The four children of Queen Elizabeth II, with her firstborn, Charles III, have held the traditional vigil for the body of the late monarch at St. Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh, a symbolic guarding of the body.
The new king, Princess Anne and Princes Andrew and Edward stood around the coffin, with their backs to it, standing guard around the body in a symbolic image. Shortly after, Elizabeth's four children left the place.
This is the first time that a woman participates in a traditional vigil, since until now this rite was reserved for the men of the royal family.
When Queen Elizabeth died in 2002, it was her four grandsons who kept the traditional vigil: Charles, Andrew, Edward and David Armstrong-Jones, the only son of Princess Margaret.
This tradition is formally called the Princes' Vigil. It was inaugurated in 1936, when King Edward VIII and his three brothers, Albert, Henry and George, surrounded the coffin of their father, King George V. Since then it has only been repeated in 2002 with the Queen Mother.