Buckingham Palace announces unprecedented ‘Platinum Jubilee’ for Queen Elizabeth II next yearLONDON — Buckingham Palace announced its plans Wednesday to throw the boss — and her subjects — an over-the-top party next year to mark Queen Elizabeth II's unprecedentedly long reign.
In 2022, the queen is expected to become the first British monarch to celebrate a “Platinum Jubilee,” marking 70 years wearing the crown, having acceded to the throne in 1952 when her majesty was just 25.
If you thought the queen’s Golden Jubilee in 2002 and her Diamond Jubilee in 2012 were big — with their star-studded concerts featuring Paul McCartney and Elton John — this one may be bigger.
And yet, a note of caution: The queen is 95 now — and newly widowed.
By all accounts (leaks, guesswork, biographers), she remains in remarkably robust health, despite the stress created by her children (Prince Andrew, shunned for his association with alleged American sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein) and runaway grandson, Prince Harry, who — along with and his wife, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex — keeps doling out monetized tidbits of House of Windsor dysfunction to Oprah Winfrey..............
..............“There has been some slowing down for several years, but she is still very engaged,” BBC royal correspondent Nicholas Witchell reported on Wednesday.
But such elaborate events require months of planning, so the palace is working on the queen’s next jubilee. The show must go on, and the monarchy — rocked by ongoing scandals and new revelations of previous bad behavior — needs to get up onstage and perform.
Or, as Prince Harry recently put it, to display themselves like animals in a zoo.
To mark the occasion, and deploy its greatest instrument of soft power, the British government has agreed to a four-day holiday weekend, beginning Thursday, June 2, 2022, with the “Trooping the Colour,” which marks the queen’s official (not actual) birthday, when 1,400 parading soldiers, 200 horses and 400 musicians will set off from Buckingham Palace in central London and proceed down the Mall to Horse Guards Parade, joined by members of the royal family on horseback and in gilded carriages.
The palace says that the parade will close with the traditional flyover by the royal air force, watched by the royal family from the Buckingham Palace balcony.......................
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/queen-britain-platinum-jubilee/2021/06/02/ab67e98e-c396-11eb-89a4-b7ae22aa193e_story.html