SSgt Dek Traylor/
UK MOD © Crown copyright 2023

The King has been presented with the Honours of Scotland at a Service of Thanksgiving at St. Giles’s Cathedral. There were many people waiting for King Charles outside of the cathedral, both to celebrate his coronation and to protest his reign. 

Thousands of well-wishers in Edinburgh lined the Royal Mile to herald the new King as he celebrated the beginning of his reign in Scotland after his 6 May Coronation at Westminster Abbey. They cheered the King and Queen and the Duke and Duchess of Rothesay as they travelled down the Royal Mile to attend. 

There were some protestors waiting on the Royal Mile to voice their opinions about the King’s celebrations in Scotland and his reign as a whole. 

Roughly 80-100 protestors from the group Republic chanted “Not My King” and held yellow signs with the slogan. The group of protestors included a Scottish Government minister, co-leader of the Scottish Greens Patrick Harvie. Harvie referred to the service at St. Giles’s as an “overpriced Game of Thrones cosplay exercise”. 

The Service of Thanksgiving in Edinburgh has been informally known as his “Scottish Coronation” but it was not a coronation as normally defined. The Duke of Hamilton presented The King with the Crown of Scotland but he was not actually crowned during the ceremony. Instead, The King touched the Crown as he made a promise to serve the people of the country.

The Honours of Scotland, often referred to as the Crown Jewels of Scotland, include the Crown of Scotland that was created in the early 1540s and was used to crown an infant Mary, Queen of Scots at her coronation, a sceptre that was created in 1494 by Pope Alexander VI and was given as a gift to King James IV, and the 1507 Sword of State that was another papal gift. 

In 2023, the Scottish Government commissioned a new Sword of State to replace the incredibly fragile sixteenth century sword. The £22,000 sword was named the Elizabeth Sword in honour of the late Queen.