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The British royal family felt Queen Elizabeth II’s presence when five rainbows appeared over Balmoral Castle the day after she died.
The monarch passed away on Sept. 8 at her beloved Scottish estate. She was 96.
On Thursday, Kate Middleton and her husband, Prince William, met with volunteers and operational staff who helped organize the committal service for the late queen on Monday. It was there that William revealed that several rainbows appeared over Balmoral Castle the day after his grandmother’s passing.
“In Scotland, how many rainbows turned up?” the 40-year-old asked his wife at Windsor Guildhall. “You hardly ever see rainbows up there, but there were five.”
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Catherine, Princess of Wales in the Ceremonial Procession, after the State Funeral of Queen Elizabeth II at Westminster Abbey on Sept. 19, 2022, in London.
(Photo by Mike Egerton – WPA Pool/Getty Images)
“Her Majesty was looking down on us,” the Princess of Wales replied.
Rainbows also appeared at two historic U.K. landmarks in recent days, People magazine reported. Shortly before Elizabeth’s death was announced, a double rainbow broke through the clouds over Buckingham Palace. The outlet also reported that on the day before her funeral, another rainbow ignited the sky over the Palace of Westminster, as the queen’s coffin was lying in state.
On Monday evening, the late monarch was laid to rest in the King George VI Memorial Chapel alongside her husband Prince Philip, father King George VI, mother Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother and sister Princess Margaret.
“She had no wish to see a statue of herself or to even have a separate burial chamber within St. George’s Chapel,” historian Robert Hardman, author of “Queen of Our Times: The Life of Elizabeth II,” told People magazine in this week’s cover story.
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Prince William, Prince of Wales and Catherine, Princess of Wales arrive to meet and thank volunteers and operational staff on Sept. 22, 2022, in Windsor, United Kingdom.
(Photo by Mark Cuthbert/UK Press via Getty Images)
“As her cousin Margaret Rhodes once said to me,’ She wanted to make her father proud,’” he added.
At least 250,000 people joined the huge line to see Elizabeth’s coffin lying in state for four days in London’s Westminster Hall at Parliament, an official said Tuesday.
The figure was released a day after Britain ended 10 days of national mourning for the late monarch. On Monday, hundreds of world leaders and dignitaries attended her state funeral at Westminster Abbey, and huge crowds thronged the streets of London and Windsor to witness history and bid a final farewell to their queen before she was laid to rest in Windsor.
Culture Secretary Michelle Donelan said officials were still “crunching the numbers,” but estimated that about a quarter-million people joined the longest queue most have ever seen for a chance to file past the queen’s coffin from September 14 until shortly before her state funeral on Monday.
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A rainbow appears over Buckingham Palace shortly before the queen’s death was announced in London Sept. 8, 2022.
(Photo by Zuhal Demirci/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Many in the queue waited for up to 13 hours, braving the autumnal chill and spending entire nights shuffling for miles along the River Thames to pay their respects. The London Ambulance Service said staff and volunteers cared for around 2,000 people who lined up and took 240 in for hospital treatment.
More than 26 million people in the U.K. watched the queen’s funeral service on television, provisional figures show, making the event one of the country’s biggest-ever TV audiences. That compares to about 32.1 million viewers who watched Princess Diana’s funeral in 1997.
British media including Sky News reported that King Charles III and his wife Camilla, the queen consort, flew to Scotland on Tuesday to grieve privately.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
