PARIS (AP) – French President Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday that his country would make a horse as a gift to Queen Elizabeth II to mark her 70th birthday on the throne.
The Elysee said Macron had decided to give the queen, a famous horse lover, a 7-year-old gray meran belonging to a mostly ceremonial French Republican Guard named Fabula de Macour. He was to be taken to Windsor Castle on Wednesday.
The horse was trained to carry the standard-bearer guard. He paraded on Paris’s Champs Elysees on May 8 in front of the presidential motorcade at a ceremony marking the anniversary of the Allied victory over Nazi Germany in World War II.
Macron will pay a formal tribute to the Queen on Thursday during a ceremony of lighting a fire at the monument to the Arc de Triomphe. He will lay a wreath at the grave of an unknown soldier in the presence of the British Ambassador to France Maine Rawlings. The national anthems of Great Britain and France will be played, Elysee said.
From Thursday to Sunday, Britain and the Commonwealth celebrate the 70th anniversary of Elizabeth on the throne – an anniversary known as her platinum anniversary.
Elizabeth, then 25 years old, became queen on February 6, 1952, after the death of her father, King George VI. Her official coronation took place on June 2, 1953 at Westminster Abbey, but her reign began at the time her father died.
Now 96 years old, she is the longest reigning monarch in Britain and the first to reach seven decades on the throne.
