King Charles III addresses nation as he mourns with U.K.

LONDON – Britain’s new king, Charles III, addressed the nation for the first time as reigning monarch Friday, praising what he said was the “sacrifice” and “unswerving devotion” of his late mother, Queen Elizabeth II.

In a televised speech from Buckingham Palace, Charles pledged to “uphold the constitutional principles at the heart of our nation.” The United Kingdom began a period of national mourning for Elizabeth, who served as queen for more than 70 years and died peacefully at her estate in Scotland on Thursday.

Earlier, Charles and his wife Camilla, Queen Consort, shook hands with well-wishers gathered in front of the palace. Bells rang and a gun salute of 96 rounds, one for each year of Elizabeth’s life, paid tribute to the country’s longest-serving monarch.

In the coming days, the queen’s coffin will lie in rest in Scotland and then make its way to London, ahead of a state funeral expected in around 10 days at London’s Westminster Abbey.

The formal coronation for Charles, 73, will come at a later date.

The period of “royal mourning” over the death of the queen will extend until seven days after the state funeral, Buckingham Palace said Friday.

The statement said the date of the funeral would be confirmed later. It is expected in about 10 days at London’s Westminster Abbey, according to “Operation London Bridge,” a plan outlining the sequence of events that take place after the death of the British monarch.

The British government announced a period of national mourning until the end of the day of the state funeral to be held in London.

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday sent his “sincerest condolences” to Charles and the people of Britain after the death of Elizabeth. In remarks carried by the Chinese state news broadcaster, Xi noted that Elizabeth had been the first British monarch to visit China, in 1986, when she met with Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping and President Li Xiannian following an agreement that the British colony of Hong Kong would be returned to China.

Xi said he “attaches great importance” to China-U.K. relations and hoped to work with Charles to promote the “healthy and stable development” of bilateral ties. Xi met with the queen in London in 2015, a visit meant to herald a “golden era” of U.K.-China ties. (The queen was captured on video describing Chinese officials on that trip as “very rude.”)

Yet Beijing’s crackdown on Hong Kong since pro-democracy protests in 2019 has strained ties between China and Britain, where concerns over human rights abuses, Huawei and Chinese trade practices have contributed to hardening attitudes toward Beijing.

In Hong Kong, the flag at the British Consulate was lowered to half-staff and flowers were placed outside the building. On the microblog Weibo, Elizabeth’s death was among the top trending topics, with internet users noting the end of an era. Others pointed out that Sept. 9 was also the anniversary of Mao Zedong’s death in 1976.

In comments possibly aimed at Xi, poised to break with a tradition of term limits and continue his control over the ruling Communist Party, users wrote on Weibo that “those who should die have not died.” In a swipe at China’s strict zero-covid policy that has put millions of residents under lockdown in recent days, one user commented before the queen’s death, “The queen is under medical supervision and so are Chinese people. It is not the queen who should die today.” In his condolences, Xi noted that Elizabeth’s 70-year reign was the longest of any British monarch and had won “extensive praise.”

Among the many tributes flowing in for Elizabeth from around the world, one personality trait stood out to those who met her in person over the years: her sense of humor.

Catherine Clark, the daughter of former Canadian prime minister Joe Clark, recounted a colorful encounter with the queen at a cocktail reception in Vancouver, B.C., when she was 10.

As the queen entered the room, she apparently asked the young Clark: “Hello – why are you not in school?” Elizabeth laughed at her explanation that her teachers thought “hanging out with the Queen was a decent excuse to miss school,” Clark wrote on Twitter. Soon after, she recalled, she tired of the event but was told that no one was to leave before the queen.

Clark said she plunked herself by the door to wait, and when she encountered the queen again, Elizabeth asked: “What are you still doing here?” To which Clark replied, with all the subtlety of a child, “Well, I can’t leave until YOU leave.”

Thankfully for her, the queen apparently found the rather forthright remark amusing and said, “Well, let’s go then, shall we?” Clark recounted.

Another story doing the rounds on Twitter late Thursday, first recounted by her former bodyguard during her 70-year Jubilee celebrations in June, recalls the time an American hiker didn’t recognize the queen when they met in the hills near her Scottish castle at Balmoral.

Richard Griffin, who goes by the name Dick, recalled that the hiker asked the queen where she lived, to which she replied London – adding that she was staying at a holiday home over the hill. She didn’t mention that she was referring to Balmoral Castle.

The hiker then asked whether she had ever met the queen. “Quick as a flash she said: ‘I haven’t, but Dick here meets her regularly,’” her bodyguard recounted in a TV interview.

After grilling him on what the queen was like – “Oh, she can be very cantankerous at times, but she’s got a lovely sense of humor,” Griffin said he replied – the hiker asked for a photo with the bodyguard and handed the queen a camera. (She happily obliged.)

Griffin then took the hiker’s camera and snapped another photo, this time with the hikers and the queen. He recalled she said to him later: “I’d love to be a fly on the wall when he shows those photographs to friends in America and hopefully someone tells him who I am.”