On Wednesday Charles III. and Camilla crowned a second time – in Scotland. Charles gets the Crown Jewels of Scotland.
Charles III (74) loves Scotland. Like his mother Queen Elizabeth II (1926-2022), the English king spends his summer holidays in the Highlands. While the Queen was looking for relaxation at Balmoral Castle, Charles and his wife Camilla (75) mainly used the Birkhall country estate, not far from the castle. Charles wears the kilt, the national garment of Scottish men, at every opportunity.
Next Wednesday this love will be crowned, in the truest sense of the word: Charles III. is also proclaimed King of Scotland in Edinburgh.
The Crown Jewels of Scotland
It is his second crowning in two months. On May 6th, Charles was officially crowned with the crown of the King of Great Britain on his head in London. Now he will be presented with the “Honors of Scotland” on July 5 in St. Giles Cathedral during a dedication and thanksgiving service. These are the crown jewels of Scotland: crown, scepter and sword.
The Honors of Scotland are among the oldest royal regalia in Europe. The 1540 crown consists in part of the gold circlet with which Robert the Bruce was crowned King of Scotland in 1306. The 1494 scepter was a gift from Pope Julius II (1443-1513).
The original sword also came from Rome in 1507, but because it has now become too fragile it was made for Charles III. commissioned a new The Elizabeth Sword. It is named after the late Queen. According to the BBC, the fine weapon that Charles is now being presented cost £22,000 (around €25,000) and was made by Scottish artisans.
The Queen spent a week visiting different parts of Scotland each year in early July. She resided in Edinburgh at the Palace of Holyroodhouse, the official residence of British royalty in Scotland, and received thousands of Scots from all walks of life. This tradition is continued by King Charles III. and Queen Camilla, who traveled to Holyrood Week to honor the close bond between the Crown and Scots.
The Scots and Independence
A good half of Scotland’s more than 5.5 million inhabitants see things differently. She feels politically and economically patronized and cheated by the English and would like to leave the union with England to form the Kingdom of Great Britain, which was completed by the Act of Union in 1707, in order to found her own sovereign state.
In a referendum in 2014, a majority of 55.3 percent voted against such a split. But the proportion of votes in favor of the vote has probably increased significantly since then, especially since the English voted for Brexit in 2016, while the majority of Scots were in favor of remaining in the EU.
The rivalry between Scots and English has existed for around 2,000 years, long before Scotland and England existed as separate kingdoms. As early as Roman times, Celtic tribes from the north often invaded the south, which was occupied by the Romans. The Roman Emperor Hadrian therefore had a 117 km long fortification built across the country from 122 to 128 AD to protect his troops from the “barbarians from the north”.
This Hadrian’s Wall was a kind of British Limes and stretched from present-day Newcastle in the north-east to the Solway Firth in the north-west of the British Isles. The ramparts, large parts of which still exist, separated the British Isles: England and Wales emerged from the Latin-influenced south, and Scotland from the wild north. The name comes from the Scots, a Celtic tribe who migrated from Ireland between the 3rd and 6th centuries and united with the Picts in 843 to form the first kingdom of Scotland.
William Wallace and the freedom-loving Highlanders
With the extinction of the Scottish Royal House of Alba, the dispute with the South began. The English King Edward I (1239-1307), known as the Hammer of the Scots (Schottenhammer), failed in his attempt to conquer Scotland militarily, but he succeeded in putting a candidate he liked on the Scottish throne and thus de to actually gain dominance. English nobles built castles in Scotland, the Scottish clans had to pay taxes and the freedom-loving Highlanders bowed to their hated neighbors from the south for the first time.
The result was uprisings and small wars – until 1297, the Scottish landed nobleman William Wallace defeated the superior English army in the Battle of Stirling Bridge and fought for Scotland’s independence. His story was filmed by Hollywood with Mel Gibson (67) as “Braveheart” (1995) and is still the epitome of the Scottish will to freedom.
In 1306 Robert the Bruce (1274-1329) became King of Scotland. From then on, the north was an independent kingdom, but it always had conflicts with England. In the 14th century, the Scottish dynasty of the Stuarts came to power, from 1603 under King James VI. also inherited the English throne and held the English crown for 100 years. In 1707 both countries were united – under English leadership.
Approach under Queen Elizabeth II.
Since then England and Scotland have been geographically and politically one, but separated by a history of more than 300 years of oppression, rebellion and uprisings, most of which were bloodily put down by the English. At times, Scots were even forbidden from playing the bagpipes or wearing kilts in order to eradicate Scottish nationalism. That didn’t work.
In return, the British crown under Queen Elizabeth II has moved closer to the Scots. She has never hidden her sympathy for Scotland, has always spent her summers in Scotland and instituted Holyrood Week.
She also had Scottish blood: her mother’s family came from the Scottish nobility. And about her father King George VI. (1895-1952) Elizabeth could look back on a direct descent from the Scottish King James VI. (1566-1625), who was crowned King James I of England in 1603 after the death of the childless Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603), thereby founding the union of the two kingdoms.
The Queen died at Balmoral Castle on September 8, 2022. After her death, her coffin was initially laid out in St Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh. Mourners from across Scotland lined up for miles to bid her farewell.
Her son Charles III. spoke of his mother’s “deep love” for Scotland when he visited the Scottish town of Dunfermline and its medieval Benedictine monastery, Dunfermline Abbey, the final resting place of many Scottish rulers, on his first official trip as king last year. The legendary King Robert the Bruce was also buried there. Charles has thus set a strong sign of solidarity.
In addition, the monarch wants to turn the Scottish castle of Balmoral, where his mother died, into a public memorial for the Queen, who is very popular in Scotland.