As the eightieth anniversary of VE Day in World War II approaches, it would be easy to miss that there were also commemorations for World War I still going on.

The ceremonies carried out today in honour of the Gallipoli campaign were of a notably lower key, but still quite interesting.

The Australian & New Zealand Army Corps fought at the time as part of the British Empire under George V. Today Charles III is monarch of all three realms in separate capacities.

His Majesty put out messages relating to the anniversary, which the Royal Twitter feed illustrated with photographs and flags. The letterhead uses the new illustration of the British royal arms with the New Zealand and Australian flags (both containing the Union Flag in the canton) are displayed diagonally in the top corners.

The Palace also Tweeted links to separate messages for Australian and New Zealand veterans, but there is clearly a mistake in the Tweet as the New Zealand link is given twice. Luckily the Australian message is easily findable from that page on the website.

The Princess Royal, President of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, attended services in Turkey (where the Gallipoli campaign actually took place). While there it appears she left a note from her brother attached to a wreath. The card still uses the old illustration of the arms. I didn’t see the princess’s own banner flying anywhere. The Master of Ceremonies introduced her as “senior member of the British royal family” alongside Sam Mostyn as Governor General of Australia, Christopher Luxon as Prime Minister of New Zealand and Ömer Toroman as Governor of Çanakkale Province. He then moved onto introducing the senior representatives of each country’s armed forces, including First Sea Lord Sir Ben Key. That Britain had a specific national representative among the latter group but not the former implies by default that Anne must be representing the United Kingdom in particular**. When it came to the laying of the wreaths, Toroman went first representing the host nation, then Anne lay hers “on behalf of the British royal family” while Mostyn and Luxon lay theirs “on behalf of the government and people” of their respective countries. Wreaths for Austria, Canada, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Ireland, South Africa and the United Kingdom were laid by their various diplomatic and military representatives, Britain’s being Ambassador Jill Morris. The order of precedence is interesting – most of the countries listed are simply in English alphabetical order***, but it is interesting that “the British royal family” as an institution got to be in the special group higher up the chain while the United Kingdom itself did not. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation has been livestreaming the Gallipoli Dawn Service (and many others) for the past several years and the YouTube videos are still up, allowing one to compare the small variations in the ceremony over time. It doesn’t appear that Britain normally has any representative, royal or otherwise, among the first section of attendees, and indeed the Australian and New Zealand representatives are usually a bit lower-ranking than the ones who attended this time.

The Duchess of Edinburgh was the principal royal representative for services in London – both at Hyde Park and at Westminster Abbey. Getty has a photograph of the order of service for the Hyde Park event. It is a less-than-impressive affair, the title being typed in bold, block capitals Calibri font (the default now on Microsoft Office) and the illustrations of the royal arms of Australia and New Zealand, the latter (still using St Edward’s Crown) clearly being taken from Wikimedia Commons. The order of service for the Abbey event uses the same illustrations.

ITN’s Royal Family Channel on YouTube has, as usual, provided a great deal of raw feed. I particularly enjoyed the wobbly footage of the camera operator navigating behind the Abbey’s arches.

In the stream for the Hyde Park service we can see at 5:42 that one of the wreaths has two cards on it bearing the conjugal arms of the Duke & Duchess – two separate shields slightly angled beneath a single princely coronet.

These events also bring up an interesting conundrum about the use of national anthems in the Commonwealth Realms – at the 12:08 mark in the same video, it is announced that “…an Australian soprano*, a music educator based here in London. This morning she will sing the national anthems of the United Kingdom and Australia. I’m also delighted to welcome Lance Corporal Bryony Williams of the New Zealand Army to sing the national anthem of New Zealand.”

The British anthem used here is God Save The King!, the Australian Advance Australia Fair! and the New Zealand God Defend New Zealand! sung in both Maori and English. Trouble is, New Zealand officially has two national anthems, the other being… God Save The King! That same song is also officially the royal anthem of Australia. For the hymn to be used to represent one realm against another feels a little diplomatically questionable. Perhaps it would be better in these kinds of circumstances to use the royal anthem to represent all realms together and/or use an alternative patriotic song to represent Britain in particular – probably the best choice would be Rule, Britannia! The abbey service has the British anthem at the beginning then the other two at the end. The service also includes a prayer “for His Majesty The King; for the Governors
General of Australia and New Zealand, and for all who govern the nations of the world”.

A minor point to note here is that New Zealand’s High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, Phil Goff, was dismissed last month after making critical comments about Donald Trump. A permanent successor has yet to be appointed so Chris Seed, a retired diplomat, is currently filling in.

The ceremony at the Whitehall cenotaph was attended by David Lammy and therefore produced a dozen photographs on the FCDO Flickr feed which are able to be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. Sir Lindsay Hoyle also features prominently in these.

*Unfortunately the editing of the video cuts off the soprano’s name.

**Whether the multinational nature of the monarchy extends beyond the sovereign himself to the rest of the royal family is a long-running philosophical conundrum among Wikipedians and others.

***Ironically this tends to mean that the birthplace of said language comes at or near the end. I won’t rehash the tired joke about searching for Britain, Great Britain or United Kingdom on drop-down menus, but I will note this article by Michael Reiners for The Critic which was published coincidentally on the same day.