And also why do they still exist? Can’t a regular soldier do the same thing?
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Others have mentioned that it is prestigious, but there’s a reason it is prestigious:
Because ritual and ceremony are important to people.
Getting married is really just signing a piece of paper together – but people have big fancy weddings for the ritual of it.
Graduating high school or college is also really just paperwork – you’ve checked enough boxes to be done. But people wear odd hats and robes and walk across a stage for the ritual of it.
Similarly, palace guards (at least the ceremonial ones you see) aren’t just soldiers in regular uniforms, like you see at an embassy gates or the like, but they’re soldiers with special uniforms and routines because it’s part of the ritual of having a palace and getting the prestigious position of guarding it.
(Having a “palace” is of course itself an exercise in ritual / ceremony. Even an American palace like the White House could really just an office building if we did t care about the ritual of it.)
Soldiering involves many stupid pointless boring tasks, often done in far worse conditions and with far less prestige than standing outside the King’s house in fancy dress.
Like others have said, the British ones are pulled from regular soldier units. Mainly the Grenadier Guards, Coldstream Guards, Scots Guards, Irish Guards, and the Welsh Guards. And when I say regular units, I mean actual soldiers who may be sent overseas into combat. Here’s a BBC video from 2007 of the Grenadier Guards in [Helmand province Afghanistan](https://youtu.be/4lIi0dZVdyE?si=4Xq8AfMezlbgicNn).
Also, when the guards units are doing regular soldier things, it’s not unusual to see units pulled from the Royal Navy or Royal Air Force [for Kings Guard duty](https://youtu.be/vIt41IDbJaM?si=WMUjgM508a8dRN9E).
When I was in college, I was part of a group that wasn’t military, but had similar stoicism rules and we stood at attention for extended periods of time like the palace guards. It boils down to practice. You can practice standing totally still for extended periods the way you practice anything else. We’d have to do push-ups if we broke attention while at our practices, and part of every practice was the new guys would stand there and the older guys would do the funniest things they could think of to try to get them to break. I’d wager that most Buckingham Palace guards are kind of an odd mixture of totally calm and extremely pissed off at the tourists doing the most basic bits during most of their shifts.
I think the longest I had to stand at attention at a public event was about an hour and a half. It starts to suck big time after more than an hour, but you can subtly shift your weight between your feet and bend your knees slightly to keep from totally going numb without moving too perceptibly. I think the Buckingham Palace guards do occasional patrols back and forth to get them moving a bit, but it might vary based on the post.
Replace “palace” with “ceremonial” and EVERY military has them.
The US has no palace per se, but has the Marines who guard the President, and the Old Guard who guard the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
France, Germany, Korea, the Philippines, and a zillion other countries without royal palaces also have them. They’re good for recruiting, they’re good for public relations, they’re good for tourism, and they’re good for morale.
Standing still sucks hard for my body. For what it’s worth, both today and historically, “decorative” guards are the exception, not the rule. Usually guard duty revolves around patrols.
I think most ceremonial duties like set the time they are on watch to something a bit more manageable like a maybe an hour max. So they may work a long shift but only standing there at attention for a hour or so at a time
I wasn’t a palace guard, but When I used to do honour guard and parades my focus was on the women in the crowd. Just watching the tourists and enjoying the women to be honest. Its always interesting just people watching. And you wouldnt believe how many times a woman put her phone number in my or my friends pocket.
As for not falling down. Its important not to drink the night before. Lol. That had me dizzy and falling over. Not good. That got me a night of guard duty. Some duties allow you to march backwards and forwards whenever you need to. Holding the rifle at rest can really ache after a while. So it’s nice to move it around between rest and attention and marching with it.
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I was at the Norwegian kings guards. We were standing guard for two hours, then four hours cooking, cleaning, sleeping, relaxing. After 24 hours another shift replaced us. The «off» day, we trained marching, shooting, etc. We did this for every other week. The other week we trained as regular infantry.
About the standing still part, we were well trained and quite used to it. When we felt the need to do so, we marched back and forth for a few minutes. If we had to stand completely still for a very long time, we could wiggle our toes without no one noticing to get the blood flowing.
Holding an assault rifle for two hours straight also gets a bit tiring, so we had altered between two positions. Rifle by the side and rifle on shoulder. Marching and changing weapon pisition was synchronized, so we had different cues to each other.
It’s very boring. Two hours are a long time in the middle of the night, when it’s snowing down your neck.
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