King Charles III was crowned Sat­ur­day at West­min­ster Abbey, in a cer­e­mo­ny built on an­cient tra­di­tions at a time when the British monar­chy faces an un­cer­tain fu­ture.

Trum­pets sound­ed in­side the me­dieval abbey and the con­gre­ga­tion shout­ed “God save King Charles” as the cer­e­mo­ny be­gan in front of more than 2,000 guests, in­clud­ing world lead­ers, aris­to­crats and celebri­ties. Out­side, thou­sands of troops, tens of thou­sands of spec­ta­tors and a smat­ter­ing of pro­test­ers con­verged along a route that the king trav­eled from Buck­ing­ham Palace in a gilt-trimmed, horse-drawn car­riage.

It was the fi­nal mile of a sev­en-decade jour­ney for Charles from heir to monarch.

To the roy­al fam­i­ly and gov­ern­ment, the oc­ca­sion — code-named Op­er­a­tion Gold­en Orb — is a dis­play of her­itage, tra­di­tion and spec­ta­cle un­matched around the world.

The rite was ex­pect­ed to by watched by mil­lions, though the awe and rev­er­ence the cer­e­mo­ny was de­signed to evoke are large­ly gone — and many greet­ed the day with ap­a­thy.

Some even met it with dis­dain. Re­pub­li­can pro­test­ers gath­ered out­side to holler “ Not my king ” for a cel­e­bra­tion of an in­sti­tu­tion they say stands for priv­i­lege and in­equal­i­ty, in a coun­try of deep­en­ing pover­ty and fray­ing so­cial ties. A hand­ful were ar­rest­ed.

As guests ar­rived, the church buzzed with ex­cite­ment and was abloom with fra­grant flow­ers and col­or­ful hats. Among them were U.S. First La­dy Jill Biden, French Pres­i­dent Em­manuel Macron, Cana­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Justin Trudeau, eight cur­rent and for­mer British prime min­is­ters as well as Ju­di Dench, Em­ma Thomp­son and Li­onel Richie.

Thou­sands of peo­ple from across the U.K. and around the world camped overnight along a 1.3-mile (2-kilo­me­ter) route that the king and his wife, Camil­la, trav­eled to reach the abbey.

At a tra­di­tion­al An­gli­can ser­vice slight­ly tweaked for mod­ern times, Charles, clad in crim­son and cream robes, swore on a Bible that he is a “true Protes­tant.”

But for the first time, a pref­ace was added to the coro­na­tion oath to say the Church of Eng­land “will seek to fos­ter an en­vi­ron­ment where peo­ple of all faiths and be­liefs may live freely,” and the epis­tle from the King James Bible was read by Prime Min­is­ter Rishi Sunak, Britain’s first Hin­du leader.

A gospel choir per­formed a new­ly com­posed “Al­leluia,” and, for the first time, fe­male cler­gy took part in the cer­e­mo­ny.

For 1,000 years and more, British mon­archs have been crowned in grandiose cer­e­monies that con­firm their right to rule.

These days, the king no longer has ex­ec­u­tive or po­lit­i­cal pow­er, and the ser­vice is pure­ly cer­e­mo­ni­al since Charles au­to­mat­i­cal­ly be­came king up­on death of his moth­er, Queen Eliz­a­beth II, in Sep­tem­ber.

The king re­mains the U.K.’s head of state and a sym­bol of na­tion­al iden­ti­ty — and Charles will have to work to unite a mul­ti­cul­tur­al na­tion and keep the monar­chy rel­e­vant at at time when sup­port for it is wan­ing, es­pe­cial­ly among younger peo­ple.

The an­ti-monar­chy group Re­pub­lic said six of its mem­bers, in­clud­ing its chief ex­ec­u­tive, were ar­rest­ed as they ar­rived at a protest. Po­lice have said they will have have a “low tol­er­ance” for peo­ple seek­ing to dis­rupt the day, spark­ing crit­i­cism that they are clamp­ing down on free speech.

