King Charles, who is efficiently performing his royal duties while undergoing cancer treatment, is reportedly facing a significant decision regarding who will be on the Buckingham Palace balcony at the conclusion of this year’s Trooping the Colour event.
The annual King’s birthday parade is set to take place in just over two weeks and traditionally ends with members of the Royal Family on the palace balcony for the RAF flypast, featuring the mesmerizing Red Arrows.
During the reign of the late Queen, nearly all family members, including extended relatives, would gather on the balcony for the occasion. However, at the last Trooping the Colour of her reign and subsequent balcony appearances since Charles ascended to the throne, only working royals have been allowed to appear.
This change means that Princess Beatrice, Princess Eugenie, Zara and Mike Tindall, and Peter Phillips have not been seen on the balcony in recent years. Nevertheless, the royal cousins recently supported Prince William when he hosted a palace garden party for his father, mingling and chatting with the assembled guests.
And according to The Telegraph, this poses a question for the King ahead of the much-anticipated balcony appearance. Its royal editor Hannah Furness writes: “The Prince of Wales would be keen to extend similar invitations again, in the spirit of including the wider family, as his grandmother once did.
“The King, too, has seemed visibly buoyed by the company of his nieces and nephews, rarely looking happier than he did clasping Zara Tindall in a hug at the Royal Windsor Horse Show this month on his way back from cancer treatment.
“He must now decide what to do for this year’s Trooping the Colour, in which the state of the Royal family will be captured in that all-important ‘balcony moment’ displaying who is in and who is out.”
The appearances of the likes of Beatrice and Eugenie at the garden party last week comes at a time when the slimmed-down monarchy looks slimmer than ever as the King continues his cancer treatment and the Princess of Wales takes time away as she has preventative chemotherapy following her cancer diagnosis.
