Nearly 100 people on Wednesday evening watched Queen Anne’s cortege arrive at the Royal Palace in Bucharest.
Around 20:30hrs, local, the cortege entered the gates to the palace to leaving speechless the curious lookers-on who came to take pictures of the cortege or just to witness the sad event.
Soldiers of the 30th Mihai Viteazu Guard Regiment took the coffin and carried it on their shoulders to the Hall of Throne
A Catholic prayer moment was held in the presence of the Royal Family, Crown Princess Margareta included, and Archbishop Ioan Robu accompanied by other clerics and Malta knights.
Women, men, children and curious passers-by, old and young members of the National Alliance for Monarchy Restoration started lining up the pavement before the Royal Palace immediately after the cortege departed the Peles Castle in Sinaia.
A mournful young woman who confessed she saw Queen Anne on television and read books about here voiced her admiration, “Her strength; her strength to encourage those around her, the King and her five daughters and to overcome absolutely everything! She was extraordinarily, overwhelmingly optimist. Her simple way of being would win you over,” said the young woman, adding that she loved the Queen very much.
A septuagenarian man said he is very upset because he cannot foresee the restoration of monarchy in Romania.
“I am waiting for the coffin to arrive. Tomorrow, I’ll be here and the day after tomorrow… I teared up when [King Mihai] abdicated. I am 79 years old and I lived to see him on the throne… They would impound our radio sets so that we may not hear the King’s messages from abroad. Dad died in prison… With monarchy, things would have been very good,” he said.
Chairman of the youth organisation of the National Alliance for Monarchy Restoration Tudor Visan-Miu says his presence at the sad event arises from “a double duty as a Bucharester and a Romanian to respect history.”
A man carrying Romania’s national flag with royal insignia said he came to pay a last homage to “our Queen.”
“Summarising 150 years of history is very tough. We can virtually say that the Romanian Monarchy created the modern Romanian state and led it to the peak of its development,” said a young man who identified himself as Andrei Berinde, executive secretary of the National Alliance for Monarchy Restoration.
He said he had the honour to meet Queen Anne, and he reminisced about the moment when, a child in 1994, he witnessed the arrival from exile of King Mihai at the Henri Coanda Airport of Bucharest. More…