TV, as well as the proclamations of King Charles in Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales & London, itself, following the late Queen's death. So, I have no doubt that worldwide news networks will also make the production, or at least parts of it, worldwide, maybe translated, on Norway's own evening news. Especially when Norway's own monarchy is descended from Queen Maud of Norway, the sister of George V of UK, & daughter of UK's Edward VII. It seems that Charles III is into cutting costs, & that Dukes & Duchesses won't be there, necessarily, unless they are actually involved with the coronation or working Royal family members, working with the community in UK. It seems the focus will be more on the military & welfare workers, as well as essential workers, such as in the NHS, UK's medical scheme. 

The Prince and The Pauper happens to be one of my favorite stories. It is such an interesting take on how two boys that resemble one another met up and decided to switch places. But of course, things don't turn out so well. It sure has such impact on popular culture with TV and movies.

It will sure be a historic day when Charles III is crowned King of Great Britain. It's been so long since there's been a coronation there.

I shall be watching, and I will also be going to a garden party to celebrate it. Got to do my bit of acknowledgement. 😛 It's quite fun to say we have a King again. As somebody so keen on British history, I'm so pleased he chose to be Charles III, rather than another George or something. It has been a while since our last Charles – and what a fascinating time in history that was. Yet may Charles III's reign go a lot more smoothly!

I'll watch as much as I can, but I hope the afternoon meeting I have that day will not coincide with anything important.  Oh wait, it'll be the middle of the night in England, so no problem! 

I like King Charles. As a child I knew Charles and Anne were older than me, and Andrew about my brother's age, Edward coming a bit later.  The only personal encounter with Prince Charles was he once waved to me individually: I had pulled over beside a big park as his car was coming along from the airport, I stood beside the road alone to watch and wave, and he waved back.  

Posted by: @sir-cabbage

I shall be watching, and I will also be going to a garden party to celebrate it. Got to do my bit of acknowledgement. 😛 It's quite fun to say we have a King again. As somebody so keen on British history, I'm so pleased he chose to be Charles III, rather than another George or something. It has been a while since our last Charles – and what a fascinating time in history that was. Yet may Charles III's reign go a lot more smoothly!

Wow! Not only watching the telecast but going to a party as well! I do hope it all turns out well for you. Charles III was a rather controversial choice, but when his full name is Charles Philip Arthur George would either Philip or Arthur have been even more unsuitable?

I've read commentaries trying to claim that the real Charles III really ought to have been Bonnie Prince Charlie, who lost the Battle of Culloden. He died on 31st January of 1788, five days after the founding of Sydney, the first settlement of Australia, at Port Jackson, on January the 26th, just to the north, along the coast from Captain Cook's Botany Bay. His death more or less ended UK's Jacobite succession after the 1688 Glorious Revolution, which led to much of the enmity between UK & France for more than a century, in World History, when James II fled to France. Called "The Young Pretender", Bonnie Prince Charles was James II's grandson. 

@Coracle: I'll watch as much as I can, but I hope the afternoon meeting I have that day will not coincide with anything important.  Oh wait, it'll be the middle of the night in England, so no problem!

The Coronation is due to start at 11.AM on Saturday 6th of May. It will be in the evening for Australians on AEST time, either 7.30 pm or after, so I expect that New Zealand time will be later by about 2 more hours, isn't it? I think it will start a bit earlier because of the procession from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey. 

Posted by: @waggawerewolf27

I've read commentaries trying to claim that the real Charles III really ought to have been Bonnie Prince Charlie, who lost the Battle of Culloden. He died on 31st January of 1788, five days after the founding of Sydney, the first settlement of Australia, at Port Jackson, on January the 26th, just to the north, along the coast from Captain Cook's Botany Bay. His death more or less ended UK's Jacobite succession after the 1688 Glorious Revolution, which led to much of the enmity between UK & France for more than a century, in World History, when James II fled to France. Called "The Young Pretender", Bonnie Prince Charles was James II's grandson. 

I've heard that claim too, years ago, as it was still occasionally being brought up by inveterate "Jacobite" Scottish nationalists who held that Bonnie Prince Charlie should have been the REAL king of Scotland and England and all the British monarchs since that time have been usurpers and illegitimate claimants to the throne. That view was apparently quite popular in Victorian times — a lot of the romantic images and popular songs about "Charlie", like the Skye Boat Song and Will Ye No Come Back Again? actually date from that time, more than a century after the Battle of Culloden (1746). But living in Britain as I now do, I can assure everyone that only a tiny minority, if anyone at all, holds that view in the 21st century. I think most people here were just relieved that Charles chose to use his first name as his regnal name and we didn't have to get used to calling him something else after over 70 years of him being Prince Charles!!  

