From Oman in the east to Morocco in the west, Middle East and north African royalty have been closely monitoring plans for the Queen’s funeral, but with days to go until the biggest event in modern royal history, they are unlikely to travel to London in numbers.
Monarchies have sought to divine meaning from protocol arrangements, and are largely underwhelmed by what they have seen.
An expectation that the kings and presidents of the region would board a bus to travel to Westminster Abbey has not been received well. Nor have mooted seating plans that place regional royals and presidents on pews well behind Commonwealth leaders who were an important part of the Queen’s orbit, but are often less influential when it comes to Britain’s trade and security ties.
Leaders of Kuwait, the UAE and Saudi Arabia have been uncertain who to send to London to what would be one of the biggest gatherings of global leaders in decades. Kuwait is thought to be sending its crown prince, and Abu Dhabi a vice-president. Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, Mohammed bin Salman, is thought to still be planning to travel – for what would be his first trip to the UK since the death of the dissident Jamal Khashoggi – however, a final decision has not been made, 72 hours from dignitaries gathering.
If Prince Mohammed does fly to London, he is not expected to take part in formal ceremonies and is instead likely to offer private condolences to a King who was better known in Saudi Arabia than the late Queen herself. There are high hopes that Charles will help reboot ties between London and Riyadh, which have been strained in the turbulent years that Prince Mohammed has wielded power.
As Prince of Wales, Charles travelled to Saudi Arabia 12 times, and he is viewed in the kingdom as coming from a longstanding sympathetic position to cultures, traditions and the history of the region. Charles has also taken a strong interest in Islam, and is believed to have had basic Arabic lessons.
“Charles has built up really strong relationships with royal families in the Gulf over decades and has done so on the basis of friendship and shared royal blood, which matters particularly to the Saudis,” said a former British diplomat who was based in Riyadh. “I think that gives him the basis for frank conversations. And for a long time, he has had the ability to raise issues and even be critical in a way that shorter-term political leaders find quite hard.
“He used to go and spend time with the late King Abdullah in the desert in a tent. I remember a friend telling me that they played bowls together in the sand. You take the time to go and stay overnight and deal with them in places that they live, then that matters.
“The extent to which he’ll be able to continue to do that now that he’s king is an open question. Because he’ll be much more conservative about how he chooses to wield his influence. But the fact is, to the extent that he chooses to help the British government, he will be a very positive influence with those countries.
“He’s obviously had the issue with the cash [donation] that came up a few months ago, but nevertheless there’s some positives to be found.”
The now King Charles had also built strong ties in the UAE and Qatar, and those with the latter attracted controversy in July, when revelations emerged of £2.5m in cash donations made by the former Qatari prime minister Hamad bin Jassim to the Prince of Wales’s charitable foundation.
In Abu Dhabi, expectations are high of deeper ties with the new King. During Queen Elizabeth’s reign came the establishment of the UAE as a country in 1971 and its extraordinary growth in the five decades since. The Queen visited Dubai and Abu Dhabi on state occasions seen as helping British trade ties.
“But when it came to Charles,” said a British official with longstanding ties to the Gulf, “he was able to sit down and talk the talk with them. He was prepared to advance British interests, and so was Prince Andrew, to be fair.
“He won’t be able to do that as King, but they know that he understands them. He hasn’t been banging on about the tyranny of autocracy for years. He isn’t a preacher like some British officials have been.”
How King Charles will recalibrate his friendships and perhaps his views about the Gulf states will be keenly watched in all Gulf capitals, where expectations are strong that Britain’s new monarch will offer a familiar and less formal approach, based on decades of links and an immersive interest in the region and Islam.
“There is a lot hanging on this, in the eyes of the GCC,” said a Kuwaiti official. “Everyone is reading the tea leaves. However, it’s not off to a good start. If the King came to our neighbourhood, we would not put him on a bus. Expecting firm friends of King Charles to all gather like schoolboys on a bus to go to the funeral is not the start we were expecting. That’s why some of us are staying away.”
