Royal Army College

Lesson Overview

The earlier lessons of this course taught what a Colour is and how it is kept: a consecrated emblem that embodies the unit, its honour, its history, and its loyalty to the Crown, guarded and handled so that it never touches the ground and never falls. This lesson shows the Colour in its proper public act. A Colour shut in its place of safekeeping serves only half its purpose; the other half is served when it is brought out and shown to the soldiers, so that every one of them knows it by sight and would rally to it without a moment's doubt. That showing is the ceremony of trooping the Colour, the greatest of the Army's parades, and the subject of this lesson.

Here you will learn what trooping the Colour truly is and why it is done; where the ceremony comes from and what its ancient purpose was; how the Colour is received onto a parade, escorted, and trooped slowly through the ranks; the place the Colour takes at each stage of a parade, received, carried, marched past, and lodged; and the compliments paid to it as the embodiment of the unit. The whole rests on a standard of precision, bearing, and reverence higher than any other parade demands, and that standard is the real subject under all the movements. The drill of trooping, the exact pace and the timing of every movement, is mastered on the parade ground, in person, under qualified instruction; ceremonial of this order is certified in person and not from a page. What this lesson gives is the meaning, the sequence, the place of the Colour, and the standard the occasion is held to.

By the end you will be able to explain what trooping the Colour is and why it is done, give a short account of the ceremony's origin and its purpose of making the Colour known to the soldiers, describe how the Colour is received, escorted, and trooped through the ranks, walk the sequence of a trooping parade at the scale a small force can mount, say what place the Colour takes when it is received, carried, marched past, and lodged, explain the compliments paid to and by the Colour on such a parade, and describe the standard of precision, bearing, and reverence the occasion demands.

Key Terms

Trooping the Colour: the great ceremony in which a single Colour is paraded slowly down the ranks of the assembled unit so that every soldier may see it close and know it by sight; the public showing of the Colour, not a re-consecration.
The Escort to the Colour: the body of soldiers, found by custom from the right-flank company, that receives the Colour, attends and guards it through the ceremony, and troops it down the ranks.
Colour party: the Ensign who carries the Colour and the escort of senior non-commissioned officers who guard it; the small armed body in whose immediate keeping the Colour rests on parade.
Ensign (the Colour-bearer): the junior officer detailed to carry the Colour on parade, properly styled the Ensign or Colour Officer; not a rank, but an appointment for the day. (The same word also names a flag.)
Receiving the Colour: the phase in which the uncased Colour is brought onto the parade and handed to the Ensign, the parade paying it the compliment due as it is received.
Trooping through the ranks: the slow march of the Colour, escorted, the length of the parade and back, the soldiers presenting arms or paying eyes as it passes them in turn.
Lodging the Colour: the marching-off of the Colour under escort at the end of the parade, returned with ceremony to its place of safekeeping; the Colour is never simply put away.
Slow time: the slow, measured march used for the most solemn movements of a trooping, in which the Colour is carried down the ranks; quick time is used for the brisker phases.
Dipping: the lowering of a consecrated Colour in salute, made only to the Sovereign or to one standing in the Sovereign's place, and to no one else; flags are never dipped.

What trooping the Colour is, and why it is done

Begin with the thing itself, because the name misleads those who have not been taught it. To "troop" the Colour is not to consecrate it, not to bless it again, and not to honour some visitor with it. It is to parade the Colour slowly down the ranks of the assembled unit, close enough for every soldier to see it plainly, so that all may know it by sight. That is the whole of it, and the whole of its purpose. A Colour consecrated once in the unit's history is trooped many times across the years, at least once a year by long custom, for a reason that has nothing to do with display and everything to do with use: a soldier who has seen the Colour carried slowly past their own face, near enough to make out its badge and its fringe, will know that Colour anywhere, in any light, in any confusion, and will rally to it.

That last word is the key to the whole ceremony, and it is worth holding before any movement is learned. In the days when the Colour was a fighting tool as much as a sacred one, a unit in the smoke and noise of battle could lose all other bearings, the voice of command drowned, the line broken, the ground unknown, and still find one fixed point: its own Colour, carried high and held aloft, the place to re-form and the rallying point of the unit. But a Colour can only rally soldiers who know it. A soldier who could not pick their own Colour from another's at a glance would rally to the wrong one, or to none. So the Colour was shown, deliberately and regularly, paraded down the ranks until not a man in the unit could mistake it. That showing is trooping, and though a small humanitarian home-defence force does not fight in lines under its Colour today, the ceremony keeps its old meaning exactly: the Colour is made known to those who serve under it, so that it remains what it has always been, the visible heart of the unit that every soldier knows as their own.

