Kölner Dreigestirn

"His Foolishness," Prince Carnival, is the supreme representative of Cologne Carnival; at the proclamation he receives the jester's slapstick (Pritsche) from the Lord Mayor and closes the Rose Monday Parade on the final and grandest float. The Peasant, "His Earthiness," symbolizes the martial spirit of the old imperial city, recalling Cologne's liberation from archiepiscopal rule at the Battle of Worringen and the city's status as a free imperial city. He wears the city keys at his belt, carries a flail in his left hand, and wears 125 peacock feathers on his hat — said to represent Cologne's immortality. The Virgin, "Her Loveliness," embodies the protective mother figure Colonia and is always played by a man — only in 1938 and 1939, on orders from the NSDAP, was a woman required to take the role. Her crenellated crown alludes to the impregnability of Cologne behind its former city walls; her Roman attire references Agrippina the Younger, regarded as the city's founder according to Tacitus's Annals.

Since 1993, the Virgin has received a silver mirror at the proclamation — an idea by Lord Mayor Norbert Burger, so she would not go empty-handed while the Prince received the slapstick and the Peasant the city keys. Since 1965 there has also been a Cologne Children's Carnival Trio (Kinderdreigestirn), an initiative tracing back to Hans Wallpott, then president of the Bürgergarde "blau-gold" of 1904, escorted throughout by young guards and pages in blue-and-gold uniforms.