Charles the Huggy King
A Royals Extra Brief
When the King yesterday hugged players from the Black Ferns, New Zealand’s women’s rugby team, at Buckingham Palace, the press treated it as a novelty. For many years, the public perception of him was stiff and formal, with his double-breasted suits and old-fashioned sense of propriety. His image as undemonstrative was imprinted by Diana, Princess of Wales and reinforced by Prince Harry in Spare, his memoir published last year. Harry wrote that from his father and the rest of the royal family there were “no hugs, no kisses, no pats. Now and then, maybe a light touching of cheeks…on special occasions.”
In fact, Charles was never so stand-offish as he came across, and the selection of photographs below illustrates his eagerness to react in an everyday human way not only with family but complete strangers.
Diana dramatically established herself as the affectionate parent and Charles as a distant father in 1991, ten years after their marriage. An iconic photograph showed her racing toward Princes William and Harry on the royal yacht Britannia during a visit to Canada. She had deliberately run ahead of Charles so photographers could capture her enveloping Prince William and radiating love while Charles held back.
Moments later, Charles arrived and gave William a big hug, but the press ignored that image. It appeared only in a couple of news outlets in Canada and Latin America. As one witness to Charles’s embrace, Diana Jervis-Reed, a Canadian protocol officer, told me, “That was not the story the press wanted to tell.”
One of the earliest—and sweetest—among the many images of Charles hugging over the years shows him at age eleven being embraced by his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, during a trip to Scotland in the 1950s. The Queen Mum was known for showering affection on her favorite grandson.
In December 2013 Charles was photographed comforting the eight-year-old granddaughter of a victim of a helicopter crash in Scotland.
Four years later, Charles twice hugged an eleven-year-old boy on one of his annual visits to Romania, where the King owns property and supports restoration and environmental projects.
Also in 2017, Charles invited a group of survivors from the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s to Clarence House, his home in London at the time. Here he is hugging a woman who was anguished about her search for lost relatives.
More recently, Charles showed touching affection to former Spice Girl Geri Horner at Buckingham Palace during an event in May 2023 commemorating his most famous charity, The Prince’s Trust. “I’m so proud of you” she told him. “You’re a very modern king.”
And in a tender echo of his grandmother’s embrace more than six decades earlier, King Charles hugged Prince William’s three children, Prince George, Princess Charlotte, and Prince Louis, during a rehearsal at Westminster Abbey for his coronation on May 6, 2023.
thank you so very very much sally... i have watched that little video numerous times since i first saw a clip on the bbc . spring of 2023 on one of his first visits to a small community charles & camilla had met a young mother with a child i cannot remember the extent of his blindness but there was charles walking hand in hand with this child & it was beautiful & the crowd that had gathered just loved it .
unfortunately the media by the mid 80's no matter where came up incredibly short when it came to capturing charles what is most unfortunate is for many photographers i honestly believe that they never truly looked at charles the man until he ascended the throne... perceptions have not always been fare to charles over the years thus now every photograph that appears captures the exuberance & emotion that he feels . the race track, one of his first real outings sure enough there is zara tindall actually propelling herself into charles's arms with this incredible hug me thinks that his niece was pleased to see him... thank you again sally i much enjoyed...