NEW: What to know about Queen Elizabeth's Platinum Jubilee.
The picture is equally fractious in the Commonwealth, a loose association of 54 nations, mostly former British colonies, 15 of which still retain the queen as the head of state. That became one fewer last year
In what may be an attempt to counter this narrative of a family of white aristocrats ruling over its subjects, Sunday’s Platinum Pageant will feature Bollywood performers and an interpretation of the queen’s 1953 coronation in an “Afro Caribbean carnival style.” The queen actually reached her Platinum Jubilee on Feb. 6, exactly 70 years after her father, King George VI, died while she was in Kenya on a Commonwealth tour.
But here again, there will be evidence of the maelstrom that has torn through the royals these past few years. Absent from the tableau will be Harry, Meghan and Andrew — now removed from front-line royal duty — the queen will no longer have her husband of 73 years at her side.As night falls, 1,500 beacons will be lighted throughout the U.K. and its overseas territories, the largest of them at the “Tree of Trees,” a 68-foot sculpture outside Buckingham Palace by artist Thomas Heatherwick.