FOG BLOG ROYALS LOG: IN A CEREMONY TODAY, CHARLES THE III FORMALLY PROCLAIMED KING CHARLES III!

LONDON — While Prince Charles became Britain’s new king automatically on the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, on Thursday, his role was officially proclaimed on Saturday morning in a ceremony laden with pomp and procedure at St. James’s Palace, a Tudor royal residence near Buckingham Palace.

Charles will spend much of the first 10 days of his reign leading his country in mourning the queen, whose state funeral will be held on Sept. 19 in Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace announced on Saturday. On Sunday, six gamekeepers from Balmoral Castle, the summer retreat in Scotland where the queen died, are scheduled to bear her oak coffin to a hearse, which will transport it on a six-hour journey to Edinburgh. On Monday, the king is to travel to Scotland, where his mother will lie in state in St. Giles’ Cathedral.

First, though, Charles underwent a more than 300-year-old ritual by which Britain’s kings and queens are proclaimed sovereign. It was the first time the public was allowed to see the procedure in action, as the proclamation of King Charles III was broadcast live, weaving a bit of modernity into the tradition.

In the moving, solemn rite, dictated by protocol and echoing a bygone age, the Accession Council certified Charles as king, amid a number of other formalities. A striking moment came when a room filled with former prime ministers and other members of the country’s great and good declared in unison: “God save the king.” King Charles later addressed the room, and the nation, emphasizing his mother’s legacy and his commitment to continue it.