King Charles III has pledged to follow his late mother’s example of “selfless duty” as he addressed lawmakers from both houses of parliament in London
He boarded a plane to Edinburgh to be with the late queen’s coffin as it lies at rest in the Scottish capital after meeting with them
Earlier, Queen Elizabeth II’s grandson Prince Harry hailed her as a “guiding compass” and praised her “unwavering grace and dignity.”
Hundreds of lawmakers crowded into the 1,000-year-old Westminster Hall at the Houses of Parliament for the service, rich in pageantry, in which Parliament offered its condolences to the king, and he replied.
A trumpet fanfare greeted the king and his wife Camilla, the queen consort, as they entered the hall, which was packed with hundreds of legislators.
Charles told members of the House of Commons and House of Lords that he would follow his late mother Queen Elizabeth II in upholding “the precious principles of constitutional governance” that underpin the U.K.’s political system.
“I am deeply grateful for the Addresses of Condolence by the House of Lords and the House of Commons, which so touchingly encompass what our late Sovereign, my beloved mother The Queen, meant to us all,” he said. “As Shakespeare says of the earlier Queen Elizabeth, she was ‘a pattern to all Princes living.'”
“While very young, Her late Majesty pledged herself to serve her country and her people and to maintain the precious principles of constitutional government which lie at the heart of our nation,” Charles continued. “This vow she kept with unsurpassed devotion.”
“The superb turnout from every political party across the spectrum underlines this sense of our constitutional monarchy being the result of a coming together of people willing to give up their powers, in order to have real powers, as far as the democratically elected House of Commons is concerned,” he said.
The hall, with its magnificent hammer-beam roof, is the oldest part of the parliamentary complex — a remnant of the medieval Palace of Westminster that once stood on the site.
AP News