King and Queen Cheered by Crowds at Trooping the Colour

Thousands of spectators lined the Mall on Saturday for Trooping the Colour, as the King and Queen led the Royal Family at the sovereign's official birthday parade beneath a sky that, for once, behaved exactly as the tradition intends. Many had camped overnight to secure their places.

The King and Queen travelled in an open-top carriage from Buckingham Palace to Horse Guards Parade, cheered along a route dense with flags and camera phones. Behind them rode the royal colonels: the Prince of Wales, the Princess Royal and the Duke of Edinburgh, uniformed and upright on horseback. The Princess of Wales followed in a carriage with Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis, whose waves to the crowd were returned with considerable interest.

On the parade ground, the King received a royal salute before the massed bands and the slow, magnificent arithmetic of the trooping itself. The precision was, as ever, total. A 41 gun salute fired by the King's Troop Royal Horse Artillery rolled across the park, the signal that the ceremony had reached its ancient climax.

Trooping the Colour has marked the sovereign's official birthday for more than two and a half centuries. It began as a practical means of ensuring that soldiers would recognise their regiment's colour in the confusion of battle; it endures as something between a military tattoo and a family occasion, and it is precisely that doubleness that fills the Mall each June.

A balcony of future kings

The day ended, as it must, on the balcony of Buckingham Palace. A 31 aircraft flypast, led by the Red Arrows trailing red, white and blue smoke, roared down the Mall while the family watched from the most famous frontage in the country. The first King's Birthday flypast took place in 1913; more than a century later, the thunder has lost none of its power to lift chins skyward.

The symbolism of the balcony was not lost on the crowd. At the King's side stood two future monarchs, the Prince of Wales and Prince George, a living diagram of succession that no constitutional document could draw so clearly. For an institution that trades in continuity, it was the most valuable image of the royal year so far, and the crowd knew it.

A note of dissent, and the weather

Not everyone came to cheer. A small group of Not My King protesters held aloft pictures of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, who has been stripped of his royal titles, and were booed by some in the crowd. The police presence was discreet, the protest peaceful, and the moment passed without incident: a small footnote on a day otherwise given over to celebration.

The official birthday is a pragmatic fiction. The King was born on 14 November, a month in which outdoor ceremony is a gamble no organiser would take, and so the sovereign's public birthday is observed in June, when the odds of sunshine are at least arguable. The tradition has served monarchs for generations, and on Saturday it served this one well.

As the crowds drifted away down the Mall, the flags folded and the barriers stacked, the verdict of the day was already settled. The King had been cheered, the weather had held, and the oldest show in the royal calendar had done its work once more. The King, aides said, was delighted.