Queen Camilla looked stunning today as she stepped out in London with the rest of the Royal Family for the King’s birthday parade. The Queen was a vision in white as she donned a silk crepe dress with silver embroidery by Anna Valentine, which she paired with a hat by Philip Treacy. She also sported a Grenadier Guards brooch on her chest.
Camilla was seen arriving alongside the King in an Ascot Landau, a four-wheeled luxury carriage with a roof that can be let down. Trooping the Colour is held annually as an official birthday event for the monarch, even though Charles’s actual birthday is on November 14. It dates back centuries and became an annual event in 1760.
It is one of the biggest military ceremonies of the calendar and this year it features more than 1,400 parading soldiers, 300 musicians and over 200 horses.
The spectacle will later wrap up with an RAF flypast over Buckingham Palace, which the Royal Family will watch from the Palace balcony.
Military pomp and pageantry are on full display today in the capital to mark the milestone, but the event this year will also remember those killed in the Air India plane crash.
The King has requested a minute’s silence be observed in tribute to the 241 passengers and crew killed, and others affected, when a Boeing 787 Dreamliner bound for Gatwick Airport came down on Thursday in the Indian city of Ahmedabad.
Black armbands are worn by the head of state and senior royals riding in the ceremony, also known as the King’s Birthday Parade, staged in Horse Guards Parade in Whitehall.
On horseback and wearing the armbands are the Royal Colonels – Prince of Wales, Colonel of the Welsh Guards, the Princess Royal, Colonel Blues and Royals, and the Duke of Edinburgh, Colonel Scots Guards.
Members of the royal family not taking part in the parade and who normally watch events from the Duke of Wellington’s former office are not wearing black armbands.
A Buckingham Palace spokesperson said the King requested amendments to the Trooping the Colour programme “as a mark of respect for the lives lost, the families in mourning and all the communities affected by this awful tragedy”.
The carriage carrying the royal couple today, the Ascot Landau, one of five kept by the Royal Mews and purchased during the reign of Queen Victoria, is bright, small carriage, which chiefly features in the Carriage Procession during The Royal Meeting at Ascot every year.
These Landaus can also be seen during other state and semi-state occasions such as State Visits, Trooping the Colour and Royal Weddings. The Ascot Landau is often drawn by the famous Windsor Greys.
Windsor Grey Horses play an important role in the ceremonial life of the Royal Family and the nation and have been drawing the carriages of successive monarchs and members of the Royal Family since Queen Victoria’s Reign.
