The crowds that had gathered outside Buckingham Palace during Edward’s final illness and in the immediate aftermath of his death had been drawn by a sense of personal connection they had never enjoyed with his mother. His extreme visibility, combined with his appetite for pleasures the majority of his subjects could understand, even if they couldn’t share them, had made him seem both accessible and modern: a suitable monarch for a new century that promised much in the way of change. Edward’s lying-in-state was conceived as a thoroughly democratic affair that would transcend religion, social
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