Understand this and the dignity of the ceremony explains itself. Trooping is not a show put on for spectators, though spectators come and are welcome. It is the unit's own act, the unit showing itself its own emblem and renewing the bond between the soldiers and the thing that embodies them. Everything in the parade serves that, above all the slow pace that lets the Colour be truly seen. A soldier who grasps that trooping is the making-known of the Colour, and not a pageant, will bring the right seriousness to it; a soldier who thinks it mere spectacle will perform the movements and miss the meaning they are paid to carry.

Where the ceremony comes from

The ceremony has a plain and practical origin, and knowing it fixes the meaning better than any definition. In the older armies, before a unit marched out, the Colours were carried, or "trooped", down the line of the assembled soldiers by the escort, slowly and ceremoniously, so that every soldier present should see the Colours of the day and know them. The need was real and immediate: in the confusion of a march or a battle, with units intermingled and command hard to pass, a soldier had to be able to recognise their own Colour instantly, because it was where they would form, where they would rally, and where, in the worst case, they would make their stand. The trooping was the means of teaching it, repeated until the recognition was certain.

From that practical drill grew the ceremony as it is kept today. The word "trooping" is itself the old word for this parading of the Colour down the assembled troops, and it has carried its meaning unchanged into the Commonwealth tradition the Royal Kaharagian Army keeps. The Sovereign's birthday parade in the Commonwealth manner, the grandest occasion on which a Colour is trooped, is the direct descendant of that battlefield necessity, grown into the highest ceremony of the soldier's year. The Royal Kaharagian Army, founded in 2010 and small, does not pretend to the scale of the great trooping parades, and it should not. But the meaning is the same at every scale, and a single Colour trooped before a single assembled company on an ordinary square keeps the ancient purpose as truly as the largest parade in any capital: that the soldiers should see their Colour, and know it, and be able to rally to it.

A word of honesty belongs here, in keeping with the temper of this whole course. The Army claims no long history of trooping, because it has no long history at all; it has the present standard, kept exactly. What it troops is its real Colour, consecrated once and bearing an honour scroll still empty because no honour has yet been earned, and it troops it for the real reason, that its soldiers should know it. There is honour enough in that, and no need to borrow grandeur the Army has not yet lived.

How the Colour is received, escorted, and trooped

A trooping parade is, in its bones, a parade of the kind the Drill and Ceremonial course taught: a body formed up, dressed, brought to attention, and moved through phases on the word of command. What sets it apart is that one phase is given wholly to the Colour, and the Colour, with its escort, becomes the moving heart of the whole. Three things happen to the Colour in turn, and a soldier should hold the order of them: it is received, it is trooped through the ranks, and at the end it is lodged. The compliments paid throughout were set out in the earlier lesson on the Colours and are returned to below; here the movement is the matter.

The Colour is first received. It does not begin the parade in the ranks; it is brought on. By custom the Escort to the Colour, the body that will attend and guard it, is found from the right-flank company, the place of honour in the line, and it is this escort that goes to fetch the Colour and bring it onto the parade. The Colour is carried on cased or borne carefully, then uncased with ceremony, and handed to the Ensign, the junior officer detailed as Colour Officer to carry it for the day. From the moment it is in his hand he is responsible for it absolutely, and it does not leave his charge until it is lodged again at the day's end. As the Colour is received and uncovered, the parade pays it the compliment due to it, presenting arms or paying eyes as the order directs, because the Colour has now joined the parade as the embodiment of the unit and is honoured as such from the instant it appears.

The Colour, in the Ensign's hand and ringed by its escort, is then trooped through the ranks. This is the heart of the ceremony and the slowest, most solemn movement of the day. The parade is drawn up in line; the Colour party, in slow time, the slow and measured march reserved for the gravest movements, is marched the length of the assembled ranks, close along the front, so that the Colour passes within plain sight of every soldier in turn. As it comes before each part of the line, the soldiers there pay it their compliment, formed bodies presenting arms or turning eyes toward it, so that the Colour moves down the parade in a travelling wave of salutes, honoured by each soldier as it reaches them. The slow pace is not for grandeur but for use: it is what lets the Colour be truly seen, studied, and fixed in memory, which is the entire object of the trooping. When the Colour has passed down the ranks and, by custom, back, every soldier on parade has seen it close and knows it, and the old purpose of the ceremony is fulfilled before their eyes.

