What's the future of the Commonwealth under King Charles?

The funeral of Queen Elizabeth today marks the end of a 10-day period that witnessed an outpouring of emotion and respect for the 96-year-old monarch, who defied age and more to reign for 70 years of change and continuity.

The period saw tens of thousands of people waiting for 24 hours, queuing to queue – hailed as the most British thing ever – to see the Queen’s coffin in Westminster Hall for a few moments. But Monday also heralds the formal beginning of a new era with King Charles as the head of state, who faces many challenges in the royal in-tray. One of them is the future of the Commonwealth, a post-imperial club that his mother held dear, and the spreading wave of republicanism in 15 countries where the British monarch is still the head of state. The Queen’s personality and rapport with Commonwealth leaders was the glue that kept the 56-member group together, even when there were growing questions about what exactly was its point in the modern world.

The British Empire was already in decline when Princess Elizabeth became Queen Elizabeth in 1952. India, the largest of its possessions, was already independent. But Britain still had 70 overseas territories that one by one became independent during her reign. When Hong Kong was handed back to China in 1997, King Charles, then a prince, saw it as the ‘end of the empire’.

Today, the British monarch is the head of state of 15 countries – called ‘Commonwealth realms’ – but there are already reports of the arrangement being reconsidered in some of them. The 15 countries are: Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, The Bahamas, Belize, Canada, Grenada, Jamaica, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu and the United Kingdom.

The most recent Commonwealth realm to part ways with the British monarchy was Barbados, in November 2021, when it swore in Sandra Mason as its first president, the sun setting over nearly 400 years of the monarchy’s reign there.

King Charles, who attended the transition in Bridgetown as the Queen’s representative, said at the time: “The creation of this republic offers a new beginning. From the darkest days of our past and the appalling atrocity of slavery, which forever stains our history, people of this island forged their path with extraordinary fortitude”.

In the context of Black Lives Matter movement and growing demands in various countries for apologies, reparations and return of colonial loot, King Charles’ accession to the throne is seen as a moment of reckoning. Hours after the Queen’s death, Gaston Browne, the prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, said he will call a referendum within three years on the country becoming a republic, but insisted that “this is not an act of hostility or any difference between Antigua and Barbuda and the monarchy, but it is the final step to complete that circle of independence, to ensure that we are truly a sovereign nation”.

In Kingston, Jamaica, there is less emotion about the Queen passing away, and more recall of the monarchy over centuries presiding over slavery and the exploitation of black people and their resources in Africa and other colonies. In March, the visit of Prince William and his wife, Kate, was widely panned. They were accused of harking back to colonial days when they shook hands with crowds behind a wire mesh fence and rode in the back of a Land Rover, just as the Queen had done 60 years ago. Demonstrators during the visit accused them of benefiting from the “blood, tears and sweat” of slaves, while in the Bahamas they were urged to acknowledge that the British economy was “built on the backs” of Bahamians and to pay reparations. Prime Minister Andrew Holness bluntly told the royal couple that “we are moving on”, adding that Jamaica intends to be “an independent, developed, prosperous country”.

- The writer is a senior journalist based in London