This year’s Trooping the Colour in London was a slightly more solemn occasion than usual. Despite the fact that the event—also known as the King’s Birthday Parade—is held in June for the express purpose of ensuring good weather, royals and royal watchers on The Mall were met with torrential downpours. (The British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, not convinced his General Election announcement had generated enough faintly hysterical memes, once again failed to bring an umbrella.)
More seriously, of course, today marked the Princess of Wales’s first public appearance since Christmas Day, having undergone major abdominal surgery in January and revealed that she was starting chemotherapy in March. Meanwhile, the King disclosed that he had been diagnosed with cancer in February, less than 18 months into his reign.
Thank goodness for Prince Louis then, who, true to form, lightened the mood on the Buckingham Palace balcony considerably. Given that the six-year-old MVP of royal engagements has been known to cover his ears and scream during RAF flypasts and yawn his way through events such as the Coronation (who among us), fans of the Windsors were keeping their eyes peeled for his antics today, and happily, he doesn’t seem to have outgrown his face-pulling, raspberry-blowing phase just yet.
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Over the course of the day, the fourth in line to the throne leaned into the decidedly un-royal double-handed wave, yanked on Buckingham Palace curtain cords, and had to be told by Princess Charlotte to stand still during the national anthem. (I don’t usually condone lip-reading, but I’d like to thank whoever the tabloids employed to decipher Louis’s one-word response to being told to behave: “Nope.”)
It’s the Scots Guards, though, who elicited the best reaction from Louis with their performance of “Highland Laddie”, with the Prince doing a little jig as the bagpipers marched past. “Please stop that,” said Charlotte. Louis, unsurprisingly, ignored her.