King and Queen in high spirits at Highland Games

The King was in high spirits as he attended the Braemar Games on the eve of the second anniversary of his accession.

Both the King and the Queen appeared to be in their element at the annual gathering, with the monarch seen chuckling and wiping away tears of laughter as he watched the spectacle.

If the significance of the date weighed heavily on his shoulders, he did not show it, perhaps buoyed by his improving health and an impending return to normality as he enters the third year of his reign.

Wearing a kilt in his own King Charles III tartan, he watched with amusement as the competitors took part in a number of sports, including the shot put, tug-of-war and caber toss.

The annual Braemar Gathering in the Cairngorms National Park is one of the Royal family’s favourite events, a sporting spectacle rooted in Scottish tradition.

It takes place on the first Saturday in September, when senior royals are often still enjoying their summer holidays at nearby Balmoral.

This year there were a number of celebrities among the crowds at the event, including Dame Judi Dench and Stephen Fry.

Elizabeth II missed the event only a handful of times during her 70-year reign, when she was on overseas tours and in 2022, just days before her death, aged 96.

On Sunday, the King will mark the anniversary of his accession privately at Balmoral, surrounded by the sweeping scenery of his late mother’s beloved Highlands, just as he did last year.

In doing so, he follows in the footsteps of his late mother, who always spent her own accession day, Feb 6, at Sandringham where her father, George VI, died in his sleep in 1952 after suffering from lung cancer.

The King and Queen will attend a service of reflection and prayer at Crathie Kirk, on the Balmoral estate, where the late Queen was a valued member of the congregation.

A royal source said: “There will be personal thoughts, prayers and reflections. I’m sure it will be a very poignant day for all. How could it not be, not least given the year of challenge that the whole family has had?”

The King will likely reflect on an extraordinary year that saw both himself and his daughter-in-law, the Princess of Wales, diagnosed with cancer, and Camilla stepping up to keep the royal show on the road, while also supporting her husband behind the scenes.

“Her natural warmth, resilience and sense of humour, as I’m sure any patient will tell you, is a wonderful thing to have,” a royal source said of the Queen.

“Of course it’s been a stressful year for Her Majesty, too, but there was never a sense of despondency, only a determination that they would get through this, as with so many other challenging issues in the past.”

Just seven months after his diagnosis, the monarch’s health is “heading in a very positive trajectory”.

He has coped with a “determination to be as public as he was able” in order to reassure the nation that his hand remained firmly on the tiller.

“The best way of seeing how the King has coped is through his actions and words – everything that you’ve seen, everything that he’s said, and everything that he’s done,” the source added.

“From the earliest outset of the health challenge, it was the King’s determination to be as public as he was able, so that people could be reassured by just how much he was still able to do in the circumstances, under his doctors’ advice.

“That has obviously slowly dialled up as the programme of treatment and recovery continued, with the result that the King is off on a 12,000-mile trip to Australia and Samoa in a few weeks’ time.”

As he marks Sunday’s milestone, there will be no formal tribute like last year, when the King recalled all that the late Queen “meant to so many of us” on the first anniversary of her death.

There will also be no gun salutes, as usually fired on Accession Day, because the anniversary falls on a Sunday. Instead, the military tribute by The King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery at Hyde Park and The Honourable Artillery Company at the Tower of London has been moved to Monday.

This year’s Highland Games marked the first since the King was announced as patron of the Braemar Royal Highland Society in May, taking on the role from his mother.

The King first attended the Games as a young boy in the 1950s.