Shame the female royals didn't walk too

[redsunshinedasiy]

Kudos to Anne who went against tradition and stood up front with her brothers and walked (and also to all the grandchildren who did the vigil) but it's a shame to see all the other females in the funeral stay crawling slowly in a car while all the men walked, just seems so old fashioned (particularly when Anne has gone against it and she is the eldest female!!)

One male equivalent would be James, Edward and Sophie’s son. Who also didn’t walk.

I used to wear heels to work and out in the evening. And struggle to walk between bus/ train/ taxi and venue. Dance all night in heals , feet painful on late night bus home , take off shoes during the journey, then can’t get them back on for the walk from the bus to friends house or home
Flat shoes freed me up to walk from Euston station to my office in Marylebone, so much nicer and better for health, than taking the tube. I now only wear flats. Fashion is now flats. Why is any woman torturing herself by putting her feet into these modern day female constraints?

I wish people would stop saying Kate has young children to cope with, Yes, she has young children, but also an army of nannies and also her mother to step in when needed.

Kate did what she felt was right for her children. She would have been pounded on if she'd put them in a car with a nanny. Those kids deserved to have their mum with them on a very tough day.

Lots of people wouldn't have even considered taking a 7 & 9 year old to a funeral.

Well said.

You must be very proud.

I think a lot of people think it would have been better if the children only attended the private family Windsor funeral.

The children will not remember it when they are older. But, as part of tradition, they learnt lots of new things, had fun, saw lots of people they know, got to look at the crowds from the cars and were probably completely spoilt. I can’t see a problem taking young children to a funeral. It’s part of life.

Had fun at a funeral? Its not a visit to a theme park you know.

Nobody says they should not go to a funeral. The issue is whether they should have gone to just the private family funeral, or the family funeral plus the state funeral.

@antelopevalley you are out to have a go at some members (not all) of the RF at every opportunity you can possibly find. I say "some" very advisedly.

I didn't go to my grandfathers funeral when I was George's age. I'd lived with my grandparents for the first years of my life and remained very close, with a real bond with my Grampy (who I adored and spent much time with) My mother thought I wouldn't cope with an open coffin and she was probably right.

I would hazard a guess that although I'm sure the Queen was a loving great grandmother, William and Kate are good enough parents to judge what was right in this case. It wasn't like William and Harry at Diana's funeral, following their mothers coffin through weeping crowds.

Perhaps try to be less partisan? Any argument you have is destroyed by it.

The Duke of Kent isn’t ranked above anyone who walked who is in the line of succession (so anyone who walked except Tim Laurence, who isn’t in the line, to my knowledge.) He is also 86.

Timothy Laurence isn’t in the line of succession, but was clearly there because he is a male member of the Royal Family. This just adds credence to the quite obvious fact that the women didn’t walk because they are women.

He isn’t an equivalent. He’s a child.

The Duke of Kent ranks above Timothy Laurence. He has younger sons who could have represented him. And if the protocol is that only male members of the royal family can walk, then why didn't the York girls' husbands and Mike Tindall walk? If protocol says "no women" then Anne wouldn't be there either. You can't say women weren't allowed when a woman was allowed.

Tim Laurence walking was more of an anomaly than Kate not walking.

Yes, of course he does, I said that. People in the line of succession rank above those who aren’t in it.

Timothy Laurence was there because he is a son in law. Neither daughter in law walked. All of the adult three male grandchildren walked. None of the four adult female grandchildren did.

Princess Anne is the oddity. The norm, the Queen’s wishes, were clearly for her closest male relatives, and daughter who was bucking the trend, to walk. It’s so crystal clear that the men walked because they’re men and the women didn’t because they’re women that it’s bizarre that anyone’s pretending otherwise.

Imagine that Anne, Zara, Beatrice, Eugenie, Louise, Sarah Chatto, Camilla and Charles and walked. Would we really be saying ‘it’s obviously the King and everyone else are just those who chose to walk. The men have got young children to look after!’? Or would we be saying ‘hmm, looks like the women are walking and the men are getting driven’?

