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Queen Elizabeth II’s Coffin Takes Long Road through Scotland

Mourners paid tribute to Queen Elizabeth II as Edinburgh prepared to receive her coffin. Lesley Martin AFP
Mourners paid tribute to Queen Elizabeth II as Edinburgh prepared to receive her coffin. Lesley Martin AFP
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Queen Elizabeth II’s Coffin Takes Long Road through Scotland

Mourners paid tribute to Queen Elizabeth II as Edinburgh prepared to receive her coffin. Lesley Martin AFP
Mourners paid tribute to Queen Elizabeth II as Edinburgh prepared to receive her coffin. Lesley Martin AFP

Queen Elizabeth II’s flag-draped coffin slowly processed through the rugged Scottish countryside Sunday on a final days-long journey from her beloved Balmoral Castle to London. Mourners packed bridges and city streets and lined rural roads and highways, some tossing flowers to honor the monarch who reigned for 70 years.

The hearse drove past piles of bouquets and other tributes as it led a seven-car cortege from Balmoral, where the queen died Thursday at age 96, for a six-hour trip through Scottish towns to Holyroodhouse palace in Edinburgh. The late queen's coffin was draped in the Royal Standard for Scotland and topped with a wreath made of flowers from the estate, including sweet peas, one of the queen's favorites.

The procession was a huge event for Scotland as the UK takes days to mourn its longest-reigning monarch, the only one most Britons have ever known. Hours before the coffin's arrival in Edinburgh, the Scottish capital, people turned out early to grab a space by police barricades. By afternoon, crowds were 7-8 people deep in places, eager to be part of such a historic occasion.

“I think she has been an ever-constant in my life. She was the queen I was born under, and she has always been there,” said Angus Ruthven, a 54-year-old civil servant from Edinburgh as he awaited the arrival of the coffin.

“I think it is going to take a lot of adjusting that she is not here. It is quite a sudden thing. We knew she was getting frailer, but it will be a good reign for King Charles,” he predicted.

The first village the cortege passed through was Ballater, where residents regard the royal family as neighbors. Hundreds of people watched in silence and some threw flowers in front of the hearse as it passed.

“She meant such a lot to people in this area. People were crying, it was amazing to see,” said Victoria Pacheco, a guest house manager.

In each Scottish town and village the entourage drove through, they were met with muted scenes of respect. People stood mostly in silence; some clapped politely, others pointed their phone cameras at the passing cars. In Aberdeenshire, farmers lined the route with an honor guard of dozens of tractors.

Before reaching the Scottish capital, the cortege traveled down what is effectively a royal memory lane — passing through locations laden with House of Windsor history. Those included Dyce, where in 1975 the queen formally opened the UK’s first North Sea oil pipeline, and Fife, near St. Andrews University, where her grandson Prince William, now the Prince of Wales, studied and met his future wife, Catherine.

Sunday's solemn drive came as the queen’s eldest son was formally proclaimed the new monarch — King Charles III — in the rest of the nations of the United Kingdom: Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It came a day after a pomp-filled accession ceremony in England for that king that was steeped in ancient tradition and political symbolism.

“I am deeply aware of this great inheritance and of the duties and heavy responsibilities of sovereignty, which have now passed to me,” Charles said Saturday.

Just before the proclamation was read Sunday in Edinburgh, a protester appeared with a sign condemning imperialism and urging leaders to “abolish the monarchy.” She was taken away soon afterward by police. Reaction to the protest was mixed. One man shouted, “Let her go! It’s free speech!” while others shouted: “Have some respect!”

Still, there was also some booing in Edinburgh when Joseph Morrow, Lord Lyon King of Arms, finished his proclamation with the words “God save the king!”

Ann Hamilton, 48, said she thought it was “absolutely terrible” that people booed the royal family during the proclamation of King Charles III in Edinburgh.

“There’s tens of thousands of people here today to show their respect. For them to be here, heckling through things, I think it was terrible. If they were so against it, they shouldn’t have come,” she said.

Still, it was a sign of how some, including Britain's former colonies, are struggling with the legacy of the monarchy. Earlier, proclamations were read in other parts of the Commonwealth, including Australia and New Zealand.

