The King, The Contenders, The Landaus, The Royal Box

To say that the British royal family is practiced at public display is an understatement. Pictured above, the June 16 Royal Ascot opening-day procession, traditionally carried out in the open-Landau spring-and-summer carriages, each classically powered by a team of four horses under the command of two postillions, the first one of which in this image above carries King Charles III and Queen Camilla and their opening-day guests, the 9th Duke of Wellington and the Duchess of Wellington.

At precisely 2 p.m. each day this week the royal procession will strike out on its same route with a rotating cast of characters, titled and not, wending its way around the course’s oval to the Royal Box’s entrance. This year, Royal Ascot’s finale takes place on Saturday, June 20.

But Charles’ opening-day Royal Ascot guests, the Wellingtons, bear considerably more historical tradition than any guests, titled or not, in the landaus or in the royal box later in the week.

Here’s the background: King George IV instituted the first Royal Ascot arrival procession, designed for him by Sir William Wellesley-Pole, in 1825, a short decade after Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo. In terms of public relations, no moss gathered on George IV. Extravagant and chronically in debt – at one point to the tune of (in today’s money) 65 million sterling – George IV was mindful of public approval. Wishing to cement that by adding another dollop of genuinely heroic grandeur, the king invited the very first Duke of Wellington, the enormously popular field marshal and military architect of Napoleon’s lasting disempowerment at Waterloo, to ride with him in that very first Royal Ascot Landau to open the royal meeting. The kingdom and its press and thus the world could see the war hero and his monarch inextricably bound by allegiance to Britain.

Eight Dukes of Wellington and two very full centuries on from that 1825 procession, on this June 16, the 9th Duke rode, as each of his forbears did and as the future heirs to the ducal title will do, in the lead carriage with the king to open Royal Ascot. The two-century-old standing invitation to the Wellingtons is but a small cog in the British monarchy’s engine, but it’s emblematic of that engine at work. If by this late date anyone would need a Baedeker on how the monarchy has survived for a thousand years, it’s a fair detail to consider.

Pictured above, the Royal Box, with Camilla and Charles, center, facing the race course, and the Duchess of Wellington in conversation with her back to the course, far right.

“Horsier” than Royal Ascot is difficult to get. Out riding from Windsor one early-18th-century day, Queen Anne, Charles II’s niece and then the reigning monarch, spied a piece of her own heath that she thought would serve well as a race course. Having a course designed, she opened Royal Ascot in 1711, with a few races. Royal Ascot week as we know it was established as a four-day meeting in 1768, which, exactly two centuries after the course’s founding, King George V expanded to as a week-long meeting in 1911. Over the three centuries since the course’s founding, the course and its signature royal week have become the highlight of the British racing and social calendar.

Above, a closer view of Charles, Camilla and the Wellingtons in the lead Landau yesterday. The footmen are each positioned to spring to his side of the carriage to assist their respective passengers in disembarking, thus halving the queueing. The king and queen always face the direction of travel and will exit first; their guests face the footmen and will exit after the monarchs.

Mission Central, with Ryan Moore in the irons, ran a fine race to win t