King Charles III will skip a gathering of international leaders including President Joe Biden to mark the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings Thursday, in a move that will inevitably highlight his ongoing health struggles.
While Buckingham Palace declined to issue a formal, on the record statement to The Daily Beast clarifying that the king would not be attending the event on Omaha Beach in Normandy, France, official sources said the decision had been made to “protect” the king’s “continued recovery.”
The king is, however expected to travel to Normandy on Thursday for a morning event with British veterans and did attend a ceremony Wednesday in Portsmouth, the British port from which many of the 156,000 Allied troops who landed in France in 1944 set off. The convalescing king arrived later than his son, the Prince of Wales, to the Portsmouth event, in a tweak to his schedule.
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The king gave his first public speech since being diagnosed with cancer, saying, in a lengthy and moving address, that the world was “eternally in debt” to the soldiers who participated in the “greatest amphibious operation in history,” saluting their “courage, resilience and solidarity” as they battled the “stormy swell to shore.”
Prince William read an extract from the diary of D-Day combatant Capt. Alastair Bannerman, addressed to his wife.
Charles is expected to attend a morning ceremony Thursday in Ver-Sur-Mer, Normandy, with British troops, but his son William will be the only senior royal attending an international ceremony with 25 world leaders including Biden at Omaha Beach in the afternoon. Official sources said it might have been “a step too far at this stage” for Charles to attend both events.
Charles made a remarkable break with precedent by confirming that he had been diagnosed with cancer in February.
In late April, the king said he was returning to public-facing duties while making clear that his cancer was not gone and he was still being treated for it.
Sources said the king was doing well in his ongoing battle with cancer but that his schedule had to be “carefully calibrated” to ensure his recovery was not jeopardized.
