Royal family’s historic coronation year despite controversy over royal books

The past 12 months marked the King’s first full calendar year as monarch, but Harry’s memoir Spare was among the issues facing the Windsors in 2023.

Prince Louis entertains his sister Princess Charlotte on the Palace balcony (Leon Neal/PA) (PA Archive)

A coronation, a reignited race row and a controversial memoir by the Duke of Sussex shaped the royal family’s 2023.

It was the King’s first full calendar year as monarch, as he bedded into the role and was crowned with great splendour alongside his Queen.

Charles and Camilla’s coronation took place in May – with thousands braving the rainy weather to take to the streets to watch their procession in the Gold State Coach.

The deeply religious ceremony in London’s Westminster Abbey was followed by a weekend of celebrations including a pop concert at Windsor where royals including Prince George and Princess Charlotte danced the night away.

Buckingham Palace finally dropped “Consort” from Camilla’s title, having cautiously let the idea of a new Queen settle into the public’s consciousness in the wake of Elizabeth II’s death.

In the defining moment, St Edward’s Crown was lowered onto the King’s head by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Camilla was also anointed and crowned with Queen Mary’s Crown – a move unthinkable in the 1990s when she was derided for being Charles’s mistress.

The couple, in lavish robes and crowns, took to the Palace balcony to wave at the crowds, joined by the Prince and Princess of Wales, as well as George – who played a key role as one of his grandfather’s Pages of Honour – Charlotte and Prince Louis.

The coronation brought together around 100 heads of state, kings and queens from across the globe, celebrities, everyday heroes and family and friends of the couple.

Even the Duke of Sussex was there to witness the historic occasion despite his fractured relationship with Charles and William, and the Duke of York, who paid millions to settle a civil sexual assault case last year, attended in his Garter robes.

The King’s son Harry – fifth in line – was seated in the third row in the Abbey and had no formal role in the proceedings.

He left swiftly for the US soon after the end of the ceremony. Meghan stayed away.

Harry also made a surprise, brief return to London in March to attend a High Court hearing in his claim against Associated Newspapers over allegations of unlawful information-gathering – one of a number of his ongoing legal actions – but he did not meet his father or brother.

In May, a spokesman for Harry and Meghan claimed the Sussexes were involved in a “near-catastrophic” car chase in New York and subjected to a “relentless pursuit” involving half a dozen blacked-out vehicles.

But a taxi driver who said he transported them for part of the journey said the dangers may have been “exaggerated”.

The couple’s lucrative media deal with Spotify ended in June after one season of Meghan’s podcast Archetypes, with one of the streaming giant’s executives branding them “grifters”.

The same month, the duke gave evidence at the High Court in person when he entered the witness box in his case against Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) over allegations of phone hacking.

He said journalists’ actions “affected every area” of his life and he lost friendships “entirely unnecessarily” due to the “paranoia”.

He later won more than £140,000 in damages when a judge ruled his phone was probably hacked “to a modest extent” by the publisher, with Harry hailing the outcome as “great day for truth as well as accountability”.

The judge also concluded there was “extensive” phone hacking generally by MGN from 2006 to 2011, “even to some extent” during the Leveson Inquiry into media standards.

At the start of the year, Harry’s candid, bestselling autobiography Spare caused ructions when he accused William of physically attacking him and pushing him into a dog bowl in a row over Meghan, and teasing him about his panic attacks.

He also alleged it was his brother and Kate who encouraged him to wear a Nazi uniform to a fancy dress party in 2005 and “howled” with laughter when they saw it.

The duke said the King put his own interests above Harry’s and was jealous of Meghan and Kate.

He also branded Camilla the “villain” and “dangerous” in interviews, accusing her of rehabilitating her image at the expense of his.

Two months later, it emerged that Harry and Meghan had been asked to vacate Frogmore Cottage, their property close to Windsor Castle – leaving them without a permanent base in the UK.

But debate over whether the Sussexes’ children would use – or even get to keep – the titles of prince and princess, to which they became entitled when the late Queen died, was resolved in March when Harry and Meghan announced “Princess Lilibet” had been christened, and it emerged there had been correspondence with the King on the matter.

Charles – taking his time to get such affairs in order – also handed the title the Duke of Edinburgh to his brother, Edward, fulfilling the wishes of his late parents.

A previous race row – which first emerged in the Sussexes’ 2021 Oprah interview – reignited once again when Meghan’s so-called cheerleader Omid Scobie wrote in his new book Endgame that two royals, rather than one, allegedly voiced “concerns” about the skin colour of Harry and Meghan’s son Prince Archie before he was born.

The two names – which Scobie said were written in private letters between Meghan and the King – did not appear in the UK edition of the book.

But a hastily pulped Dutch version named two senior royals in connection with the allegation, with Scobie initially denying he included the names and later admitting they had appeared in an early, uncleared version sent to Dutch publishers.

There were calls for the Sussexes to distance themselves from the book, but there was no public statement from Harry and Meghan, and Buckingham and Kensington Palace declined to comment.

