What Prince William’s First Solo Visit To Riyadh Signals For UK-Saudi Ties – Analysis

By Jonathan Gornall

Prince William’s arrival in Riyadh on Monday will be a reaffirmation of the special bond between the monarchies of Britain and Saudi Arabia that was forged in the early days of the reign of his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, and which has flourished ever since.

But for the 43-year-old prince, heir apparent to the British throne, his first official visit to the Kingdom will also be imbued with an element of personal poignancy.

William will be following in the footsteps of his mother, the late Diana, Princess of Wales, who visited Saudi Arabia 40 years ago during a nine-day tour of the Middle East in 1986 with her then husband, Prince Charles.

The couple had married in 1981, and Diana was just 25 years old during their first tour of the Middle East. Prince William, their first child, was three years old at the time and did not accompany his mother on the visit, although as a nine-month-old baby he had travelled with his parents to Australia and New Zealand in 1983.

William was 15 when his mother died in a car crash in Paris in August 1997.

The prince has visited the region before. His first trip was freighted with personal meaning. In June 2018 he paid a three-day visit to Israel and Palestine, meeting both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority.

It was the first official visit by a senior member of Britain’s royal family to Israel and the Palestinian Territories.Although the visit was described by Britain as strictly non-political, and William visited holy places important to all three Abrahamic faiths, to the annoyance of some Israeli politicians he made a point of publicly assuring Palestinians that they had not been forgotten by Britain, which had ruled the area from 1917 until the creation of Israel in 1948.

But there was also an element of personal pilgrimage to the trip for William. While in Jerusalem he visited the tomb of Princess Alice of Battenberg and Greece, his great-grandmother, a devout Christian who had helped Jews to evade Nazi capture during the Second World War.

After her death in 1969, Israel honored her request to be buried in Jerusalem, and William visited her burial place in a crypt in the Russian Orthodox Church of Mary Magdalene on the Mount of Olives outside Jerusalem’s Old City.

Kensington Palace describes the purpose of Prince William’s first solo visit to Saudi Arabia as “a celebration of trade, energy and investment ties.”

It is no coincidence that the visit of the prince, who served for several years as a pilot in the British Royal Air Force, coincides with the World Defense Show in Riyadh, and amid British hopes of Saudi Arabia becoming the fourth national partner in the next-generation Tempest fighter aircraft program.

In May 2025, Saudi Defense Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman travelled to London to discuss closer cooperation with UK Defense Secretary John Healey, who described the Kingdom as “a vital partner for the UK in ensuring security and stability in the Gulf.”

However, royal watchers in the UK have attached another significance to Prince William’s visit. For Tatler, the house journal of Britain’s upper classes, for the man it describes as “one of Britain’s greatest diplomats” the visit is being seen as “another step in his preparation for the throne.”

The visit comes at a pivotal moment for the British royal family.

Queen Elizabeth II, who became queen at the age of 25 upon the death of her father, King George VI, on Feb. 6, 1952, reigned for 70 years. When she passed on Sept. 8, 2022, at the age of 96, she was succeeded by her eldest son, Prince Charles.

Upon the accession of King Charles III, Prince William, known formerly as the Duke of Cambridge, inherited his father’s previous titles as Prince of Wales and Duke of Cornwall.

But in February 2024, barely nine months after the coronation of the king, Buckingham Palace announced that Charles III had been diagnosed with an undisclosed form of cancer.

Fears about his health have persisted ever since, although in December 2025, the 77-year-old monarch revealed that “thanks to early diagnosis, effective intervention and adherence to doctors’ orders, my own schedule of cancer treatment can be reduced in the new year.”

Nevertheless, as heir apparent, all of Prince William’s duties are now designed with his future responsibilities very much in mind.

His visit this week reflects the importance placed by Britain not only on its relationship with Saudi Arabia as an important trading partner, but also on a personal connection between the two royal families that stretches back for more than a century.

The friendship between the British and Saudi royal families dates back to 1919, when Prince Faisal, the 13-year-old third son of Abdulaziz bin Abdulrahman, the future founder and king of Saudi Arabia, became the first member of the Saudi royal family to visit Britain.

The invitation had been sent to his father, the king of Najd, who was known in the West as Ibn Saud and was recognized by the British government following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in the First World War as the rising political force in the Arabian Peninsula.

Still grappling with the impact on his territories of the influenza epidemic of 1919, which would claim more lives globally than the First World War that had preceded it, the king chose his eldest son, Prince Turki, to represent him in England.

Tragedy, however, intervened. Turki fell victim to the epidemic and, at the last minute, Prince Faisal was appointed in his place as the symbolic head of the Saudi delegation to London.

It proved a wise choice. Although young, the Prince won over his hosts during a cordial visit that set the tone for a relationship between the two royal families that has endured ever since.

While in London, Prince Faisal visited Buckingham Palace, where he met King George V, toured the House of Commons and the House of Lords, and was taken on what must have been a somber tour of the battlefields of northern France, where more than 3.5 million Allied and German soldiers had been killed in the war that had ended only one year previously.

In June 1953, Prince Fahd, another of King Abdulaziz’s sons, represented his 78-year-old father at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. King Abdulaziz had only five months left to live, and on Nov. 9, 1953, would be succeeded by Crown Prince Saud, his second son.

During the reign of Queen Elizabeth II, there were no fewer than four state visits to Britain by kings of Saudi Arabia, a number matched by the heads of state of only four other countries, including the UK’s near-neighbors, France and Germany.

The first to visit was King Faisal, who as a young prince had visited England in 1919 and had succeeded King Saud in 1964. In May 1967 he arrived in London for a momentous eight-day visit, at the start of which he was honored with a full state welcome, riding through the streets of London in a horse-drawn carriage alongside Queen Elizabeth II.

King Faisal would be followed on state visits to Britain by King Khalid in 1981, King Fahd in 1987 and King Abdullah in 2007.

The royal traffic between the two kingdoms has always been two-way.

In February 1979, arriving on board the supersonic jet Concorde, Queen Elizabeth II visited Riyadh and Dhahran during a Gulf tour that also took her to Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE and Oman.

In Saudi Arabia, she was hosted by King Khalid and enjoyed a series of events, including a desert picnic and a state dinner at Maathar Palace in Riyadh. In return, she and her husband hosted a dinner for the Saudi royal family on board Her Majesty’s Yacht Britannia.

The relationship between the two royal families has not been limited to the great occasions of state.

The Court Circular published by Buckingham Palace reveals that between 2011 and 2021 alone various members of Britain’s royal family met with Gulf monarchs more than 200 times — equivalent to once a fortnight — and that 40 of these informal meetings were with members of the House of Saud.

In January 2015, Prince William’s father, the then Prince Charles, flew to Riyadh to pay his respects following the death of King Abdullah, while flags over royal and government buildings in London were lowered to half-mast.

In March 2018, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had a private audience and lunch with Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace during an official visit to the UK. During that visit he also dined with the Prince of Wales — now King Charles III — and his son, Prince William.

This week, with William’s arrival in Saudi Arabia as the Prince of Wales, the two men will resume their acquaintance, this time both as heirs apparent.

Prince William is famously unstuffy and down to earth, and very much at ease meeting members of the public, both at home and when he travels overseas.

His precise itinerary while in Saudi Arabia is unclear. For anyone who might encounter him during his visit, Buckingham Palace insists “there are no obligatory codes of behavior” when meeting a member of the royal family.

However, its advice for those who “wish to observe the traditional forms” is to address Prince William first as “Your Royal Highness” and thereafter as “Sir.”