A year ago, the British monarchy was on unfamiliarly shaky ground.

The millennium-old institution has always had its detractors, but Prince William had found himself in the new position of being asked to answer for his ancestors' colonial sins as he and Kate Middleton embarked on a royal tour of the Caribbean. Echoing remarks his father, then-Prince Charles, gave in newly republican Barbados in November 2021, William told an audience at the Jamaican governor general's residence that slavery was "abhorrent" and "never should have happened."