The King and Queen were cheered along The Mall as they made their way in a carriage to Horse Guards Parade, the annual Trooping the Colour marking Charles’s official birthday – a tradition dating to the 18th century, when George II, also born in November, chose a summer date for better weather.
Charles, wearing a Grenadier Guards tunic and forage cap, inspected the troops from the dais alongside Queen Camilla and the Princess of Wales. Camilla honoured her regiment in a red silk crepe Grenadier Guards uniform dress by Fiona Clare, with a Philip Treacy black beret and white plume bearing her cap badge. The colour trooped this year was the King’s Colour of the Grenadier Guards, presented by the King earlier in the week and escorted by guardsmen of the King’s Company.
“Royal family gathers for Trooping the Colour as King Charles celebrates official birthday amid pomp and pageantry.”
Royal colonels rode on horseback: the Prince of Wales as Colonel of the Welsh Guards, the Princess Royal as Colonel of the Blues and Royals, and the Duke of Edinburgh as Colonel of the Scots Guards. The Princess of Wales, who is Colonel of the Irish Guards, watched from a first-floor window of the Duke of Wellington’s former office with her three children – Prince George, 12, Princess Charlotte, 11, and Prince Louis, 8. Charlotte, in a white dress with a ribbon in her hair, sat opposite her mother in the carriage, while the boys mirrored their father in blue ties and suits. Kate wore a blue outfit by Catherine Walker paired with a Philip Treacy hat and the Irish Guards brooch.
About 8,000 family members of guards and officers filled stands at Horse Guards Parade, where guardsmen in scarlet tunics and bearskin caps performed precision marching. The new defence secretary, Dan Jarvis, was among spectators alongside other senior cabinet members and the prime minister, after his predecessor John Healey quit on Thursday over a dispute on long-term military funding.
The Grenadier Guards, raised in 1656 in Bruges, Belgium, carry centuries of tradition. For the soldiers, the day carried emotional weight: Lance Bombardier Ciara Sullivan, 24, of the King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery, died last month after falling from a horse at the Royal Windsor Horse Show.
After the parade, the Royal Family gathered on the Buckingham Palace balcony to watch the Red Arrows flypast – the culmination of a national celebration uniting all three services in honour of the King’s anniversary.