New photo released to mark King Charles III’s 77th birthday

Charles greeted well-wishers after visiting Cyfarthfa Castle. (Chris Jackson/Getty Images via CNN Newsource)

Buckingham Palace has marked King Charles III’s 77th birthday Friday with the release of a new photo of the monarch.

The image, taken in May by photographer Millie Pilkington, shows Charles in the gardens of Sandringham Estate in Norfolk, with the sprawling stately home behind him.

Other photos, seemingly taken at the same time, show him wandering Sandringham’s gardens and tending to a maple sapling. They were published in the magazine Country Life on Wednesday to mark Charles’ restoration of the historic gardens.

On Friday, the King and Queen Camilla travelled to a reception at Cyfarthfa Castle, about 25 miles (40 kilometres) north of the Welsh capital, Cardiff, where he cut into an enormous birthday cake shaped like the castle.

He later officially opened the South Wales Metro Train Depot, briefly sitting in the driver’s seat of one of the new tram-trains, and greeted members of the public who had waited outside in the rain for his arrival. Meanwhile in London, gun salutes were fired in Green Park and by Tower Bridge.

• Photo gallery: King Charles’ life in pictures as the monarch turns 77

The appearance of autumnal rain underscored why British monarchs often get two birthdays – one of which is “official” and marked by the Trooping the Colour parade.

That takes place in the summer and sees 1,400 officers and soldiers parade through London on a crowd-lined route from Buckingham Palace to Horse Guards Parade.

The tradition of the monarch enjoying two birthdays is thought to have started with King George II in 1748. Like Charles, he was also born in November.

It has been a difficult few weeks for Charles. At the end of October, he took the extraordinary step to strip his brother Andrew of his royal titles, in an attempt to quell the scandal over Andrew’s links to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

That scandal overshadowed a historic moment earlier in October when Charles became the first British monarch to publicly pray with a pope in at least 500 years when he visited the Vatican and met Pope Leo XIV.

Charles continues to balance his duties as monarch with ongoing cancer treatment, after he was diagnosed with an undisclosed form of the disease in early 2024.

By Issy Ronald, CNN