London, May 6: King Charles III of the United Kingdom will be officially crowned on Saturday in a pompous ceremony that critics of the British monarchy see as the mockery of democracy.
The king and his queen consort, Camilla, will set out from Buckingham Palace at 10:20 a.m. BST (9:20 GMT) and travel through the streets of London in a six-horse-drawn royal carriage all the way to Westminster Abbey.
The official service will be conducted at Westminster Abbey starting 6 a.m. BST (06:00 GMT) by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The king and consort will be crowned side-by-side in the first coronation ceremony in 70 years.
The royal procession will go past Trafalgar Square, which hosts a statue of King Charles I, the 17th-century British monarch whose authoritarian rule led to his execution in 1649.
About 1,700 activists are expected to gather in the square for a Not My King protest. Republic, an anti-monarchy group behind the rally, told protesters to wear yellow to stand out in the streets lined with red-white-blue Union Jack flags.
Republic leader Graham Smith told the media they wanted to see the monarchy abolished and the king replaced with a democratic head of state. He described coronation pageantry as a vanity parade held amid a cost-of-living crisis.
Buckingham Palace has not provided its estimate of the costs but British media put the coronation price tag at up to 100 million pounds ($126 million). This is despite it being slimmed down to 2,000 guests from 8,000 who attended the 1953 ceremony.
