Republican protesters heckled the King and the Queen as they attended a ceremony to mark the 25th anniversary of the Scottish Parliament's reconvening.
A group assembled at the bottom of the Royal Mile and shouted "not our king" as the monarch and his consort were driven from the Palace of Holyroodhouse to the Queensberry House entrance.
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The former SNP MP Tommy Sheppard was among the protesters.
He told The Herald: "I think most reasonable people would think a cause for concern that the taxpayer's bill for the monarchy now exceeds half a billion pounds at a time when we're being told the public finances tight."
He added: "I wanted, in part, to protest about that, but I also wanted to mark the occasion of a rare royal visit to make it clear to anyone who wants to see that public opinion of Scotland is very much going in an alternative direction, and that the support for an elected head of state, both within an independent Scotland and indeed pending that within the United Kingdom is growing like never before."
Mr Shepherd said there had been little resistance to the protest.
"There were a couple of people who were hostile and shouted at us, but literally just a couple.
"Generally, people were not hostile to our presence. And then it struck me that, in fact, actually the vast majority of the people there were tourists on celeb watch. They weren't actual royalists.
"There's this myth of the popularity of the moacrhy and how people love them. I mean,maybe that's true in deepest provincial Englandshire, it's clearly not true on the streets of Edinburgh. And if it's not true in Edinburgh, then it's probably not true anywhere else in Scotland. "
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