The second leg of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s much-anticipated Royal Caribbean Tour got off to a turbulent start the moment that the government’s £75 million “Brexit jet” left Belizean airspace. Their imminent arrival in the next “Commonwealth realm,” Jamaica, was not popular and soon sparked outrage among Jamaicans both on the island and in the diaspora — which spilled out into social media. Photos of William and Kate greeting Jamaican children through a fence have hardly helped.

Soon, there were widespread calls for reparations and a republican fervor sweeping Jamaican politics. The Queen remains Jamaica’s head of state, with her duties carried out by a colonial governor-general, but this has long been controversial. The latest visit has sparked significant resistance — influential Jamaican leaders in academia, music, and law have expressed their anger at the institution responsible for overseeing the enslavement of over one million Africans on the island of Jamaica in an open letter to the British Monarchy: “We see no reason to celebrate 70 years of the ascension of your grandmother to the British throne because her leadership, and that of her predecessors, has perpetuated the greatest human rights tragedy in the history of humankind.”

It is widely believed that William and Kate Windsor’s tour of the Caribbean came in response to Barbados’s shock decision to replace Queen Elizabeth II with a Barbadian president in November 2021. If so, it is a decision that has backfired spectacularly. Jamaican prime minister Andrew Holness confirmed on Wednesday in a short meeting with the royals that Jamaica will be “moving on” to fulfill its ambitions as an independent, developed, prosperous country. But why is Jamaica keen to cut ties with the monarchy after nearly sixty years of political independence from the United Kingdom?