The king of the U.K. and the mayor of the largest city in the U.S. are set to meet Wednesday.
King Charles III and Queen Camilla will arrive in New York City as part of their four-day visit to the U.S. for the nation’s semiquincentennial.
They will participate in a wreath-laying ceremony at the National September 11 Memorial and meet families of victims and first responders from the 2001 terrorist attack.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill will be in attendance.
“And that will be the extent of my meeting with the king and with others who are present,” Mr. Mamdani said Monday.
His cool welcome of the British royals is worlds away from how New York City’s elected officials embraced previous monarchs.
Mr. Mamdani’s less-than-enthusiastic response may stem from his father, a scholar specializing in African politics and post-colonial studies who has written about British colonial rule on the continent. On St. Patrick’s Day, the mayor compared the Iran war to British rule over Ireland.
Mr. Mamdani’s background and politics — he’s a Democratic socialist who grew up in Uganda and South Africa until he was 7 — are a stark difference from the royals, whose predecessors oversaw the British empire.
Still, he has met with leaders he has bashed, including two polite meetings with President Trump in which the two found common ground over their love for the city.
Mr. Mamdani and the king have not met before, nor have they spoken about each other publicly.
This marks the king’s first visit to the U.S. since he assumed the throne in 2022.
The royal couple’s stop in New York marks the halfway point of their overseas excursion, with events including the queen’s visit to the New York Public Library and the king stopping by an after-school, urban farming program. They will also attend a reception for the King’s Trust, a charity he founded in 1976, before departing.
Their trip began Monday in Washington, marked by the king’s speech to Congress and meetings with Mr. Trump and first lady Melania Trump.
While the public displays of support between the two nations are to mark 250 years of American independence, the monarchs’ visit is privately aimed at amending the fraying relationship between the two countries amid Mr. Trump’s tariffs and war with Iran.