Meanwhile the rest of the royal family was reported to be “united in outrage”, making Harry’s estrangement from William looking even less likely to be resolved.

Heir to the throne William launched his major drive to end homelessness, Homewards, and also raised eyebrows when he said he wanted to “go a step further” than his family and bring real change to the causes he supports.

Just days later, the Palace announced the King was keeping his own major charities close, rebranding the Prince’s Trust youth charity as the King’s Trust, the Prince’s Foundation as the King’s Foundation, and making his grant-giving body the King Charles III Charitable Fund.

Charles once spoke of his hope his sons would take over the Prince’s Trust, which he set up with his Navy severance pay in 1976.

In the summer, the Metropolitan Police announced they were taking no further action in the investigation into cash-for-honours allegations at the then-Prince’s Foundation.

A series of newspaper articles accused Michael Fawcett, formerly the foundation’s chief executive and a close confidant of the King, of promising to help a Saudi billionaire donor achieve British citizenship and a knighthood.

William, forging ahead with his own initiatives, staged his Earthshot Prize awards in Singapore, won a dragon boat race on the Kallang River and visited the jungle, traversing a 82ft (25m) high suspension bridge in the MacRitchie Nature Reserve.

Kate missed out on the trip, staying with 10-year-old George, who was facing his first set of major exams to decide which school he will attend when he turns 13, with Eton and Marlborough College among the contenders.

There was no major joint official overseas tour for the Waleses in 2023, with William and Kate taking a back seat to allow the King and Queen to embark on their inaugural travels.

William endured a backlash when, in the summer, despite being president of the Football Association, he decided not to attend the Lionesses’ World Cup final against Spain in Sydney, and faced claims he would have travelled to Australia if it was the men’s team.

Kate, who launched her Shaping Us campaign in January, called for “action at every level” to help to rebalance and restore society’s social and emotional skills in a keynote speech in November for her early childhood foundation, with former prime minister Sir Tony Blair among the attendees.

The same month, she donned combat gear and drove a seven-tonne armoured vehicle equipped with a machine gun and was described as “a natural” on her first visit to 1st The Queen’s Dragoon Guards as Colonel-in-Chief.

The princess also staged her annual carol concert at Westminster Abbey, attended by a host of royals including her children.

The youngsters appeared in birthday portraits throughout the year and helped their mother volunteer at a baby bank charity.

In celebration of Mother’s Day, they were pictured smiling broadly as they perched in a tree with Kate.

William and Kate went head to head in a netball drill as they joined young athletes and their parents being coached on building up mental resilience at SportsAid at Bisham Abbey National Sports Centre in Berkshire in October.

Kate had two fingers strapped up as a precaution after a recent trampoline accident.

Charles, who turned 75 in 2023, undertook a number of significant firsts as King including his first State Opening of Parliament as monarch.

On his maiden overseas state visit to Germany in March, he became the only British sovereign to address German politicians from the Bundestag while the parliament is in session.

A tour of Paris and Bordeaux on a state visit to France eventually took place in September after it was delayed by widespread riots.

Charles became the only British monarch ever to speak from the French senate chamber.

There was table tennis playing from Camilla, and a state banquet hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron in the Palace of Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors.

In October the King and Queen went to Kenya – their first state visit to a Commonwealth country – where the couple posed in an electric tuk-tuk, and Charles visited the Karura urban forest in Nairobi.

After Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, Buckingham Palace said the King condemned “the barbaric acts of terrorism”.

In a state of the nation address at Mansion House the same month, Charles stressed the “vital” need for mutual understanding among religions in times of “international turmoil and heartbreaking loss of life” as the violent Israeli-Hamas conflict continued.

On his official birthday in June, the King, with his face hardly visible beneath his bearskin hat, became the first monarch in more than 30 years to take part in Trooping the Colour on horseback.

US President Joe Biden came to visit in July, dropping in to see the King at Windsor Castle where he was treated to a dose of pomp and pageantry with a Guard of Honour.

In September, on the first anniversary of the late Queen’s death, the royal family reflected on her life, and Charles and Camilla gathered for private prayers at Crathie Kirk, close to Balmoral, where Elizabeth II worshipped.

Kate appeared visibly moved as she laid flowers beside a portrait of the late Queen as she and William spent the anniversary at St Davids Cathedral in St Davids, Pembrokeshire.

The King rubbed shoulders with K-Pop royalty after inviting girl band Blackpink to a state banquet at the palace in honour of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol.

He also travelled to Dubai for the Cop28 climate change summit and in an opening address told leaders the world remains “dreadfully far off track” in key climate targets.

Meanwhile, Netflix’s The Crown launched its final season, focusing on the Windsors in the 1990s and 2000s including the death of Diana, Princess of Wales.

The King has a busy 2024 planned with major tours expected to Canada – his first to an overseas Commonwealth realm – and later Australia and New Zealand, as well as the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Samoa, and commemorations marking the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings.