King Charles III hosted his first reception on Sunday for representatives of the Commonwealth realms, the 14 former colonies he governs alongside Britain – at least for the time being.

As Republican movements gain ground from Australia to Antigua, one of the 73-year-old’s greatest challenges will be keeping together the global family that his late mother, Queen Elizabeth II, loved so much.

On his third full day as monarch, the King received Patricia Scotland, Secretary-General of the 56-nation Commonwealth, at Buckingham Palace before a reception with High Commissioners and their spouses.

Just hours earlier, Australia and New Zealand had officially proclaimed Charles king after a pompous proclamation in London on Saturday.

But while the lavish tributes to “Mama Queen” — as she was known in Papua New Guinea — left no doubt about the widespread love for his mother, one wonders if Charles can inspire the same devotion.

The Caribbean island nation of Barbados became the youngest nation to declare itself a republic last year, and others are moving in the same direction.

A sizeable segment of Australians want to become a republic, including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, but for now his focus is on mourning the late Queen.

“The most important thing is to remember the moment we are in now,” he told British Sky News, ruling out a referendum in his first term.

Shortly after Charles was confirmed as King of Antigua and Barbuda, Prime Minister Gaston Browne said he intended to hold a republican referendum “within the next three years”.

“This is not an act of hostility or a difference between Antigua and Barbuda and the monarchy, but it is the final step in closing that circle of independence,” he told ITV News.

Republicans are in the minority in Canada, but a poll last April found that 67 percent opposed Charles’ succession by his mother.

Calls for change are also growing in Jamaica, where Prime Minister Andrew Holness told Charles’ son William in March that the nation would “carry on” as an independent country.

William’s trip through the Caribbean with his wife Kate was met with protests and calls for the monarchy to apologize and make amends for its role in the slave trade.

The rich belong to a total of 56 mostly former British colonies that make up the Commonwealth, a voluntary association comprising 2.5 billion people around the world.

Togo and Gabon became the newest members this year, despite never having been under British rule.

Most of the others became independent after Queen Elizabeth II’s accession to the throne in 1952, and many have since bid farewell to the monarchy, but she saw the Commonwealth as a way of binding the various nations together.

At a summit in 2018, Commonwealth leaders confirmed that Charles would succeed her as head of the organization if she died.

He has already laid the foundation stone, has visited 45 of the 56 nations so far and represented his mother at the recent leaders’ summit in Rwanda in June.

There he addressed the issue of republicanism head-on, telling an audience of presidents and prime ministers that it was “purely a matter for individual member countries to decide.”

At the 2013 Sri Lanka Summit, where he also stood up for the Queen, he recalled a life he spent as part of the Commonwealth’s “family” and said it was “in my blood”.

He recalled how former Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah, who was visiting the Queen’s Scottish estate at Balmoral as a boy, gave him a bow and set of arrows, which he immediately fired into the trees.

Charles has also described water-skiing with former Prime Minister of Malta Dom Mintoff and dancing with the wife of the Prime Minister of the Bahamas, Lynden Pindling, at a 1973 Independence Ball.

Such connections could help empires remain in the Commonwealth even if they shed the monarchy.

Former British Prime Minister David Cameron remarked that, like his mother, Charles was an “excellent diplomat”.

“I’ve seen him in action at Commonwealth Heads of Government meetings and he knows each leader personally. He interacts brilliantly with them,” he told BBC television.