King Charles was welcomed at a lavish state banquet at the Palace of Versailles on Wednesday night, at the start of a state visit to reinforce the renewed UK-France relationship after the near total collapse in trust during the Boris Johnson years after Brexit.
In Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors, the famed 17th-century gallery built by the Louis XIV to project the power and majesty of the French monarchy, King Charles told the French president, Emmanuel Macron: “Your generosity of spirit brings to mind how my family and I were so greatly moved by the tributes paid in France to my mother, the late queen … You said that she had touched your hearts – and it was she who held France in the greatest affection.”
He added: “I would like, if you would allow me, to raise a toast to President and Madame Macron and to the French people, as well as to our entente cordiale – a sustainable alliance. Whatever lies ahead, may it endure, faithful and constant, for centuries to come.” He was accompanied by Queen Camilla, who wore a blue silk crepe dress and matching cape by Dior, with diamonds inherited from the late queen.
More than 150 guests, including Mick Jagger and Hugh Grant, were seated along one vast, 60-metre-long table in order for everyone to be present “at the king’s table”. They were to dine on a lobster and crab dish inspired by the tastes of Louis XIV, followed by French poultry marinaded in champagne and a gratin of French cèpe mushrooms.
A selection of French and English cheeses included stichelton, a British blue cheese similar to stilton that uses unpasteurised milk. Along with a long list of vintage wines and vintage champagne, the dessert was a French macaron with lychee and rose sorbet and raspberry compôte.
There was no foie gras on the menu – the controversial pâté obtained by force-feeding ducks or geese – as the king has banned it from his household.
From early evening at the gilded entrance to the Palace of Versailles – both the seat of the French monarchy and a symbol of the French Revolution of 1789 – a procession of figures from sport, politics and culture walked the red carpet laid over cobblestones.
They included the British-French actor and singer Charlotte Gainsbourg, the British-French actor Emma Mackey and the French actor Carole Bouquet.
Also present were the chief executive of the French luxury goods empire LVMH, Bernard Arnault, one of the world’s richest people, as well as the businessman and French Iliad telecoms group founder Xavier Niel.
Several guests from the world of sport included the former French football coach Arsène Wenger, the French-Ivorian football star Didier Drogba, the footballer Patrick Vieira, and Tony Estanguet, the three-times Olympic canoeing champion who is head of the 2024 Paris Olympics organising committee, as well as the tennis player and former Wimbledon winner Amélie Mauresmo.
Stéphane Bern, the French broadcaster and royal commentator, who was a guest at the dinner, said: “Versailles is a showcase for France. This is about Franco-British friendship. It is about the excellence of the French art of fine dining, and it’s about showing the best of France to the British. The main element of an evening like this is always the toasts. You can only speak to your neighbour on your left or right as the table is too wide to speak over. The key topic of conversation at an event like this is the French art of eating and entertaining.”
All day, a team in Versailles had worked on the table presentation, using tape-measures to finalise the place settings to the millimetre.
The king’s toast referred to his mother, the late Queen Elizabeth II, who had lunch in the same room at Versailles during her first state visit to France in 1957. Macron had presented the king with a book specially made to commemorate her official visits to France.
The king’s trip is seen as the “soft power” follow-up to Rishi Sunak’s drive to repair the badly damaged Paris-London relationship at a Franco-British summit earlier this year, which addressed issues such as the crisis of people risking their lives to cross the Channel in small boats. “Despite Brexit and because our ties are so old, I know that we will continue to write together part of our continent’s history,” Macron said in his toast at the Versailles dinner.
Earlier in the day, King Charles lit the flame at the tomb of the Unknown Warrior at Paris’s Arc de Triomphe before travelling down the Champs-Elysées with Macron to hold one-to-one talks on issues including war in Ukraine and recent coups in Africa’s Sahel region.
At the Arc de Triomphe, the 74-year-old king and 45-year-old president commemorated Britain and France’s common sacrifices and continuing military cooperation ahead of next year’s 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings. Macron later posted a video on X, formerly Twitter, of the pair greeting crowds where shouts of “Vive le Roi” could be heard.
This friendship. pic.twitter.com/ikXRzDWUuE
— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) September 20, 2023
Macron presented the king with a gift of the first edition of the novel Les Racines du Ciel by Romain Gary, chosen for its references to the protection of animals and biodiversity, as well as a medal for his work on the environment.
King Charles, who is on his 35th visit to France, and Queen Camilla landed at Orly airport on a British Airways flight and were met on a red carpet by the prime minister, Élisabeth Borne. Their mode of transport was in contrast to Elizabeth II, who had travelled to Paris by Eurostar train in 2004 and 2014.
The king and queen were driven from the airport in their own Bentley, which was transported from the UK. But the king accompanied Macron down the Champs-Elysées in the presidential Citroën DS7 convertible accompanied by 136 horses of the republican guard.
• This article was amended on 21 September 2023 to describe Didier Drogba as French-Ivorian, rather than “French”.