A cost-of-liv­ing cri­sis is al­so mak­ing every­one in the U.K. poor­er, rais­ing ques­tions about the cost of all the pomp.

Charles has sought to lead a small­er, less ex­pen­sive roy­al ma­chine for the 21st cen­tu­ry. So this will be a short­er af­fair than Eliz­a­beth’s three-hour coro­na­tion.

In 1953, West­min­ster Abbey was fit­ted with tem­po­rary stands to boost the seat­ing ca­pac­i­ty to more than 8,000, aris­to­crats wore crim­son robes and coro­nets, and the coro­na­tion pro­ces­sion me­an­dered 5 miles (8 kilo­me­ters) through cen­tral Lon­don so an es­ti­mat­ed 3 mil­lion peo­ple could cheer for the glam­orous 27-year-old queen.

Or­ga­niz­ers this time short­ened the pro­ces­sion route, trimmed the coro­na­tion ser­vice to less than two hours and sent out 2,300 in­vi­ta­tions to world roy­al­ty, heads of state, pub­lic ser­vants, key work­ers and lo­cal he­roes. There were judges in wigs, sol­diers with gleam­ing medals at­tached to red tu­nics and mem­bers of the House of Lords in their red robes.

Heir to the throne Prince William, his wife, Kate, and their three chil­dren were all in at­ten­dance. William’s younger broth­er Prince Har­ry, who has pub­licly sparred with the fam­i­ly, ar­rived alone. His wife Meghan and their chil­dren re­mained at home in Cal­i­for­nia.

Built around the theme “Called to Serve,” the coro­na­tion ser­vice be­gan with one of the youngest mem­bers of the con­gre­ga­tion — a boy cho­ris­ter — greet­ing the king. Charles re­spond­ed by say­ing, “I come not to be served but to serve.”

The mo­ment is meant to un­der­score the im­por­tance of young peo­ple — and is a new ad­di­tion in a ser­vice laden with the rit­u­als through which pow­er has been passed down to new mon­archs through­out the cen­turies.

The sym­bol­ic peak of the two-hour ser­vice came halfway through when Arch­bish­op of Can­ter­bury Justin Wel­by placed the sol­id gold St. Ed­ward’s Crown on the monarch’s head. Trum­pets sound­ed and gun salutes were fired across the U.K.

In an­oth­er change, Charles has scrapped the tra­di­tion­al mo­ment at the end of the ser­vice when no­bles were asked to kneel and pledge their loy­al­ty to the king.

In­stead, Wel­by will in­vite every­one in the abbey to swear “true al­le­giance” to the monarch. He’ll in­vite peo­ple watch­ing on tele­vi­sion to pay homage, too — though that part of the cer­e­mo­ny has been toned down af­ter some crit­i­cized it as a tone-deaf ef­fort to de­mand pub­lic sup­port for Charles. Wel­by will now sug­gest peo­ple at home take a “mo­ment of qui­et re­flec­tion” or say “God Save the King.”

The pub­lic’s re­sponse to Charles, though, dur­ing the ser­vice and along the pa­rade route, is key, said George Gross, a vis­it­ing re­search fel­low at King’s Col­lege, Lon­don and an ex­pert on coro­na­tions.

“None of this mat­ters if the pub­lic don’t show up,” Gross said. ‘’If they don’t care, then the whole thing doesn’t re­al­ly work. It is all about this in­ter­ac­tion.’’

And to­day’s pub­lic is very dif­fer­ent from the au­di­ence that saw Eliz­a­beth crowned.

Al­most 20% of the pop­u­la­tion now come from eth­nic mi­nor­i­ty groups, com­pared with less than 1% in the 1950s. More than 300 lan­guages are spo­ken in British schools, and less than half of the pop­u­la­tion de­scribe them­selves as Chris­t­ian.

By DAN­I­CA KIR­KA and JILL LAW­LESS

LON­DON (AP)