King Charles’ Death: New Funeral Details Highlight Major Changes for Prince William’s Family
New details have emerged surrounding the plans for King Charles‘s death. The monarch must have a blueprint in place for the inevitable. Charles’s plans have changed significantly since ascending to the throne in 2022. How do these changes affect Prince William and his family?
King Charles’ funeral details affect Prince William
Robert Hardman’s latest version of his biography, Charles III: New King. New Court. The Inside Story contains surprising updates to the royal family’s future funeral plans, including their codenames.
Hardman discussed these important changes during an episode of HELLO!’s A Right Royal Podcast. Hardman said: “The fact is anything that’s going to involve thousands of troops, a large part of the police and all the other services and all the broadcasters and media, you’ve got to have a few plans.”
“With Queen Elizabeth II, planning began in earnest for her farewell a good 20 years earlier with what was known as Operation London Bridge. That was the title that the previous Duke of Norfolk gave to the funeral plans for the monarch, with other funeral plans for other members of the family, given different bridge designations.”
However, it appears Charles had one codename, and now has another. Hardman explained the shift in plans.
“So the Queen Mother, for example, was Operation Tay Bridge and the Prince of Wales [Charles] was Operation Menai Bridge. Menai Bridge is the bridge between Anglesey and Wales. And so that process has resumed, as one might expect,” he explained.
“But it was quite interesting to discover that actually the designation for the monarch remains Operation London Bridge and for the Prince of Wales is Operation Menai Bridge still. Whereas previously for Prince William, it was Operation Clare Bridge because Clare Bridge is a famous bridge in Cambridge, and he was the Duke of Cambridge.”
In his book about King Charles, Robert Hardman also shared the news that the members of Prince William’s family also had designated codenames upon their death. Their family codename is Menai.
Menai is the designated codename for William’s wife Kate and their three children Prince George, Princess Charlotte, and Prince Louis. “That would be the plan that within each family you’d have Menai I, Menai II, Menai III,” Hardman explained.
Queen Elizabeth’s funeral was planned as soon as she became monarch
Shortly after Queen Elizabeth became monarch on Feb. 6, 1952, funeral planning commenced. This was necessary to secure the monarchy with a carefully planned series of events that would allow the public to pay their respects in a way controlled by the crown.
“From the moment the queen became monarch, Whitehall started the planning process about what would happen when she died,” Philip Murphy, a professor of British and Commonwealth history at the University of London told the New York Times in 2022.
Although the first plans for Elizabeth’s funeral were first drawn up in the 1960s, their details were throughout the years of her reign. A meeting between the queen and different departments continued to refine the plans until the months before her death.
Queen Elizabeth died on Sept. 6, 2022. Her son Charles’ coronation took place in May of 2023.