Around the Colour through all of this stands its escort, the Colour party proper: the Ensign who carries it and the senior non-commissioned officers detailed to guard it, the steadiest ranks of the unit, into whose keeping the Colour is given because they are the most trusted. They are armed, with bayonets fixed and the points sheathed so that no blade can tear the silk, and they keep a higher standard than the rest of the parade throughout. The Colour party stays covered and keeps its bayonets fixed even where the rest of the parade might uncover or unfix, because the guard of the Colour never stands down while the Colour is on parade. They move with it, flank it, and follow it, and their bearing is the bearing the whole parade is measured against. The figure below sets out the disposition of the Colour party as it troops down the ranks.

   THE COLOUR PARTY TROOPING THE COLOUR DOWN THE RANKS  (in slow time)

                   FRONT (the assembled unit, in line, presenting arms)

   x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x   <- FRONT RANK
   x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x   <- CENTRE RANK
   x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x   <- REAR RANK

        the Colour party moves slowly along the front  ----->

                         [SNCO]                                <- escort (right)
                            |
                        ====#====   <- THE COLOUR (on its pike, in the
                            |           Ensign's hand, carried at the carry)
                         [ENS]        <- the ENSIGN (junior officer, Colour Officer)
                            |
                         [SNCO]                                <- escort (left)

   bayonets FIXED, points SHEATHED        Colour party stays COVERED throughout
   escort = the steadiest SNCOs           the guard of the Colour never stands down

   The Colour passes within sight of every soldier in turn, so that all
   may see it close and KNOW it.  As it reaches each part of the line,
   that part pays it its compliment.  That is the whole object of trooping.

Figure 1. The disposition of the Colour party as the Colour is trooped down the ranks. The Ensign carries the Colour, ringed by an escort of senior non-commissioned officers with bayonets fixed and sheathed; the party moves slowly along the front of the assembled unit so that every soldier sees the Colour close. The exact pace, spacing, and timing are mastered on the parade ground; the disposition and its purpose are learned here.

The sequence of a trooping parade at the scale a small force can mount

The great trooping parades of the Commonwealth are vast affairs, of many companies, massed bands, and mounted escorts, and the Royal Kaharagian Army neither mounts them nor pretends to. But the ceremony does not depend on scale. A single Colour, trooped before a single assembled company on an ordinary square, by an escort, an Ensign, and a small Colour party, keeps the whole meaning of the occasion. What follows is the sequence at that honest scale, a chain of phases each opened by a word of command and owned by a role, exactly as the formal parade was taught in the Drill and Ceremonial course, with the trooping of the Colour set as its solemn centre.

One: form up and dress. The markers are placed, the unit falls in on them in line, three ranks, and is dressed by the right until ranks and files are exactly straight, then stood at ease to await the parade. The Escort to the Colour is told off from the right-flank company. The parade is built true on the ground before anything else is done.

Two: receive the reviewing officer and salute. On the approach of the reviewing officer, who takes the parade in the Sovereign's name unless the Sovereign is himself present, the parade is brought to attention as one and renders the salute together, the general salute, or the royal salute with the National Anthem if the Sovereign or a vice-regal representative is being received. This is the parade's formal welcome, paid by the whole body before the Colour is brought on.

Three: receive the Colour. The Escort marches off, fetches the Colour, and brings it onto the parade; the Colour is uncased and handed to the Ensign. As it is received and uncovered the parade presents arms to it, honouring the Colour as the embodiment of the unit from the moment it appears. The Colour has now joined the parade and is the centre of all that follows.

Four: troop the Colour through the ranks. This is the heart of the parade. The Colour party, in slow time, troops the Colour the length of the assembled ranks and back, close along the front, each part of the line paying its compliment as the Colour reaches it, so that every soldier sees the Colour close and knows it. This phase is unhurried by design; it is the whole reason the parade is held, and it is not rushed for the convenience of spectators or the clock.

Five: the march past. The Colour, having been shown to the unit, now takes its place at the head of it, and the parade changes from line into column and marches past the saluting dais. The Colour is carried in the march past at the post of honour, and as it comes level with the dais, on the order "eyes right", the soldiers turn their heads toward the reviewing officer, the marching salute of the body, while the Colour itself is carried past with the unit it embodies. The march past may be in quick time or, on the most solemn occasions, in slow time.