@Courtenay: I think most people here were just relieved that Charles chose to use his first name as his regnal name and we didn't have to get used to calling him something else after over 70 years of him being Prince Charles!!

Yes, & though Wikipedia also mentions that Jacobite attitude, I am glad to hear it. King Charles' full name is Charles Philip Arthur George Windsor, or should that be really Mountbatten-Windsor? It wasn't until just before his younger brothers were born that Queen Elizabeth & Parliament agreed that her descendants could have the surname, Mountbatten-Windsor, when necessary. But in the English tabloids etc, there were sometimes remarks about his sharing a name with the ill-fated Charles 1st, executed by Oliver Cromwell, in 1649, though they mysteriously never said much about Charles II, who restored the monarchy in 1660. Unlike his two predecessors, Charles II was wary of Parliament, which had brought him back, & thus worked relatively well with it. 

Arthur was rumoured to be King Charles' favourite name, when King Arthur was legendary.  Whilst King Philip might have been too much of a reminder of King Philip II of Spain, who was the King Consort of Queen Mary 1 (Tudor) & who has been alleged to have proposed marriage to Queen Elizabeth 1, her half-sister, & successor. Up to the birth of his grandson, Prince George, in 2013, it was sometimes claimed that Prince Charles might adopt King George VII as his regnal name. 

When my hubby spent his childhood near Falkirk, I am very aware of Bonnie Prince Charles' Jacobite victory there on 17th January of 1746. However, Bonnie Prince Charlie, according to Wikipedia, named Charles Edward Louis John Sylvester Maria Casimir Stuart (31 December 1720 – 30 January 1788), failed to take full advantage of his victory, & was subsequently defeated at Culloden. There is a monument to Bonnie Prince Charles in Falkirk, on the path beside the canal leading from the Falkirk Wheel, with its two giant "kelpies". There was another battle there, on 22nd July of 1298 AD, at Wallacestone, on the other side of Falkirk, where William Wallace was defeated & captured by the English. There is a monument there, in the park at the top of the hill, where on a clear day you can see across to Grangemouth, north of Edinburgh. 

@courtenay there are several youtube videos about "who would be monarch if...", which you might find amusing. There is bound to be one that follows the Jacobite line.

I'm very glad that our new king is using his own first name.

The previous six monarchs wereGeorge VI (first name Albert, last name George, known as Bertie), Edward VIII (first name Edward, last name David, known as David), George V (first name George), Edward VII (Albert Edward, known as Bertie), and Victoria (Alexandrine Victoria, known as Drina).

[Edit: Yes, I failed to mention our late Queen Elizabeth! She was crowned with the name she used throughout her life]

[Note: If it pops up in a theatre near you, a play called King Charles III should be avoided; I watched it in a local theatre in London in 2019, and it was already five years old, dated and limping along. I would imagine it will die a natural death and never be staged again!]

Posted by: @coracle

The previous six monarchs were George VI (first name Albert, last name George, known as Bertie), Edward VIII (first name Edward, last name David, known as David), George V (first name George), Edward VII (Albert Edward, known as Bertie), and Victoria (Alexandrine Victoria, known as Drina).

Not to mention Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, who also went by her first name! (full name Elizabeth Alexandra Mary)  

[Note: If it pops up in a theatre near you, a play called King Charles III should be avoided; I watched it in a local theatre in London in 2019, and it was already five years old, dated and limping along. I would imagine it will die a natural death and never be staged again!]

Oh yes, I remember that being on when I lived near London — it was billed as a sort of tragi-comedy in (supposedly) Shakespearean style, imagining Charles triggering a constitutional crisis almost as soon as he becomes King. I didn't bother seeing it at the time and I suspected I wasn't missing much!!

I've been too busy reviewing some new books I have been reading on Kindle, to have been overly concerned with an out-of-date play about Charles III, which, most likely, would never be seen in Australia. But what was in it exactly, I wonder, that the play would have called a "Constitutional Crisis"? Now, I am a bit curious. 😼 Possibly it is on You Tube. Sometimes, I think that some tabloids have been fighting tooth & nail since 2005, to make constitutional crises about everything possible associated with King Charles, & especially about his now Consort, Queen Camilla, who will be crowned alongside him, at his Coronation on 6th of May.

