Scotland: Edinburgh's farewell to its queen

From our special correspondent in Edinburgh

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• OUR FILE - Elizabeth II, a rock and a symbol for England

Three teenage girls in black dresses clutching a bouquet of flowers, old gentlemen in red kilts and tweed jackets adorned with medals, a lady with a misty look behind her lace veil and a young man in a fluorescent green down jacket had taken their places on Monday in the packed crowd gathered in the heart of Edinburgh to pay their last respects to Queen Elizabeth.

Arriving from London in the early afternoon, Charles III first went to Holyrood Palace, the official residence of the royal family in Scotland, where the Lord Provost symbolically handed him the keys to the city.

Then he joined the "guard of honor" formed behind the hearse aboard which his mother's coffin reached Saint-Gilles Cathedral, where it will remain on public display until it leaves for London on Tuesday. at the end of the day,

The procession, which walked slowly up Edinburgh's historic main street, the Royal Mile, before passing statues of philosophers Adam Smith and David Hume, was the high point of a day full of symbols and choreographed down to the smallest detail.

Several tens of thousands of Scots attended in silence, their mobile phones held at arm's length to immortalize this historic moment, allowing themselves at most a few applause or a

.

Accompanied by Princess Anne and a Prince Andrew forced by scandal to wear only a tail coat, the new king had put on his parade uniform and carried in his right hand the baton of Field Marshal presented to him by his mother on bestowing this rank, the highest in the British Army, in the spring of 2012. After he entered the cathedral, the Crown of Scotland was placed on the coffin bearing the Royal Banner and adorned with a wreath of white flowers.

The Reverend Calum MacLeod, who presided over the religious ceremony, saluted the memory of a sovereign

.

Death of Elizabeth II: Scotland bids farewell to the Queen in Edinburgh Cathedral

Among the onlookers, Dylan, 19, had left his village at 6 a.m. and had taken no less than four trains to be able to attend the procession.

Peter Bustock, a 58-year-old clergyman in a black suit and white shirt, arrived for his part from the north of England and said he was ready to queue

to be able to meditate for a moment in front of the coffin of the Queen.

This visit of Charles III to Edinburgh, just four days after his accession to the throne, is an opportunity for him to display his attachment to this land as well as his determination to preserve the unity of the kingdom.

Since the June 2016 referendum on Brexit, approved by a narrow majority of English and Welsh people but rejected by voters in Scotland and Northern Ireland, this has been put to the test.

Visibly aware of the centrifugal forces at work in his country, the monarch plans to travel to Belfast on Tuesday, where he will meet the elected representatives of Northern Ireland, then to Cardiff on Friday.

, tries to reassure the columnist Alan Cochrane in the

, while acknowledging that the task

.

, he still observes,

Monday, after the service dedicated to the memory of Elizabeth, Charles III received the Scottish Prime Minister.

Leader of the Scottish National Party, resolute advocate of independence, Nicola Sturgeon has nonetheless paid a vibrant tribute to the Queen in recent days.

She particularly praised her special link with the land of Scotland.

But these comforting words cannot overshadow the ambiguities of the SNP when it comes to the monarchical system.

Campaigning for the referendum in 2014, where the "no" to independence won with 55% of the vote, the party paradoxically proposed that a Scotland emancipated from British tutelage retain the Queen as head of state.

But its official position is now to propose a referendum on this specific issue once independence is won.

"Pride"

At the end of the day, Charles III got back in his car to travel with the Queen Consort the few tens of meters which separate the Palace of Holyrood from the Scottish Parliament, which the Queen had accompanied in the restoration of her functions in 1999 and of which she had inaugurated the new premises in 2004. Dressed for the occasion in a kilt, he was greeted on his arrival by a few applause before joining the hemicycle where, after two minutes of silence, a "motion of condolences" was spoken by Nicola Sturgeon.

,” replied the king, referring in passing to his

for having carried for seventy years his titles of Scottish nobility, including that of Duke of Rothesay.

Earlier in London, the King addressed the British Parliament for the first time as a monarch at the Palace of Westminster.

,” he said. declared, emphasizing that his mother was

.