In 2022, Queen Elizabeth II celebrated her Platinum Jubilee, 70 years on the throne. To mark it, members of the royal family travelled to Commonwealth countries. In March, Prince William and Kate set off on an eight-day tour of Belize, Jamaica and the Bahamas.
The tour ran into trouble almost immediately. In Belize, a planned visit to a cacao farm was cancelled after local villagers protested about the couple’s helicopter landing on their football field and about a land dispute.
In Jamaica, protesters gathered outside the British High Commission in Kingston. They called for the royal family to apologise for Britain’s role in slavery and to pay reparations. A letter signed by dozens of prominent Jamaicans made the same demands.
Then came the images. Photographs of William and Kate reaching through a chain-link fence to shake hands with people in Trench Town were widely shared. Critics said the pictures looked uncomfortable and old-fashioned, even colonial. Later, the couple rode in the back of an open-top Land Rover at a military parade, the same vehicle the Queen and Prince Philip had used in Jamaica in 1962, which many felt sent the wrong message.
The most striking moment came at a meeting with Jamaica’s prime minister, Andrew Holness. In front of the cameras, he told the couple that Jamaica was moving on and intended to fulfil its ambitions as an independent country, a clear signal that it planned to become a republic.
William responded in a speech in which he expressed his profound sorrow for slavery, calling it abhorrent. But he did not issue a formal apology, which some campaigners had demanded.
After the tour, William released an unusual personal statement. He said that foreign tours were an opportunity to reflect and learn, and that the future of these countries was for their people to decide. He added that who the Commonwealth chooses to lead its family in the future is not what is on his mind.
Royal commentators said the tour showed how much the world had changed. Images that might once have been seen as celebrations now looked out of step with modern values. For William and Kate, it was a lesson in how a future king and queen might need to approach the Commonwealth very differently.