Some of the better books I've looked at, include Angela Levin's 2022 book, Camilla: from outcast to Queen Consort, published after Queen Elizabeth made her February 6th speech, last year, nominating Camilla as Charles' Consort. Another one, which sets the record straight, in my opinion, is Tina Brown's 2022 Palace Papers, which I ended up enjoying enormously, though its write-up in the Daily Express, put me off at first.  And to see life from the POV of Diana's "grey men", I do recommend Valentine Low's 2022 Courtiers: the hidden power behind the Crown, which sheds some light on current events that trickle "Down Under".

@ Courtenay: Not to mention Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, who also went by her first name! (full name Elizabeth Alexandra Mary) 

Wasn't Queen Elizabeth's choice of name as a monarch, the reason why her mother, after whom she had been named, was called the Queen Mother, to avoid confusion?

@waggawerewolf27 she was officially called Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. 

The title 'Queen Mother' usually refers to the widow of the previous king. In the case of our recent Queen, the Queen Mother was also the queen's mother!

However a king's widow may not be related to the next king or queen, if there has been a battle or usurping. I think she would then have been called a Dowager Queen. English history is full of these complications, and I suspect most other countries with a royal family (past or present) are similar. 

Wikipedia provides some useful explanations of the terms "Queen Mother" and "Queen Dowager". Basically, a Queen Dowager (or Dowager Queen) is the widow of a deceased king, and a Queen Mother is the mother of a current reigning monarch. So both titles often apply to one person, as they did with Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother — she could have been called Queen Dowager as well. I read somewhere that she chose The Queen Mother as her title because it sounded less "old" than Queen Dowager! Also, her mother-in-law, Queen Mary — widow of King George V — was still alive when Queen Elizabeth II became Queen (as in Queen Regnant) in 1952, and Mary already had the title of Queen Dowager, so it avoided having two members of the Royal Family with the same title.

The confusing part here — I'm sure some people's heads are spinning already — is that in Britain, the title of "Queen" actually has two possible meanings. Most commonly in history, it refers to a Queen Consort, the wife of a king. But it can also mean Queen Regnant, which is what Elizabeth II was — an actual female monarch in her own right, not the wife of a male monarch. (Until they were changed very recently, the laws of succession in Britain gave preference to males, so a woman would only become monarch if there were no men in the direct line of succession, which is why there have been relatively few Queens Regnant. Queen Elizabeth I, Queen Anne and Queen Victoria are the other most famous ones in English, later British, history.) It would be clearer if we used a different word for the two roles, but for whatever historical reasons, we don't!!

So Camilla, wife of King Charles III, is a Queen Consort and that's how she's being referred to in the media. Technically, though, it's correct to refer to her as simply "Her Majesty the Queen" or "Her Majesty Queen Camilla". I don't think the full term "Queen Consort" was used very often for the wives of the previous Kings — people just referred to King George V and Queen Mary, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth (later the Queen Mother). But because for 70 years we had a Queen Regnant, we are all just so used to the term "the Queen" meaning Queen Elizabeth II that I think for quite a long time, she will still be "THE Queen" in people's minds and the first person we think of when we hear that title.

(There have also been public controversies over Camilla's title due to the past circumstances of her relationship with Charles and the breakup of his first marriage to Diana. But I won't go into that here and I think by now most of us in Britain, whatever we thought of the whole kerfuffle back in the 1980s and '90s, are happy to leave all that in the past and accept Camilla as Queen Consort and as the great support to her husband that she clearly is. There are still people who object, of course — or who object to having a monarchy in the first place — but most people seem happy to live and let live.)

Getting back to the coronation specifically, I know we're planning a little party at the care home where I work, because I've seen us stockpiling cardboard "crown" hats, Union Flag bunting and cake stands!!   I wonder if we will have Coronation Chicken for lunch?? (That's a cold chicken salad with a very mild, creamy curry mayonnaise dressing, which was invented for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. It really took off and is still very popular in Britain today as a sandwich filling!)

The official Coronation dish is 'Coronation quiche'. There is plenty of discussion online ('beans in a quiche!?') and you can find the recipe easily.

I'm sure Courtenay's old folks will prefer the Coronation Chicken ! I tried it once, in the kind of bakery where they made you a fresh takeaway sandwich while you waited.