Did the King not get the memo? 2024 will long be remembered as a year of personal challenges for the monarchy.
The term ‘crisis’ has frequently been used as royal observers draw comparisons to past challenging times for the monarchy, such as the late Queen’s ‘annus horribilis’ of 1992.
At the end of that year, she had used her broadcast to reflect ruefully on what she called a ‘sombre year’.
One might have expected yesterday to be a somber day given the circumstances. However, it was far from it. Instead, a rather cheerful speech on the importance of unity was delivered, complete with a cheerful pink spotted handkerchief poking out of the King’s pocket and not one, but two warm embraces.
No other monarch has faced as much pressure as Charles III. Being the King who received a heartfelt hug from a tearful spectator outside the Palace gates during his very first public appearance as monarch, less than a day into his reign.
Yesterday’s broadcast showed him receiving a full bear-hug Down Under from Australian Aboriginal activist ‘Uncle Widdy’. Moments later, the film showed the King at a Buckingham Palace reception being almost smothered by the New Zealand women’s rugby team. As the monarch could almost have said, but did not, have a very huggy Christmas.
To emphasise that this was not going to be all about personal dramas, the King opened his address by going straight back to those powerful and poignant commemorations of the 80th anniversary of D-Day in June (his first overseas trip since his cancer diagnosis).
The subliminal message was clearly: Here are some people who have been through something very much worse than I have.
King Charles treated us to a positively sunny soliloquy on the joys of togetherness, writes Robert Hardman
He was both touched and energised by that trip to Normandy with the Queen on June 6. Back then, the royal schedule overran by more than an hour as the couple mingled with the Spirit of Normandy Trust and the veterans, including Royal Navy anti-aircraft gunner John Dennett of Merseyside who appeared in yesterday’s broadcast (having celebrated his 100th birthday in the meantime).
Yesterday, the King paid tribute to them once again: ‘Listening to these once-young Service men and women touched us deeply as they spoke of their comrades who never returned.’
Turning to contemporary conflicts, he saluted the ‘humanitarian organisations working tirelessly to bring vital relief’.’ He likened them to ‘the example that Jesus gave us’, namely ‘to bring hope where there is despair’.
Taking his theme from the carol Once In Royal David’s City, he extended the message to reflect on the belief of ‘all the great Faiths in the love and mercy of God in times of joy and of suffering’.
In acknowledging the shared value systems of the other main religions, here, surely, was a nod to that long-held aspiration to be a defender of faith as well as Defender of The Faith.
Inside the Fitzrovia Chapel in London where the King recorded his Christmas message
The King alluded to his own troubles in his speech as he explained the choice of the chapel of the former Middlesex Hospital for this broadcast
Only then did the King allude to his own troubles, explaining the choice of the chapel of the former Middlesex Hospital for this broadcast. He also alluded, obliquely, to the Princess of Wales who has spent so much of the year on her own cancer journey, not that the C-word was mentioned.
‘From a personal point of view, I offer special, heartfelt thanks to the selfless doctors and nurses who, this year, have supported me and other members of my family through the uncertainties and anxieties of illness,’ he said.
We caught a glimpse of his visit, with the Queen, to the Macmillan cancer unit at London’s University College Hospital back in the spring.
Yet this was by no means the first time that cancer has featured in a Christmas broadcast. If anything it has been something of a regular fixture. In 2022, in the first broadcast of the King’s reign, we saw Prince William with staff at the Royal Marsden cancer hospital.
There he was again, at the same hospital, visiting the Oak Care Cancer Centre in last year’s broadcast. It is often overlooked but the Royal Family’s links with the fight against a disease which will touch the lives of half the population are deep and enduring.
Just as much attention, however, was devoted to the Royal Family’s response to this summer’s riots following the Southport murders. The King has long seen it as part of the monarchy’s role to help patch up broken communities.
As Prince of Wales, he was the one national figure who would keep returning to riot-torn areas such as Brixton, Toxteth and Tottenham, long after the politicians had moved on.
Yesterday, he spoke of the quest to ‘repair not just buildings, but relationships; and, most importantly, to repair trust.’ The broadcast also included shots of the Prince and Princess of Wales in that healing process.
Other members of the ‘working’ Royal Family included yesterday were the Princess Royal, the Edinburghs and the Gloucesters. Two honourable exceptions were the Duke of Kent and his sister, Princess Alexandra (who celebrated her 88th birthday yesterday), but only because they have not been able to undertake many public engagements this year.
Once again, the Dukes of York and Sussex were nowhere to be seen, though Prince Andrew will have been delighted to see the prominence given to his elder daughter, Princess Beatrice, yesterday at Sandringham. She and her husband were next in line to the Waleses on the way out of church, a subtle reminder that she remains in the top ten in the royal line of succession.
An upbeat broadcast then – and one with a strong Commonwealth theme, too. As King of 14 other realms and head of an association of 56 independent nations, this was a broadcast aimed at a global audience with one overarching message: ‘Onwards…’
