According to The Telegraph, Carlos III would have chosen Paris for his first official visit. A very symbolic move that owes both the Franco-British friendship and the priorities of the new king.
Charles III and the queen camila received on the steps of the Elysée Palace by Emmanuel Macron and his wife? The photo could soon go around the world. According to The Telegraph, the new king would have chosen to book his first official trip to France. And things could go very fast: the press evokes the month of November 2022. If the information has not been confirmed -or denied- by the British Foreign Office, it is still plausible, and in more ways than one.
In the first place, because relations are going well between Emmanuel Macron and Carlos III. According to our colleagues Figarociting the Elysee, “the President of the Republic wished the King every success, and expressed his full availability to continue the work they have done together in recent years in the face of common challenges, starting with the protection of the climate and the planet”. Without a doubt, the new sovereign appreciates the volunteerism shown by the French president in the fight against global warming.
But the choice of Paris owes as much to the present as to the past. The Windsors have a special relationship with France. Charles’s grandparents, the King George VI and the Queen Elizabethhe paid his first state visit to France in 1938, just a year after his coronation, even before traveling to the United States in 1939.
Paris is also the first destination -outside the Commonwealth- visited by the young Princess Elisabeth, recently married to the prince philip, in May 1948. The couple received an enthusiastic welcome from Parisians who crowded their way to cheer them on. Everyone ignores that the princess is pregnant… with Carlos! become queen, Isabel II will make five state visits to France. A record that his successor will have a hard time matching.