Six: advance in review order and the salute. The parade re-forms in line facing the dais, advances in review order, and renders the final salute as one, general or royal as the occasion requires. The Colour is on parade for this last great compliment, carried at the post of honour as the unit pays its formal close.

Seven: lodge the Colour and march off. The reviewing officer departs, the Colour is marched off under its escort and lodged with ceremony in its place of safekeeping, and the parade is brought once more to attention and marched off the ground in column, or formally dismissed. The Colour is never merely put away at the end; it is escorted off and lodged with the same care it was received, and the parade ends under command and in order, never trailing away.

   THE SEQUENCE OF A TROOPING PARADE  (at the scale a small force can mount)

   PHASE                         OPENED BY (command)        THE COLOUR IS...
   ---------------------------   ------------------------   --------------------
   1. Form up and dress          "Fall in" / "Right dress"  not yet on parade
   2. Receive officer + salute   "General salute,           not yet on parade
                                  present arms"
   3. RECEIVE the Colour         (Escort fetches; Colour    RECEIVED  (presented
                                  uncased to the Ensign)     arms to it)
   4. TROOP the Colour           (Colour party, SLOW TIME,  CARRIED slowly down
      through the ranks           down the ranks and back)   the ranks - the HEART
   5. The march past             "Eyes right"               MARCHED PAST, at the
                                                             post of honour
   6. Advance in review + salute "Advance in review         on parade for the
                                  order" + the salute        final salute
   7. LODGE the Colour +         (Escort marches it off)    LODGED with ceremony,
      march off                  "March off" / "Dismiss"     then the parade goes

   In LINE for phases 1, 2, 4, 6 (to be seen and to show the Colour);
   in COLUMN for phase 5 and the march-off (to move).
   The trooping itself (phase 4) is the reason the whole parade is held.

Figure 2. The sequence of a trooping parade and the place the Colour takes at each phase. The Colour is received onto the parade, trooped slowly through the ranks so all may know it, carried in the march past and the final salute at the post of honour, and lodged with ceremony at the end. The drill of each phase is certified on the parade ground; the sequence and the place of the Colour are learned here.

The place of the Colour on parade, and the compliments paid to it

Through the whole parade the Colour holds a single, unbroken place: it is the embodiment of the unit, present in person, and it is treated accordingly from the moment it is received to the moment it is lodged. A soldier should be able to say what that place is at each stage, because the Colour's standing never lapses while it is out, and the compliments follow from it.

When the Colour is received, it is honoured as it appears: the parade presents arms to it, paying the Colour the compliment due to the unit it embodies. This is the first compliment of the Colour's day, and it marks the moment the unit's emblem joins the unit's parade. When the Colour is carried, whether trooped down the ranks or borne in the column, it takes the post of honour and is guarded by its escort, and the soldiers it passes pay it their compliment in turn, formed bodies presenting arms or paying eyes toward it. When the Colour is marched past the dais, it is carried at the head of the unit it embodies, sharing in the eyes-right the unit pays the reviewing officer. When the Colour is lodged, it is escorted off and returned to safekeeping with ceremony, honoured at its departure as it was at its arrival. At no point is the Colour handled casually, set down for convenience, or left unguarded, because at no point does it cease to be the unit made visible.

Two halves of the compliment must be held apart, because they are easily run together and are not the same thing, as the earlier lesson on the Colours set out in full. The Colour receives the salute, and in one case only it renders one. It receives the salute as the embodiment of the unit: soldiers salute it, formed bodies present arms or pay eyes toward it, and the honour paid is paid not to a piece of cloth but to the unit, its service, and its loyalty to the Crown, all gathered into the Colour. The salute paid to the Colour is a salute to the unit itself. The Colour renders a compliment in one strict case alone: it dips, the Ensign lowering the pike from the upright so that the Colour itself bows. Here is the firm canon on which ceremonial is most often got wrong and on which this course does not waver: the Colour dips only to the Sovereign, to H.R.H. The Prince of Kaharagia, or to a regent or vice-regal representative standing in the Sovereign's place, and to no other person whatever their rank or distinction. It is not dipped to a senior officer, not to a visiting head of state, not to any honoured guest. On a trooping parade taken by a reviewing officer who is not the Sovereign, the Colour does not dip at all; it is carried, paraded, and honoured, but it bows to no one but the Crown. The reason is the reason the Colour exists: it embodies the unit's loyalty to the Crown, and it lowers that loyalty to the Crown alone.

