This Year's Trooping the Colour Was a Time For Reflection

Yahoo

21 hours ago

This time last year, the focus was only on one thing. Kate Middleton's appearance at Trooping the Colour was her first public outing of 2024 and her first since her shocking cancer diagnosis. With King Charles also being treated for cancer, his birthday parade marked (as T&C wrote at the time) a moment of joy in the middle of a difficult year.
The Princess of Wales is now in remission and regularly back to public engagements, and as such the narrative at this year's Trooping the Colour was always going to be more divergent. For the second year running, the King traveled in a carriage not on horseback. Kate and Camilla sat side by side on a dais, as they had done in 2023, as honorary royal colonels. As always, the royal children delighted the crowds. At the same time, anti-monarchy protesters, whose presence was largely reduced to a footnote in 2024 and had pledged to stage a 'bigger and better protest,' were highly visible with their yellow signs saying 'Not My King.'
But it was the King who set the tone that this year's Trooping should be a time for reflection. The evening before the event, it was announced that royal family members taking part would take the unprecedented step of wearing black armbands in the wake of the devastating Air India crash that killed more than 250 people. A spokesperson said that the King made the request 'as a mark of respect for the lives lost, the families in mourning and all the communities affected by this awful tragedy.' There was also a moment of silence at Horseguards Parade after the Last Post was played.
Now we are half way through the year, it can confidently be said that 2025 is shaping up to be much more positive for the royal family than 2024. All the working royals are back on the roster. The King has recently carried out important overseas trips to Poland, Italy, and Canada as well as being busy across the UK. Commemorations for the 80th anniversary of VE Day in May saw the royals out in force, with the Thanksgiving Service, parade through central London, and concert at Horseguards Parade providing a major national moment with the monarchy at the center.
Yet, there are continued challenges simmering below the surface. The King's treatment for cancer is ongoing and a Palace source described it at the end of last year as a 'managed condition.' Despite virtually no official updates on his health, the subject continues to be much-discussed, sometimes highly speculatively, online. Polling shows that around 60% of the British public has a positive view of the royal family, but this drops to just 40% among 18 to 24-year-olds. Divisions with Prince Harry and Meghan continue to play out publicly, with Harry's legal challenge over his security the latest thing to thrust it into the spotlight.
Queen Elizabeth described 2019—the year that Prince Andrew was forced to step back in disgrace over his links to Jeffrey Epstein—as 'quite bumpy.' But in truth, that description could also fit every year since. 2020 saw Harry and Meghan step back in tandem with the challenges of the COVID pandemic. Prince Philip died in 2021, Queen Elizabeth died in 2022, and in 2023 the royal family prepared for the King's coronation as the revelations from Prince Harry's bombshell memoir reverberated around the world.
However, what the royal family has also reminded us of throughout the past six years is that whatever the challenges the monarchy keeps plugging along. They adapted when they lost three working royals, they adapted when they couldn't carry out in-person engagements, and they managed the transition from the longest reign of Britain's beloved Queen Elizabeth into a new Carolean era despite significant health challenges.
Trooping the Colour is the only fixed annual appearance by the royals on the Buckingham Palace balcony. It is a moment of consistency, a focal point each June for the pomp and pageantry and for crowds to gather to watch a piece of history. It is also, as protestors remind us, a moment that can spark discussions on how the monarchy is perceived today and what its future holds.
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