Charles, even as he mourned his late mother, was getting to work at Buckingham Palace, meeting with the secretary-general and other representatives of the Commonwealth. Many in those nations are grappling with affection for the queen and lingering bitterness over their colonial legacies, which ranged from outright slavery to corporal punishment in African schools to looted artifacts held in British cultural institutions.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who had started laying the groundwork for an Australian republic after an election in May, said Sunday that now was the time not for a change but for paying tribute to the late queen.

India, a former British colony, observed a day of state mourning, with flags lowered to half-staff on all government buildings throughout the country.

Amid the grief enveloping the House of Windsor, there were hints of a possible family reconciliation. Prince William and his brother Harry, together with their respective wives, Catherine, Princess of Wales, and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, delighted mourners near Windsor Castle with a surprise joint appearance Saturday.

The queen's coffin was taking a circuitous journey back to the capital. On Monday, it will be taken from Holyroodhouse to nearby St. Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh, where it will remain until Tuesday, when it will be flown to London. The coffin will be moved from Buckingham Palace on Wednesday to the Houses of Parliament to lie in state until a state funeral at Westminster Abbey on Sept. 19.

In Ballater, the Rev. David Barr said locals consider the royals as “neighbors” and try to treat them as locals when they spend summers in the Scottish Highlands.

“When she comes up here, and she goes through those gates, I believe the royal part of her stays mostly outside,” he said. “And as she goes in, she was able to be a wife, a loving wife, a loving mum, a loving gran and then later on a loving great-gran — and aunty — and be normal.”

Elizabeth Taylor, from Aberdeen, had tears in her eyes after the hearse carrying the queen's coffin passed through Ballater.

“It was very emotional. It was respectful and showed what they think of the queen,” she said. “She certainly gave service to this country, even up until a few days before her death.”

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How Likely Is the Use of Nuclear Weapons by Russia?

This photograph taken at a forensic expert center in an undisclosed location in Ukraine on November 24, 2024, shows parts of a missile that were collected for examination at the impact site in the town of Dnipro following an attack on November 21. (Photo by Roman PILIPEY / AFP)
This photograph taken at a forensic expert center in an undisclosed location in Ukraine on November 24, 2024, shows parts of a missile that were collected for examination at the impact site in the town of Dnipro following an attack on November 21. (Photo by Roman PILIPEY / AFP)
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How Likely Is the Use of Nuclear Weapons by Russia?

This photograph taken at a forensic expert center in an undisclosed location in Ukraine on November 24, 2024, shows parts of a missile that were collected for examination at the impact site in the town of Dnipro following an attack on November 21. (Photo by Roman PILIPEY / AFP)
This photograph taken at a forensic expert center in an undisclosed location in Ukraine on November 24, 2024, shows parts of a missile that were collected for examination at the impact site in the town of Dnipro following an attack on November 21. (Photo by Roman PILIPEY / AFP)

On 24 February 2022, in a televised speech heralding the Russian invasion of Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin issued what was interpreted as a threat to use nuclear weapons against NATO countries should they interfere.

“Russia will respond immediately,” he said, “and the consequences will be such as you have never seen in your entire history.”

Then on 27 February 2022, Putin ordered Russia to move nuclear forces to a “special mode of combat duty’, which has a significant meaning in terms of the protocols to launch nuclear weapons from Russia.”

Dr. Patricia Lewis, director of the International Security program at Chatham House, wrote in a report that according to Russian nuclear weapons experts, Russia’s command and control system cannot transmit launch orders in peacetime, so increasing the status to “combat” allows a launch order to go through and be put into effect.

She said Putin made stronger nuclear threats in September 2022, following months of violent conflict and gains made by a Ukrainian counterattack.

“He indicated a stretch in Russian nuclear doctrine, lowering the threshold for nuclear weapons use from an existential threat to Russia to a threat to its territorial integrity,” Lewis wrote.

In November 2022, according to much later reports, the US and allies detected manoeuvres that suggested Russian nuclear forces were being mobilized.