   ON A TROOPING PARADE, DOES THE COLOUR DIP?

   The reviewing officer is the Sovereign (The Prince) ....... YES  (dipped)
   The reviewing officer is a regent / vice-regal
     representative standing in the Sovereign's place ........ YES  (he stands
                                                                    for the Crown)

   The reviewing officer is a senior officer ................. NO
   The reviewing officer is a visiting dignitary ............. NO
   The parade is taken by anyone who is not the Sovereign .... NO

   The Colour is still RECEIVED, TROOPED, and HONOURED throughout;
   it simply does not DIP except to the Crown.
   A FLAG / ENSIGN dips ...................................... NEVER, to anyone.

Figure 3. The dipping of the Colour on a trooping parade. The Colour is paraded and honoured at every parade, but it dips only when the Sovereign, or one standing in the Sovereign's place, takes the salute; to every other reviewing officer it is carried without dipping. Flags are never dipped at all. The canon is held here; the movement is certified in person.

The standard the occasion demands

Of all the parades the Army mounts, the trooping of the Colour is held to the highest standard, and a soldier should understand why before learning to meet it. The reason is not that more people watch, though they may; it is that the Colour is on parade, and the Colour is the unit's honour made visible. A loose movement on an ordinary drill parade is a fault; a loose movement before the Colour is a fault paid in the sight of the thing the parade exists to honour. The standard rises to meet the occasion because the occasion is the unit honouring its own emblem, and nothing slack is fitting in that company.

Three demands fall on every participant, and they are the demands of all ceremonial raised to their highest pitch. The first is precision: every movement exact, every pace the regulated length, every soldier in step, the dressing true, the timing fixed so that the body moves as one. On a trooping parade the slow time of the trooping itself exposes the smallest error, because slowness shows everything; there is no briskness to hide a fault behind. The second is bearing: the stillness, the steadiness, the carriage of a soldier who knows what they are about and is proud to be doing it. The Colour party in particular keeps a bearing above the rest, armed and covered when others relax, because they carry and guard the unit's emblem and are watched as its keepers. The third, and the one that gives the other two their meaning, is reverence: the inward seriousness that knows the Colour for what it is and treats it so, not as a prop in a display but as the consecrated embodiment of the unit. A soldier may have precision and bearing without reverence, and the parade will look correct and mean nothing; with reverence the same movements become what they are for, the unit doing honour to its own heart.

This last is why the course teaches the meaning before the movement. The reverence is not in the drill; it is in knowing what the drill is paid to. A soldier who understands that the Colour being trooped is the unit made visible, shown to its own soldiers so they may know it and rally to it, will bring to the parade a seriousness that no amount of drilling could instil on its own, and that seriousness will show in every still rank and every exact pace. The precision and the bearing are learned and perfected on the parade ground, where the drill of trooping is mastered and certified in person; the reverence is learned here, in understanding the Colour, and it is the reverence that makes the precision worth having.

In Practice: The Annual Trooping at the Company Square

A company of the Royal Kaharagian Army is to troop its Colour, as it does once each year, on the square of its garrison, and a sergeant detailed to the Escort to the Colour prepares the soldiers under him for it. He tells them first what they are about to do and why, because he has learned that soldiers who know the reason hold the standard better than soldiers who only know the steps. They will not be consecrating the Colour, he says; that was done once, years ago, and is never done again. They will be trooping it, parading it slowly down the ranks so that every soldier on the square sees it close and knows it, which is the whole reason the ceremony exists, kept from the old days when a unit had to know its own Colour in the smoke of a fight to rally to it. The Army does not fight under its Colour in lines today, he tells them, but the meaning has not changed: a soldier who has seen the Colour pass within a pace of their face will know it anywhere, and that knowing is what the parade is for.

