Charles succeeds his mother, Queen Elizabeth, who reigned for 70 years and died on Thursday afternoon.
Jamaica’s prime minister said the country would mourn Elizabeth, and his counterpart in Antigua and Barbuda ordered the flags to be flown at half-mast until the day of her burial.
But in some quarters doubts remain about what role a distant monarch should play in the 21st century. Earlier this year, some Commonwealth leaders expressed their unease at a summit in Kigali, Rwanda, over the passing of the leadership of the 54-nation club from Elizabeth Charles.
In March, an eight-day tour by Prince William, now heir to the throne, and his wife Kate to Belize, Jamaica and the Bahamas was marked by calls for reparations payments and an apology for slavery.
Barbados, one of twelve Caribbean nations in the Commonwealth, relinquished the Queen as head of state last year. Jamaica has signaled that it may soon do the same, although both remain members of the Commonwealth.
A poll in August showed that 56% of Jamaicans support the removal of the British monarch as head of state.
Mikael Phillips, an opposition member of the Jamaican parliament, tabled a motion in favor of impeachment in 2020.
“I hope, as the Prime Minister said in one of his expressions, that he will act more quickly when a new monarch is in place,” Mr Phillips said on Thursday.
Former Saint Lucia prime minister and now opposition leader Allen Chastanet told Reuters he supported what he saw as a “general” move towards republicanism in his country.
“Certainly at this stage I would support becoming a republic,” he said.
Activists in the region said Charles’s ascension to the throne was also an opportunity to redouble calls for reparations from slavery.
More than 10 million Africans were ensnared in the Atlantic slave trade by European nations between the 15th and 19th centuries. Those who survived this brutal journey were forced to work on plantations in the Caribbean and the Americas.
Although Charles did not mention reparations in his speech at the Kigali conference, he expressed his sadness at the suffering caused by slavery.
“It’s the end of an era where the monarchy maintains the status quo of the legacies of colonialism,” said Professor Rosalea Hamilton, coordinator of Jamaica’s Advocates Network, which protested the royal visit.
The Queen’s grandchildren have the opportunity to lead the conversation on reparations, Ms Hamilton added.
“We should ask the person who will take over to allow the royal family to pay reparations to Africans,” said David Denny, secretary general of the Caribbean Movement for Peace and Integration, from Barbados.
“We should all work to remove the royal family as the heads of state of our nations,” he added.