LONDON: On Remembrance Sunday, Prince Charles will lay Queen Elizabeth II’s wreath honoring Britain’s war dead as she watches on — a rare public symbol of the 91-year-old gradually scaling back her duties.
It will be a milestone moment in the otherwise imperceptibly slow-motion process, as her eldest son, now 69, increasingly steps up on her behalf.
Experts said Britain’s oldest-ever monarch would never consider abdication or even a regency by her son, having sworn to serve her people for life.
But Charles, the heir to the throne, will steadily take on more duties outside the core constitutional obligations of her job.
“A very great deal can be done to scale back her public roles progressively and informally,” Bob Morris of the Constitution Unit at University College London told AFP.
“There are ways of handling a lot of the public functions which don’t necessarily require the queen personally to undertake them,” he said.
“Remembrance Sunday is a very good example.”
The ceremony is one of the core annual occasions when Britons expect to see their monarch center-stage.
She has missed it only six times in her 65-year reign: twice when pregnant and four times when overseas.
Sunday’s service at the Cenotaph memorial in London involves walking backwards down steps and standing still for a long time in often chilly and damp weather.
Queen Elizabeth will be looking on from a Foreign Office balcony, alongside her 96-year-old husband Prince Philip, who retired from public duties in August.
“The queen wishes to be alongside the Duke of Edinburgh and he will be in the balcony,” a Buckingham Palace spokeswoman said.
A palace source suggested this would set the pattern for future Remembrance Sundays.
By joining her retired husband in this way, the queen opens the door to doing likewise at other events — and has set a precedent as to what she herself might do as she ages.
Some reports suggest she could eventually retreat into seclusion in Scotland, like her great-great-grandmother queen Victoria did after her husband Prince Albert died.
Queen Elizabeth’s official engagements have already dropped 22 percent from the 425 in her 2012 diamond jubilee year to 332 in 2016.
She has not made any long-distance trips since 2011.
Charles and his wife Camilla now do the bulk of such visits, such as their 11-day tour of four Asian Commonwealth countries which ended Thursday.
As the heir, Charles has for years been reading the red boxes of official state papers that are also examined by his mother, shadowing her work in preparation.
As Prince of Wales, Charles is outspoken on topics such as the environment, architecture, farming and youth skills.
His activism is partly fueled by knowing that his time is limited and he will be unable to do so as king.
Royal author Penny Junor, an expert on Charles and Camilla who recently wrote “The Duchess: The Untold Story,” said the prince was in no rush to become king.
“I don’t think Charles is itching to get his hands on his mother’s duties. He has a very full life already,” she said.
“He really enjoys what he does. When he becomes king, he can’t be so hands-on.”
Junor said it was the queen, not Charles, who was driving the process of handing over duties, and would progressively be “more and more realistic about what it is that she can do.”
Britain’s Prince Charles steps up as Queen steps back
Britain’s Prince Charles steps up as Queen steps back
Parrots rescued as landslide-hit Sicilian town saves pets
- Residents queued up at a fire service command point just outside the high-risk, evacuated “red zone” to be accompanied inside to rescue pets
- Some locals feed their animals but leave them where they are, because they have no place to take them
NISCEMI, Italy: Pino Terzo Di Dio was in tears as firefighters carried his beloved parrots out of his home, which has been cordoned off as his town teeters on a cliff edge.
They were the latest pets to be saved by firefighters from hundreds of homes that were evacuated in the Sicilian town of Niscemi after a four-kilometer (2.5-mile) long stretch of hillside collapsed.
“They are scared,” Di Dio told AFP, his voice breaking as the emergency workers carried the parrots — four cockatiels and a parakeet — out of his house in two cages, buffeted by the wind.
The town, built on unstable terrain, was battered by a powerful storm which hit southern Italy last week.
There were no deaths or injuries from Sunday’s landslide, but experts say the gulf could extend when it rains again.
- ‘Lost everything’ -
Residents queued up at a fire service command point just outside the high-risk, evacuated “red zone” to be accompanied inside to rescue pets or gather belongings from important documents to clean underwear.
Some locals feed their animals but leave them where they are, because they have no place to take them.
Di Dio said his bird feeders were full but one of the parrots “tends to knock the water onto the floor,” and feared they may have been without water for days.
The 53-year-old said he had been moving between friends’ houses since the disaster.
“It’s been four days that I’ve barely washed. I smell like a goat, but that’s fine,” he said.
All his attention was on the yellow and grey birds, aged between seven and 13, and where they will go now.
“Let’s hope that someone with a kind heart will take care of them. The important thing is that they treat them well,” he said.
“I don’t have a home, I’ve lost everything.”
- ‘Help us’ -
Firefighter Franco Turco said emergency workers had rescued “quite a few dogs, cats — and now parrots.”
The team was working out how to rescue horses in fields below the baroque town, where deep fissures caused by the landslide were complicating access.
In the meantime, some 24 firefighters have carried out 80 missions to recover belongings in the red zone, which extends 150 meters from the cliff face.
But not even they enter the 50 meters buffer zone before the edge.
Some residents “have cried, have hugged us,” he said.
In the same building as Di Dio’s parrots, a woman who did not want to be named pulled a shopping trolley and black plastic bags full of belongings out of the house and onto the street.
In her arms she carried a ceramic statue of the Madonna, which had once stood at the foot of her stairs.
“May the Madonna help us,” she said.
