Arson. Bumbling bishops. A jilted spouse banging on the abbey door. These may sound like plot lines from “Days of Our Lives,” but they are actually moments that have punctuated British coronations throughout history.
Coronations at Westminster Abbey go back almost one thousand years. They have become a well-rehearsed, finely tuned machine. Yet, despite all the pomp and ceremony, there have been times when they have gone disastrously wrong. George Gross, a visiting research fellow at King’s College London and co-founder of the British Coronations Project, tells CNN that the crowning of William the Conqueror on Christmas Day, 1066, “sets the tone” for coronations ever since.
While mistakes are still made, modern royal occasions are generally more polished affairs. Gross says that, while earlier royal events were rehearsed to a degree, “there was a general assumption, largely because coronations were much more frequent, that people really knew what they were doing.” But, the thing that truly transformed the preparation that went into coronations was the advent of television.
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