President Joe Biden said Friday he will attend Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral.
“I don’t know what the details are yet, but I’ll be going,” Biden told reporters traveling with him in Ohio.
The date and subtleties of the queen’s funeral have not been set yet will be released “in due course,” as per Buckingham Palace. The funeral is supposed to happen within the next 10 days at Westminster Abbey in central London.
The queen will then be let go in St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle close by her mother, father and husband Prince Philip.
Queen Elizabeth, Britain’s longest-serving ruler, died Thursday at Balmoral Castle, her summer residence in Scotland, following 70 years on the throne. She was 96. Her eldest son and heir, Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, quickly became King Charles III upon her death.
In a statement issued soon after her death, Biden and first woman Jill Biden praised the queen for leading with “grace, an unwavering commitment to duty and the incomparable power of her example.”
“Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II was more than a monarch,” the Bidens said. “She defined an era.”
Biden has known the queen for three decades and has met her three times, most recently in June 2021, when she hosted him and the primary woman at Windsor Castle during their visit to the U.K. to attend the Group of Seven leaders’ summit.
After that visit, Biden told journalists the queen was “very gracious” and said he invited her to the White House. Biden said the ruler helped him to remember his late mother.
Queen Elizabeth met each U.S. president since Harry Truman, except for Lyndon B. Johnson. She met former Herbert Hoover, however it was decades after he left office.
Biden has ordered flags over the White House and other public buildings be flown at half-staff until sunset on the day of the queen’s burial.
