Ever since Prince Charles became King Charles III following his mother’s death in 2022, many people have been expressing concern about his health partly due to the way he looks in pictures both taken recently and taken years ago.

In many pictures of King Charles, his hands and sometimes his feet look painfully swollen. While King Charles has not publicly commented on why his hands and feet often appear to be swollen, he has made it clear that he is aware of the situation. In fact, he dubbed his own fingers “sausage fingers.”

According to “The Man Who Will Be King” by Howard Hodgson, back when Prince William was a baby, King Charles quipped, “I can’t tell you how excited and proud I am. He really does look surprisingly appetising and has sausage fingers just like mine.”

It seems that his fingers have been unusually large even long before he was a father. His mother, the late Queen Elizabeth II, even commented on his fingers when he was a child.

When Charles was just a baby, Queen Elizabeth wrote to her music teacher about her son explaining, “The baby is very sweet and we are enormously proud of him. He has an interesting pair of hands for a baby. They are rather large, but with fine long fingers quite unlike mine and certainly unlike his father’s. It will be interesting to see what they become.”

While it’s clear that swollen hands aren’t anything new for King Charles, the question still remains – why are they swollen? In addition, is it anything to be concerned about?

It turns out that there are a few possible reasons that Charles’ hands and feet are often swollen. Watch the video below to learn more about his “sausage fingers” and what doctors believe may be causing this unusual feature.