CHANGING OF THE GUARD: Royal Tudor Beasts Replace Queen's Beasts

It has been a time in British history like none other: a farewell to seven decades of one monarch and the start of a long-anticipated new reign.

- L.A. SOKOLOWSKI

Buckingham Palace has announced May 6, 2023, as the official coronation day of King Charles III and a coin has been struck with his visage facing left, opposite (per tradition) the direction of the late Queen Elizabeth II.

Like the solemn exchange of one royal coinage portrait for another, so too have royal honor guards been exchanged: history has retired the heraldic figures known as The Queen’s Beasts, who protected their monarch’s entrance into Westminster Abbey. In their stead, The Royal Mint has cast a new coin series concurrent with a new king: The Royal Tudor Beasts.

FAITHFUL AND FIERCE

Having completed their honorary duties, the remaining figures in The Queen’s Beasts collection by Jody Clark for The Royal Mint deserve a nod for their timeless symbolism. These recast figures include a unicorn and much like that mythical beast, the greater the elusiveness of these pre-2023 coins, the more satisfying their hunt and capture will be.

THE UNICORN OF SCOTLAND 

Like the Lion of England (the first coin struck in The Queen’s Beasts series), the Unicorn of Scotland (the second coin) epitomizes the supporters of the Royal Arms not simply as a royal badge but as figureheads of the monarchy and the United Kingdom (including on British passports). The Unicorn and Lion were the first released in Brilliant Uncirculated editions to make them available to wider audiences and proved so popular they went out of stock.

THE RED DRAGON OF WALES