Queen Margrethe to attend Princess Lilian’s funeral; funeral to be broadcast

The Danish court has announced that Queen Margrethe will attend the funeral of her aunt, Princess Lilian of Sweden, in the Palace Church in Stockholm on Saturday. At last it has also been decided that the funeral will be broadcast. SVT2’s broadcast will start at 12.40 p.m., while the funeral will start at 1 p.m. (not 11 a.m. as stated on the Danish royal website). The commentators will be the author John Chrispinsson and Roger Lundgren, editor-in-chief of Kungliga Magasinet.
Tomorrow Princess Lilian will lie in state in the Palace Church, where the public will be admitted from noon to 3 p.m. Her coffin, draped in the royal standard, arrived at the Royal Palace at 6.30 p.m. today, where the royal family, including Princess Christina and Tord Magnuson, gathered to pay their respects.
Princess Madeleine’s fiancé, Christopher O’Neill, has meanwhile arrived from New York to attend the funeral. (The tabloid Expressen’s notoriously unreliable royal correspondent Johan T. Lindwall yesterday ran his usual drama story of how O’Neill will not be allowed to be seated with his fiancée as they are not married, but as everyone with the slightest knowledge of court etiquette knows, fiancés are always seated with their betrothed at royal events).
Following the funeral service Princess Lilian will be buried by the side of her husband, Prince Bertil, in the Royal Burial Ground at Haga. The coffin will be driven in a closed hearse, followed by some fifteen other cars carrying family members. The cortege will go by way of Slottsbacken, Skeppsbron and Slottskajen, over Norrbro to Gustaf Adolfs torg, and then by way of Regeringsgatan, Hamngatan, Sveavägen, Norra Stationsgatan and Norrtul to the southern gates to the Haga Park. Soldiers will line the route from the Palace to Gustaf Adolfs torg.