Then he drills them on their part, which is the keeping of the Colour while it is trooped. They are the escort, he says, and the escort is found from the right-flank company because that is the place of honour, and they are chosen because they are trusted. On the day they will fetch the Colour, see it uncased and handed to the Ensign, and then troop it down the ranks in slow time, ringed about it, bayonets fixed and points sheathed so no blade can touch the silk. They will stay covered and keep their bayonets fixed though the rest of the parade may not, because the guard of the Colour never stands down while the Colour is out. He warns them that the slow time will show every fault they have, that there is no hiding a late pace or a crooked dressing when the body moves that slowly before the unit's own emblem, and that this is exactly why the standard must be exact. He tells them the one thing they must never get wrong: the reviewing officer this year is not the Sovereign, and so the Colour will not dip, will bow to no one, because the Colour dips to The Prince alone and to no lesser person however honoured. And he tells them what the trooping is really for, beneath all the drill: that when it is done, every soldier on that square, themselves included, will know their Colour by sight and would rally to it without a thought, which is the whole of what a Colour is and the whole of why it is shown. They troop it the better for knowing it.

Check Your Understanding

Explain what it means to troop the Colour, and say plainly why it is done. What is the ancient purpose the ceremony preserves, and why does the lesson say that trooping is the unit's own act rather than a show put on for spectators? Why is the slow pace of the trooping not for grandeur but for use?
Walk the sequence of a trooping parade at the scale a small force can mount, naming the phases and saying what place the Colour takes at each: when it is received, when it is trooped through the ranks, when it is marched past, and when it is lodged. Who forms the Escort to the Colour, and why is it found from the right-flank company? Why does the Colour party stay armed and covered when the rest of the parade relaxes?
Explain how the Colour both receives the salute and, in one case only, renders one. To whom alone does the Colour dip, and what happens on a trooping parade when the reviewing officer is not the Sovereign? Then describe the three demands the occasion makes on every participant, precision, bearing, and reverence, and explain why the lesson says reverence is what makes the other two worth having.

Reflection (write a short paragraph): This lesson says that trooping the Colour exists so that every soldier may see the Colour close and know it by sight, kept from the old days when a unit had to find and rally to its own Colour in the confusion of a fight. The Royal Kaharagian Army does not fight under its Colour in lines today, yet it still troops it, and still holds the ceremony to the highest standard of any parade. Think about why a small, young, humanitarian force keeps a ceremony whose original battlefield use it will almost certainly never need. What is the trooping still doing for the unit and for the soldier who takes part in it? And how does understanding that the Colour being trooped is the unit made visible, shown to its own soldiers, change the bearing a soldier brings to the slow march down the ranks?

Summary

To troop the Colour is to parade it slowly down the ranks of the assembled unit, close enough for every soldier to see it plainly and know it by sight; it is the public showing of the Colour, not a re-consecration and not a pageant put on for spectators. A Colour is consecrated once but trooped many times, at least once a year by custom.
The ceremony comes from a real battlefield need: a unit had to recognise its own Colour at a glance in order to find it, form on it, and rally to it in the confusion of a fight, and the Colour was trooped down the assembled soldiers until all could know it. The Royal Kaharagian Army does not fight under its Colour today, but it keeps the ceremony for the same purpose, that its soldiers should know their Colour, at the honest scale a small force can mount.
On parade the Colour is received, trooped through the ranks, marched past, and lodged. It is received from the Escort to the Colour, found by custom from the right-flank company, and carried by the Ensign, a junior officer detailed as Colour Officer, ringed by an escort of senior non-commissioned officers with bayonets fixed and points sheathed.
The trooping itself is the heart of the parade: the Colour party, in slow time, carries the Colour the length of the ranks and back, close along the front, each part of the line paying its compliment as the Colour reaches it, so that every soldier sees it close. The slow pace exists so the Colour can truly be seen, which is the entire object of the ceremony.
Throughout the parade the Colour holds the place of the unit made visible: presented arms to as it is received, carried at the post of honour, sharing the unit's eyes-right in the march past, and lodged with ceremony at the end, never set down or left unguarded. The Colour party keeps a higher standard than the rest of the parade and stays armed and covered while the Colour is out, because the guard of the Colour never stands down.
The Colour receives the salute as the embodiment of the unit, and in one strict case only renders one: it dips only to the Sovereign, H.R.H. The Prince of Kaharagia, or to one standing in the Sovereign's place, and to no other person whatever their rank; on a parade taken by anyone who is not the Sovereign the Colour is paraded and honoured but does not dip, and flags are never dipped at all.
The occasion is held to the highest standard of any parade because the Colour is on it, and demands precision, bearing, and reverence from every participant; the slow trooping exposes every fault, and reverence, the inward seriousness that knows the Colour for the unit made visible, is what gives the precision and bearing their meaning. The drill is certified on the parade ground; the meaning and the standard are learned here.

Trooping and Parading the Colours