The crumbling Commonwealth of Charles III.

Sag Harbor, New York King Charles III faces a harsh reality: during his reign, the number of nations that still want a British head of state will rapidly decline.

As long as Elizabeth II sat on the throne, the danger of a mass exodus seemed unlikely. This is different now. Of the more than 50 nations that make up the British Commonwealth, the former Caribbean colonies are the most troubled.

There is one good reason why they no longer owe allegiance to the British Crown: the long association between slavery and monarchy.

The first Caribbean state to change was Barbados, which became a republic with its own head of state in 2021. The memory of slavery here goes back as far as the seventeenth century.