Trooping the Colour is held on a Saturday in June on Horse Guards Parade in London, and it is the largest ceremonial event in the British military calendar: around 1,400 soldiers, 200 horses and 400 musicians, watched by the monarch.
The two birthdays
The parade marks the sovereign’s official birthday, which is not their real one. Charles III was born in November; Elizabeth II in April. The convention dates from Edward VII, born in November, who moved his public celebration to the summer on the entirely reasonable grounds that an outdoor parade in a British November is a poor idea.
Several Commonwealth realms observe an official birthday on their own dates, which means the monarch may have three or four a year.
What “trooping the colour” means
The ceremony has a genuine military origin. A regiment’s colours are its flags, and in the era of massed infantry they were the rallying point in battle — the thing you looked for through smoke to find your unit.
Soldiers therefore had to know their own colours by sight, so the flag was carried slowly down the ranks — trooped — so every man could see it. What is now pageantry began as a practical necessity that could decide whether a regiment held together under fire.
One battalion of the Foot Guards has its colour trooped each year, and the regiments take turns.
The order of the day
- Troops assemble on Horse Guards Parade from around ten o’clock.
- The monarch travels from Buckingham Palace along the Mall — Elizabeth II rode on horseback until 1986, and in a carriage thereafter.
- The Royal Salute, and the monarch inspects the line.
- The massed bands perform, and the colour is trooped through the ranks.
- The Foot Guards and Household Cavalry march past.
- Everyone returns to the palace, and the Royal Family appears on the balcony for the RAF flypast.
The bearskins and the standing still
The soldiers are serving infantry of the Foot Guards, in scarlet tunics and bearskin caps — see the King’s Guard. They stand motionless for extended periods in full dress in June heat, and every few years a guardsman faints, falls flat, and is carried off while nobody around him moves.
The instruction is not to lock the knees, which restricts blood flow, and to keep flexing the calves imperceptibly. It does not always work.
The balcony
The concluding appearance is watched closely for who is on it. Charles III restricted the line-up to working royals only, and the omissions were analysed at length in the press. It is one of the few genuinely readable signals the institution sends.
Watching it
Seats on Horse Guards Parade are balloted months ahead. The Mall is free and unticketed, and the two rehearsals in the preceding weeks — the Major General’s Review and the Colonel’s Review — are effectively the same parade with far smaller crowds and cheaper tickets.