It’s pretty safe to say most of us weren’t around when Queen Elizabeth II was crowned back in 1953.
But, can we turn to Netflix’s The Crown to get a sense of her coronation, and predict what her son King Charles III’s might be like? Most of the traditions do stretch back for centuries, after all.
The award-winning series covered the crowning moment back in the fifth episode of season one, with Claire Foy playing the late monarch at the age of just 27 years old.
The Crown won’t be including its own version of Charles’ coronation, as creator Peter Morgan has confirmed that the show will end with season six and stop covering royal events beyond the early 2000s.
So just how accurate was it with its first – and only – depiction of a coronation?
Westminster Abbey
Unsurprisingly, The Crown was not able to use the traditional venue used since 1066 – Westminster Abbey.
Instead, they used Cambridgeshire’s Ely Cathedral and filmed it all in one week, with many of the shots filmed from the perspective of the TV cameras who were – for the first time – allowed to film a coronation ceremony back in the 50s.
The regal outfits
There will be several outfit changes for Charles over the course of the ceremony, with most of the various robes and garments being the exact same items that his mother once wore.
However, these are not objects which are freely available for anyone to wear.
The Crown’s costume designer Michele Clapton told Vanity Fair in 2017: “We created all the dresses, the robes, the anointment gown, and it was just a huge task.”
Amazingly, she was also able to borrow an exact replica of the monarch’s white, satin coronation gown, which was commissioned by Swarovski in 2012 for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.
Charles, meanwhile, is expect to wear the Admiral of the Fleet outfit underneath his coronation garments.
Michele also recreated the cotton-linen dress which the Queen wore for her anointment. For the 18-foot crimson Robe of State, lined in ermine with gold lace, and worn upon arrival, they used faux fur with black dots on the white trim.
Charles will also be wearing a cotton-linen tunic for his anointing, like his mother, and the Robe of State upon his arrival into the Abbey.
The anointment
This religious part of the ceremony is traditionally completely private. It is perceived as a moment between the sovereign and God.
The Palace did not allow TV cameras to capture this part in 1953, instead performing the ritual of putting holy oil on the monarch’s forehead under a canopy.
But in The Crown, this moment was filmed.
Production designer Martin Childs explained: “The gravity of that moment was something that’s never ever been shared with an audience before, and we went in and did it.”
Don’t get your hopes up, though – for Charles’s ceremony, this probably won’t be caught on camera.
As for the holy oil pictured in The Crown? Martin told Vanity Fair it was Tesco’s finest olive oil. Charles, meanwhile, will be anointed with oil based on the same ancient formula used for the Queen’s actual coronation in 1953.
Coronation chair
The coronation chair (where the monarch who is crowned has to sit) is a pivotal part of the ceremony.
However, it “looks very beaten up” in real life with a “huge amount of graffiti”, according to Childs, so in The Crown, they chose not to recreate that element in their footage to avoid distracting the viewers.
Meanwhile, the Stone of Destiny was just a lightweight plastic, rather than 335-pounds block of sandstone from Scotland which British monarchs have been crowned on for centuries.
Both of these items will be used in Charles’s ceremony though – and the Stone of Destiny has been carted down from Scotland just for the occasion.
