Budapest Post

Cum Deo pro Patria et Libertate
Budapest, Europe and world news

A royal disaster: William & Kate in the Caribbean

Prince William and Kate are in the Caribbean to mark Queen Elizabeth's platinum jubilee. The visit has been criticised as a PR disaster by royal watchers in Britain.
In Belize, a visit to a cocoa farm was scotched after residents protested. In Jamaica, the prime minister declared his country was “moving on” from the British monarchy. In the Bahamas, the couple arrived to demands from a group calling for slavery reparations that they acknowledge Britain’s economy “was built on the backs of our ancestors.”

For Prince William and his wife, Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, it has been a turbulent tour of the Caribbean — one that has dramatized, through a pileup of gaffes and miscues, how rapidly Queen Elizabeth II is losing her grip on these distant dominions, even when she sends her most popular proxies.

Barbados cast off the queen as head of state last November, and Jamaica seems emboldened to follow suit, though it would require a referendum to amend the island’s constitution. William, second in line to the throne, got a taste of how the mood toward the monarchy has changed in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement and a renewed call for reparations for Britain’s role in the slave trade.

“We intend to fulfill our true ambitions and destiny as an independent, developed, prosperous country,” Jamaica’s prime minister, Andrew Holness, said on Wednesday as a po-faced William looked on.

On many stops of their tour, the couple was greeted warmly, even jubilantly. But even those encounters were marred by off-key images. During a military parade, William, resplendent in a white dress uniform, rode with his wife, also in white, in the same open-top Land Rover that carried the queen and Prince Philip in 1962. To some locals, it was a caricature of a colonial proconsul inspecting his troops.

In Trench Town, the Kingston neighborhood famous as the home of Bob Marley, the couple tried their hand at reggae and mixed with friendly crowds. But the enduring image of the stop was likely to be them touching the fingers of children stretched through a chain-link fence — the kind of public-relations gaffe that afflicts other members of the royal family but has rarely tarnished this couple.

The dissonance is about more than poor stagecraft, according to scholars and royal watchers. Sentiment toward the royal family has shifted perceptibly in the Caribbean since the killing of Black people by the police in the United States inflamed a long-simmering debate in Britain and its former colonies about the legacy of empire. Barbados’s decision to remove the queen was a tipping point.

“Barbados is seen as the conservative of the Caribbean,” said Richard Drayton, a professor of imperial history at Kings College London, who spent his childhood on the island. “So, when Barbados takes a step like this, it creates space for other Caribbean countries to move in that direction.”

Both major political parties in Jamaica support becoming a republic, though there are legal hurdles that make it more complicated than in Barbados. Guyana led an earlier wave of republicanism in the Caribbean, dissolving its ties to the queen in 1970. Trinidad and Tobago followed in 1976, and Dominica in 1978.

Elizabeth, 96 next month, remains head of state of 15 countries in the Commonwealth. While she has a reservoir of popularity in the Caribbean, particularly among older people, Professor Drayton said many were impatient for a public acknowledgment by the monarchy of its role in the slave trade, which was conducted under royal imprimatur by the Royal African Company in the 17th and 18th centuries.

William’s father, Prince Charles, spoke candidly about the stain of slavery when he was on hand for the ceremony at which Barbados became a republic. By all accounts, William went even further, though he stopped short of a formal apology.

“I want to express my profound sorrow,” he said at a dinner in Jamaica. “Slavery was abhorrent, and it should never have happened.”

Given the charged atmosphere, Professor Drayton said Buckingham Palace miscalculated by choreographing the couple’s visit as a traditional royal tour. The idea was to send William and Catherine, who are among the most popular royals in opinion polls, to represent the queen during her Platinum Jubilee (she stopped traveling overseas several years ago). Catherine, more commonly known as Kate, still got good reviews in the London tabloids.

“This is a very old strategy on the part of the royal household to cement its hold over the dominions, to make the charismatic presence of the crown visible,” he said. “The assumption they could simply send out members of the royal family to press the flesh and charm the crowds reflects a lack of clear thinking.”

The royal family has grappled with questions about race since last year, when the biracial, American-born wife of Prince Harry, Meghan, told Oprah Winfrey in a sensational television interview that a member of the family had expressed concerns about the color of their baby’s skin. Asked bluntly whether his family was racist, William said no.

While the Harry-and-Meghan show did not intrude on the William-and-Kate tropical tour, royal watchers said the repeated references to racial issues served as an illustration of what was lost when Harry and his wife gave up their royal duties and relocated to California. On a visit to Africa before the split, Meghan electrified crowds that had never seen a British duchess who looked like them.

“If this tour had been led by Harry and Meghan, it would probably have gone down a lot better than William and Kate,” said Ed Owens, a historian who has written about the relationship between the media and the monarchy. “Harry and Meghan were, if you like, the monarchy’s silver bullet, making it more palatable.”

