The annual event was also an opportunity for the monarchy to demonstrate stability after months in which the king and Kate, the wife of heir to the throne Prince William, were kept apart by anticancer treatments.
In a symbolic show of unity, Charles, Queen Camilla, William, Kate and their children were joined by other members of the royal family on a balcony at Buckingham Palace at the end of the birthday parade. king. The family waved to the gathered crowd and watched a flypast of military aircraft that closed ceremonies marking the monarch’s official birthday.
This is the first time Kate has appeared in public since December. She revealed in March that she was undergoing chemotherapy for an unspecified form of cancer.
“I’m progressing well, but as anyone who goes through chemotherapy knows, there are good days and bad days,” Kate said in a statement released Fridayadding that he still had “a few months” of treatment left.
Kate said she was “not out of the woods yet” and authorities stressed that Saturday’s engagement did not herald a full return to public life.
Huge crowds gather each June to watch the anniversary parade, also known as Trooping the Color, which begins with a procession involving horses, musicians and hundreds of soldiers in ceremonial uniform starting on Buckingham Palace.
The princess, 42, was first seen in public when she traveled by horse-drawn carriage from the palace to the main avenue known as ‘The Mall’ with her children George, 10, Charlotte, 9 years old, and Louis, 6 years old. Onlookers cheered when they spotted Kate, wearing a white dress by designer Jenny Packham and a wide-brimmed hat by Philip Treacy.
She watched the ceremony with the children from the window of a building overlooking Horse Guards Parade, the parade ground in central London. Louis yawned widely at one point during the ceremony, but mostly he watched attentively.
Prince William, in military uniform, rode on horseback for the ceremony, during which troops parade before the king with their regiment’s flag, or “color.” Precision marches and martial music harken back to the days when a regiment’s flag was a vital rallying point in the fog of battle.
Charles, who is also being treated for an undisclosed form of cancer, traveled in a carriage with Queen Camilla, rather than on horseback as he did last year. The king inspected the troops from a dais on the parade ground, saluting the elite regiments of the Foot Guards as they marched before him.
Five regiments parade in turn, and this year, it was the turn of a company of the Irish Guards, of which Kate is the honorary colonel. The troops, dressed in scarlet tunics and bearskin hats, were led to the parade ground by their mascot, an Irish wolfdog named Seamus.
Charles, 75, revealed his cancer in February and recently returned to public duties. Last week he attended commemorations of the 80th anniversary of D-Day, the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe on June 6, 1944.
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It’s not “true”
One of the many oddities of the British royal convention is that Saturday is not the king’s actual birthday, which occurs in November. Like his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, Charles officially celebrates his birthday on the second Saturday in June. This date was chosen because the weather is generally good, although the first light of the sun has given way to a noisy and rainy day in London.
The rain stopped for most of the ceremony, but began to fall as the massed troops escorted the royal carriages to Buckingham Palace, amid a soggy but enthusiastic crowd.
The blue skies returned as the family went out onto the balcony to watch the Royal Air Force’s aerobatic team, the Red Arrows, fly over the city, sending up plumes of red, white and blue steam.
Thousands of royal fans, clad in raincoats and umbrellas, cheered, while a handful of anti-monarchist protesters chanted: “Not my king.”
Spectators who braved the unstable weather were treated to a spectacle of pageantry and precision in which 1,400 soldiers, 250 military musicians and more than 200 horses took part. Equine participants included Trojan, Tennyson and Vanquish, three of the five military horses who caused mayhem in April when they escaped and ran loose in central London.
The horses were carrying out routine exercises near Buckingham Palace on April 24 when they were frightened by noise from a nearby construction site and galloped through the streets of the capital, crashing into vehicles and causing chaos at the hour morning rush hour.
The Army says the other two horses are recovering well and are also expected to return to duty.
