A lot of royal reporters traveled with King Charles and Camilla for their Kenyan Tour. If you ask me, I think some of them were actually hoping to have another international flop tour, like William and Kate’s mess in the Caribbean in 2022. But in the end, Charles and Camilla managed to avoid protests and they were not widely praised or condemned in the Kenyan or British media. I would even say that Charles performed well, especially compared to Camilla, who spent much of the trip dissociating from Black folks and/or waiting in the car. It’s fascinating to watch, in real time, as the palace spins the after-action reporting. The palace wants the story to be “Charles is The Listening King, a man of compassion and empathy.” Even the most loyal royalists know that the story is much more complicated than that. Some highlights from Valentine Low’s reporting for the Times:

King Charles met with Kenyans who had been tortured & brutalized by the British: In a long-planned engagement conducted well away from the glare of the media spotlight, they had a half-hour meeting with the King. [This was] a chance for the King to listen to their stories — and their grievances — himself. The fact that the media travelling with King Charles knew nothing of the meeting until hours after it was over says much about how Buckingham Palace regarded it as highly sensitive. But the fact that the palace was prepared to release brief details about it afterwards also says much of their desire to get the message across that Charles is a caring King who is not afraid to tackle uncomfortable historical issues.

The Listening King: “Everyone had a chance to tell their story, how their lives and families had been impacted by [that] legacy,” said a royal source. “The King listened with great compassion and great interest.”

The palace PR: The visit was the most delicate that Charles has conducted since becoming King. Buckingham Palace, with some justification, feels that it has gone well. The palace was particularly keen that the controversy over British mistreatment of Kenyans in the colonial era should be addressed at the beginning of the visit so that it should not dominate the whole four-day trip… Such reactions have given those close to the King the confidence to talk about his “diplomatic sure-footedness” when there are difficult issues to address. A royal source said: “The Kenyan media, and the Kenyan people we meet, have all said how appreciative they were of the King’s words, how sensitively phrased they thought they were and how right it was that it was raised in that way.”

The average Kenyan isn’t buying it though: For all the palace bullishness, however, it is far from clear that ordinary Kenyans were particularly excited about the King’s visit. David Anderson, professor of African history at the University of Warwick who was in Kenya a few days ago, said: “I felt Kenyans were a bit bemused. I wasn’t sure they were terribly impressed. The impression I have is that they don’t think Charles said anything new.” Despite that, Anderson, who advised the Mau Mau veterans in their legal case against the British government which resulted in compensation being paid, thought the King had done well with his speech. “It was about as robust as I thought he could be. It was personal. He does not like what he has learned, he does not like what he has discovered. He is embarrassed and ashamed about it and wanted to say so. I admired his sincerity.”

Charles still avoided confronting more recent tragedies: Kelvin Kubai, a lawyer representing the victims of alleged abuses by the British army at their training base at Nanyuki including the 2012 murder of Agnes Wanjiru, 21, said: “The areas the King went to were not the areas people wanted him to go. We would have wanted him to come to Nanyuki, where we have the British Army and we have so many issues. But instead he chose to go to Mombasa, where there is not much history of the British presence in Kenya. Camilla has seen victims of gender-based violence. We would have wanted her to see victims who have been raped by the British, including the family of Agnes Wanjiru. It’s kind of an insult. Kenya sometimes prioritises its foreign relations with the UK over the rights of the Kenyan commoner.”

[From The Times]

As I said, I think some reporters were actually hoping that some of this would come to a head during C&C’s trip. But they aren’t dealing with the half-assed Waleses, who never read their briefing memos and can’t problem-solve their way out of a wet paper bag. The palace and Kenya’s President Ruto stage-managed this tour pretty strictly, and I would also assume that there’s a profound sense of relief now that it’s over. Nothing will be done, and that’s the last time Charles will ever go to Kenya. Now he gets to sit in his palace and pay people to call him “the listening king” for the next year.

Queen Camilla waits inside a car when she and King Charles visited Uhuru Gardens. pic.twitter.com/PoOlgfANVz

— Nation Africa (@NationAfrica) October 31, 2023

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.