On Saturday, King Charles III and Queen Camilla concluded their weeklong tour of Australia and Samoa with a visit to the village of Siumu, where Charles received a brand-new title. According to the Samoan Observer, the villagers gave him the honor of To’aiga o Tumua, which means “paramount chief” in their dialect. Despite a downpour, the residents of Siumu went ahead with a traditional ‘ava ceremony while the king and queen watched.
Afterward, the king made a few impromptu remarks expressing his appreciation for the trip. “I shall always remain devoted to this part of the world and hope that I survive long enough to come back again and see you,” he said. “We shall take away with us, I promise you, very special memories of our time here. We thank you for our wonderful gifts.” The queen was later photographed wiping away a few tears of joy.
Originally, their majesties had hoped to add a visit to New Zealand onto this tour, but medical advice following Charles’ cancer diagnosis and treatment led them to opt for a shorter itinerary. As the visit concluded on Saturday, a palace official told the BBC that he has been cleared to resume a more normal schedule in 2025, including increased international travel. “He has genuinely loved this tour,” the official added. “He has genuinely thrived on the programme. It’s lifted his spirits, his mood and his recovery. In that sense, the tour—despite its demands—has been the perfect tonic.”
During their four-day visit to Samoa, they took part in the annual Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, where they joined Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and other leaders from around the 56-member voluntary union of nations. On Friday night, the king and queen hosted a reception for the leaders at the Robert Louis Stevenson Museum in Apia.
For the event, Charles wore the naval “Red Sea rig” dress uniform, a more casual approach to formal dressing in hot weather, and his white short-sleeved button-down was decorated with blue trimming from a Samoan school of fine art. However, the suit-loving monarch did admit to feeling a little out of place when he spoke to Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo, who was wearing a dapper blue suit. “You’re making me feel underdressed,” the king said.
Last week, an interruption from Aboriginal senator Lidia Thorpe in Australia made Indigenous rights a topic of discussion during the tour. In a Friday speech, which The Times reports was vetted by Starmer himself, the king mentioned that some contemporary inequalities are rooted in the past but stopped short of offering an official apology for colonialism or the slave trade.
“Our cohesion requires that we acknowledge where we have come from,” he said. “I understand from listening to people across the Commonwealth how the most painful aspects of our past continue to resonate. It is vital therefore that we understand our history to guide us to make the right choices in the future.”
During the meeting, Starmer and the other 55 heads of Commonwealth countries signed an agreement that called “discussions on reparatory justice” for the transatlantic slave trade. “In the two days we've been here, none of the discussions have been about money,” Starmer later clarified. “Our position is very, very clear in relation to that,” he added, likely referring to recent comments by the government’s chancellor Rachel Reeves that the UK did not intend to pay monetary reparations.
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