Lewis said that after a flurry of diplomatic activity, China’s President Xi Jinping stepped in to calm the situation and speak against the use of nuclear weapons.

In September 2024, Putin announced an update of the 2020 Russian nuclear doctrine. The update was published on 19 November 2024 and formally reduced the threshold for nuclear weapons use.

According to Lewis, the 2020 doctrine said that Russia could use nuclear weapons “in response to the use of nuclear and other types of weapons of mass destruction against it and/or its allies, as well as in the event of aggression against the Russian Federation with the use of conventional weapons when the very existence of the state is in jeopardy.”

On 21 November 2024, Russia attacked Dnipro in Ukraine using a new ballistic missile for the first time.

She said Putin announced the missile as the ‘Oreshnik’, which is understood to be a nuclear-capable, intermediate-range ballistic missile which has a theoretical range of below 5,500km.

Lewis added that Russia has fired conventionally armed nuclear-capable missiles at Ukraine throughout the war, but the Oreshnik is much faster and harder to defend against, and suggests an escalatory intent by Russia.

Nuclear Response During Cold War

In her report, Lewis said that nuclear weapons deterrence was developed in the Cold War primarily on the basis of what was called ‘mutually assured destruction’ (MAD).

The idea behind MAD is that the horror and destruction from nuclear weapons is enough to deter aggressive action and war, she added.

But the application of deterrence theory to post-cold war realities is far more complicated in the era of cyberattacks and AI, which could interfere with the command and control of nuclear weapons.

In light of these risks, presidents Biden and Xi issued a joint statement from the 2024 G20 summit affirming the need to maintain human control over the decision to use nuclear weapons.

The US and Russia exchange information on their strategic, long-range nuclear missiles under the New START agreement – a treaty to reduce and monitor nuclear weapons between the two countries which is set to expire in February 2026.

But, Lewis said, with the US decision to exit the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 2019, there are no longer any agreements between the US and Russia regulating the number or the deployment of ground-launched nuclear missiles with a range of 500-5,500 km.

She said short-range nuclear weapons were withdrawn and put in storage as a result of the 1991 Presidential Nuclear Initiatives but are not subject to any legal restraints.

The 10th NPT Review Conference was held in 2022 in New York. The issue of nuclear weapons threats and the targeting of nuclear power stations in Ukraine were central to the debate.

Lewis noted that a document was carefully crafted to finely balance concerns about the three pillars of the treaty – non-proliferation, nuclear disarmament and the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. But Russia withdrew its agreement on the last day of the conference, scuppering progress.

“It was believed that if Russia were to use nuclear weapons it would likely be in Ukraine, using short range, lower yield ‘battlefield’ nuclear weapons,” she said, adding that Russia is thought to have more than 1,000 in reserve.

“These would have to be taken from storage and either connected to missiles, placed in bombers, or as shell in artillery,” Lewis wrote.

Increasingly the rhetoric from Russia suggests nuclear threats are a more direct threat to NATO – not only Ukraine – and could refer to longer range, higher yield nuclear weapons.

For example in his 21 September 2022 speech, Putin accused NATO states of nuclear blackmail, referring to alleged “statements made by some high-ranking representatives of the leading NATO countries on the possibility and admissibility of using weapons of mass destruction – nuclear weapons – against Russia.”

Putin added: “In the event of a threat to the territorial integrity of our country and to defend Russia and our people, we will certainly make use of all weapon systems available to us. This is not a bluff.”

There have been no expressed nuclear weapons threats from NATO states.

NATO does rely on nuclear weapons as a form of deterrence and has recently committed to significantly strengthen its longer-term deterrence and defence posture in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The current UK Labor government has repeatedly reiterated its commitment to British nuclear weapons – including before the July 2024 election, according to Lewis.

Therefore, she said, any movement to ready and deploy Russian nuclear weapons would be seen and monitored by US and others’ satellites, which can see through cloud cover and at night – as indeed appears to have happened in late 2022.

Lewis concluded that depending on other intelligence and analysis – and the failure of all diplomatic attempts to dissuade Russia – NATO countries may decide to intervene to prevent launch by bombing storage sites and missile deployment sites in advance.