No day has ever dawned that rivaled this.

It's the 2nd of June, 1953.

Beauty, Queen ship, Raymond Superb, her life outsourced the noblest fiction.

All of London is breathless.

Elisabeth II, all of 27 years old, is making her way from Buckingham Palace to her official coronation.

Banners and bunting hang from eaves across the city.

People have been camping out all night in the rain to make sure they have a good spot on the parade route.

Cheering crowds await her at every turn.

The young Queen rides in an impossibly ornate golden coach,

preceded by hundreds of horse guards and footmen dressed in their finest.

Her destination is Westminster Abbey, site of every coronation of a British monarch for more than a thousand years.

The Queen is anointed with holy oil, while surrounded by lords and ladies in their crimson velvet robes and ermine capes and clergy in white vestments.

Then she's presented with the royal regalia, the golden spurs of chivalry, the sword of state.

Is your majesty willing to take the oath?

I am willing.

She takes the oath of service, pledging to govern a vast but fading empire.

Will you solemnly promise and swear to govern the peoples of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland,

Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Union of South Africa, Pakistan and Ceylon,

and of your position and the other territories to any of them belonging or pertaining, according to their respective laws and customs.

I solemnly promise so to do.

At last, it's time for the monarch to receive the crown.

With Sundaywards crown, the crown of England, the Archbishop performs the simple yet the most significant ceremony of the Queen's coronation.

...