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In March, The Guardian published an 8,000-word story about what will happen when Queen Elizabeth II dies. The reporter for the story, Sam Knight, recorded every detail of the plans and the likely political and emotional consequences, from the type of coffin (lead-lined) to the number of available seats at spots along the queens funeral route. Knight addressed something most Brits have not even contemplated, a psychological reckoning for the kingdom that she leaves behind, he wrote. The Huffington Post spoke to Knight last week to learn more about how he got the story .

How did this article come about?

Occasionally, long-form writers and editors from The Guardian have lunch and talk about things. It was the end of a turbulent and dispiriting 2016, and we looked at each other and said, What happens next? And someone said, The queen is going to die. And we were like, Yeah, youre probably right.

As soon as we started talking about what might happen, I thought of a New Yorker story by Evan Osnos about [President Donald] Trumps first term. It came out in September, before the results, and it was written in the future tense. It was so shocking when you read it. It felt substantial, even though it was speculative journalism. I imagined I could write something along those lines about the death of the queen.

Your story is meticulously reported. Where did you begin?

Everything to do with the monarchy is based on precedent. My first thought was that even though this event is in the future, its going to be based on what happened in the past. So the first place I went was the National Archives .

I pulled up all the old files to do with the funerals of [King] George VI in 1952 and [Prime Minister Winston] Churchill in 1965. Seating plans. Processional routes. When to ring the bells. When to lower the flags. How to handle MPs and other politicians. It gave me a structure for the event. And it also gave me the right kind of questions to ask. If you read the reports, you suddenly knew to ask, Is the coffin going to have a false lid?