*had
*obvious that

For an edit button!

But if that was the Queen's wishes, then it has nothing to do with "protocol". If everyone and their spouse walked, the party behind the coffin would have been huge.

She chose her children, her cousin, the Earl of Snowdon as her sister's oldest child, Peter Phillips as her oldest grandchild, and William and Harry because they are the King's children. Seniors in rank and age, not sex or gender.

You don't know what would have happened if the eldest grandchild had been female, or if Princess Margaret's eldest child was a daughter, or if Charles had a daughter instead of a son.

It wasn’t lots of peoples decision thought was it.

I am 100% sure that William, did not consider the opinion of a few people on MN when he and his wife made the decision. William and Kate know their children far better than anyone here. He has more experience of being part of a huge public funeral. He has had time to process that, as an adult and what he thinks should have happened or not happened. He is best placed to make that decision along with the Mother of the Children.

"It’s so crystal clear that the men walked because they’re men and the women didn’t because they’re women that it’s bizarre that anyone’s pretending otherwise."

Totally. The fact it was just men (except Anne) walking in the procession is because of protocol and tradition. It's pure Victorian upper class funeral custom. Mid-C19th etiquette dictates that women of the gentry and aristocracy don't walk in funeral corteges. In the early Victorian period the women didn't even attend the funeral lest "being unable to restrain their emotions, they interrupt and destroy the solemnity of the ceremony with their sons, or even faint" as one 1870 book put it, and later in the C19th it still wasn't expected they attend, and if they did, they were to be seated in church before the coffin arrived, and they didn't go to the graveside. The Victorians felt the men could be relied upon to maintain the required stiff upper lip in public but the women wouldn't be equal to it and had to be protected and mourn in privacy.

Like other traditions with a similar history, it's choice today whether to follow them or reject them. None of us have any idea why the women in the Queen's family made the choices they did. Maybe those who didn't walk were happy that protocol gave them the greater privacy of the cars (maybe some of the men grieving their mum/mum-in-law/granny/auntie would have liked that choice too, who knows). Maybe it was the Queen's preference. Maybe they just didn't want to wear flats. Who knows.

But the traditional protocol that only male relatives walk in the funeral procession, is because they are men and because historically women weren't thought equal to it/were protected from it. Agree it's bizarre to pretend otherwise.

And the female spouses of the new King and Prince of Wales and the 9 year old second in line plus his 7 year old sister (but not other similar aged great-grandchildren) joining to walk behind the coffin in the Abbey, is about seniority and showing the people the succession is secure...it was a stare funeral, not a family's private farewell to granny, I doubt ivery much it was just about involving the children in saying goodbye, or coincidence that the two great-grandchildren involved were the second and third in line.

*sobs not sons

The other females are not the Queen's direct blood line.

You seem to be missing the point. The procession is for direct blood line surely?

The in the army you are first and foremost a soldier. Even engineers in the royal logistics corps and reme attend close to the front line of battle. Most of those matching though we're from infantry. So there you want the best fighters. Air force (RAF regiment excepted) and navy (marines excepted) less so.

"You seem to be missing the point. The procession is for direct blood line surely?"

Eh? Zara is as closely related to the queen (daughter's daughter) as Peter (daughter's son). Beatrice and Eugenie (son's daughters) are as closely related as William and Harry (son's sons). Sarah Chatto (niece) is as closely related as her brother David Earl of Snowdon (nephew). Sophie Wessex (daughter-in-law) as closely related as Tim Laurence (son-in-law). Only difference is the women are women. Also (excluding the in-laws) further down the line of succession because until George's generation it's male primogeniture (so again, only difference is they're women).

Well said. Exactly this.

I don’t think we’d be saying either of those things. Speaking for myself, I’d be saying ‘fair enough, but where are the rest of the Queen’s children and the Prince of Wales?’.

OP:

They could not walk any real distance in their ludicrous shoes!