Still, given the deeper historical trends, it is unlikely that even they would have kept the queen’s realm from shrinking further. Professor Drayton predicted Jamaica would be a republic in two years, possibly followed by Belize, though its situation was complicated by security concerns about its neighbor, Guatemala.

“The hesitations about doing this are now gone,” he said. “That particular ship has sailed.”
AI Disclaimer: An advanced artificial intelligence (AI) system generated the content of this page on its own. This innovative technology conducts extensive research from a variety of reliable sources, performs rigorous fact-checking and verification, cleans up and balances biased or manipulated content, and presents a minimal factual summary that is just enough yet essential for you to function as an informed and educated citizen. Please keep in mind, however, that this system is an evolving technology, and as a result, the article may contain accidental inaccuracies or errors. We urge you to help us improve our site by reporting any inaccuracies you find using the "Contact Us" link at the bottom of this page. Your helpful feedback helps us improve our system and deliver more precise content. When you find an article of interest here, please look for the full and extensive coverage of this topic in traditional news sources, as they are written by professional journalists that we try to support, not replace. We appreciate your understanding and assistance.
Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
Severe Heatwave Claims 2,300 Lives Across Europe
Declining Beer Consumption Signals Cultural Shift in Germany
Emails Leaked: How Passenger Luggage Became a Side Income for Airport Workers
Polish MEP: “Dear Leftists - China is laughing at you, Russia is laughing, India is laughing”
Western Europe Records Hottest June on Record
BRICS Expands Membership with Indonesia and Ten New Partner Countries
Elon Musk Founds a Party Following a Poll on X: "You Wanted It – You Got It!"
China’s Central Bank Consults European Peers on Low-Rate Strategies
France Requests Airlines to Cut Flights at Paris Airports Amid Planned Air Traffic Controller Strike
Poland Implements Border Checks Amid Growing Migration Tensions
Emirates Airline Expands Market Share with New $20 Million Campaign
Amazon Reaches Milestone with Deployment of One Millionth Robot
Yulia Putintseva Calls for Spectator Ejection at Wimbledon Over Safety Concerns
House Oversight Committee Subpoenas Former Jill Biden Aide Amid Investigation into Alleged Concealment of President Biden's Cognitive Health
Amazon Reaches Major Automation Milestone with Over One Million Robots
Extreme Heat Wave Sweeps Across Europe, Hitting Record Temperatures
Meta Announces Formation of Ambitious AI Unit, Meta Superintelligence Labs
Robots Compete in Football Tournament in China Amid Injuries
China Unveils Miniature Insect-Like Surveillance Drone
Marc Marquez Claims Victory at Dutch Grand Prix Amidst Family Misfortune
Germany Votes to Suspend Family Reunification for Asylum Seekers
Budapest Pride Parade Draws 200,000 Participants Amid Government Ban
Southern Europe Experiences Extreme Heat
Xiaomi's YU7 SUV Launch Garners Record Pre-Orders Amid Market Challenges
Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez's Lavish Wedding in Venice
Russia Launches Largest Air Assault on Ukraine Since Invasion
Massive Anti-Government Protests Erupt in Belgrade
Iran Executes Alleged Israeli Spies and Arrests Hundreds Amid Post-War Crackdown
Hungary's Prime Minister Criticizes NATO's Role in Ukraine
EU TO HUNGARY: LET THEM PRIDE OR PREP FOR SHADE. ORBÁN TO EU: STAY IN YOUR LANE AND FIX YOUR OWN MESS.
Hungarian Scientist to Conduct 30 Research Experiments on the International Space Station
NATO Members Agree to 5% Defense Spending Target by 2035
NATO Leaders Endorse Plan for Increased Defence Spending
U.S. Crude Oil Prices Drop Below $65 Amid Market Volatility
International Astronaut Team Launched to Space Station
Macron and Merz: Europe must arm itself in an unstable world
Germany and Italy Under Pressure to Repatriate $245bn of Gold from US Vaults
Iran Intensifies Crackdown on Alleged Mossad Operatives After Sabotage Claims
Trump Praises Iran’s ‘Very Weak’ Response After U.S. Strikes and Presses Israel to Pursue Peace
Oil Prices Set to Surge After US Strikes Iran
BA and Singapore Airlines Cancel Dubai Flights Amid Middle East Tensions
Trump Faces Backlash from MAGA Base Over Iran Strikes
Meta Bets $14 B on Alexandr Wang to Drive AI Ambitions
FedEx Founder Fred Smith, ‘Heart and Soul’ of the Company, Dies at 80
Chinese Factories Shift Away from U.S. Amid Trump‑Era Tariffs
Pimco Seizes Opportunity in Japan’s Dislocated Bond Market
Labubu Doll Drives Pop Mart to Status as China’s Most Valuable Toy Maker
Global Coal Demand Defies Paris Accord Goals
United States Conducts Precision Strikes on Iran’s Nuclear Sites
US strikes Iran nuclear sites, Trump says
×