Charles to emerge from the shadows
After decades in the background, a new king has his chance to make his mark on the monarchy, and the world, writes Ellen Whinnett
KING Charles III comes to the throne at the age of 73; an ageing man determined to finally make his mark after spending his entire adult life in the shadow of his mother.
The new king, who became heir to the throne at the age of just three years old, inherits the crown after a 70year wait, a period he filled with activism, sometimes unpopular opinions, and wellarticulated yearnings to achieve something with his life.
He often felt trapped in his royal role, observing at times that he needed to accept his fate that “unorthodox individuals’’ were doomed to years of “ridicule’’ and lamenting that “nobody knows what the utter hell it is to be the Prince of Wales’’.
The death of his former wife, Princess Diana, and his affair with, and later marriage to, the true love of his life Camilla Parker Bowles, have often overshadowed his charitable efforts and fundraising work.
His zealous support of homoeopathic medicines, organic farming techniques and climate change mitigation have seen him labelled variously as an unwelcome meddler and a visionary who is years ahead of his time.
Government officials in the UK and across the Commonwealth will now watch nervously to see how the new monarch approaches his role, and whether he will be as hands-off as his fiercely apolitical mother.
Royal historian Hugo Vickers said he expected King Charles to be very different from Prince Charles.
“When he becomes king, he almost has a new start, and you can see this with Edward VII and other members of the royal family when they succeed,’’ Mr Vickers said.
“Edward VII as Prince of Wales was considered to be a fairly flaky character, but the moment he became king he sort of transformed into this amazingly wonderful, substantial diplomatic figure. “Edward VIII was three different men – he was a rather charming Prince of Wales, an anxious Edward VIII, (and) he was a whining and whingeing Duke of Windsor after abdication. “George VI of course took a little bit more time to get into his stride.’’
The new king also takes on the task of replacing his beloved mother in the public’s affections after her extraordinary 70 years on the throne, a period so lengthy that three generations across the Commonwealth have only ever known Elizabeth as their sovereign. Republicans in places such as Australia who have bided their time under Elizabeth will have no such qualms under Charles, and it’s likely there will be a rush of republic debates, and even votes, across the Commonwealth under Charles’s reign. Mr Vickers said those republicans would need to weigh up what will happen after Charles, whose son Prince William is now the heir presumptive, passes on.
“Prince William, when he has been to Australia and New Zealand, places like that, especially when he takes the kids with him, has been incredibly popular,’’ he said.
Charles and Elizabeth were different in many ways.
Where his mother was frugal, he is extravagant.
Where she was determined to avoid controversy, he sought it.
Where she always declined to tell governments what to do, Charles has spent decades handwriting letters to ministers, his “black spider memos’’ telling them how they should handle issues such as urban planning and environmental policy.
Born on November 14, 1948, to the then Princess Elizabeth and her husband Prince Philip, Charles was an awkward, bookish child, intimidated by his gruff, athletic father and overshadowed by his confident younger sister, Princess Anne.
He attended the same schools his father had done – Cheam, in England, and then spent his high school years as a boarder at Gordonstoun, the austere school in Scotland, after his father decided he would benefit from its cold showers, tight discipline and intensive outdoors program. He later wrote how miserable he found the experience.
He spent two terms at Geelong Grammar’s Timbertop campus in Victoria, Australia, then went on to study archaeology and anthropology at Cambridge, where he became the first heir to the throne to receive a university degree when he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1970.
He served in the Royal Air Force and then the Royal Navy from 1971 to 1976.
By his late 20s, he was an accomplished polo player and was often seen out on the town or on glamorous holidays with various young society ladies. But behind the scenes, the unlikely playboy prince was struggling to carve out a suitable role.
In a private letter written in March 1987, he admitted:
‘Unless I rush about doing things and trying to help furiously, I will not (and the monarchy will not) be seen to be relevant and I will be considered a mere playboy!’
Having somewhat foolishly declared he thought 30 was the right age to get married, Charles felt pressured as his self-imposed deadline approached and no suitable marriage candidate had been found. He had dated Camilla Shand in the 1970s, but the relationship petered out and she married Charles’s associate Andrew Parker Bowles.
In 1981, he married Lady Diana Spencer. They had met just 13 times before their
Prince Charles has his foibles, but he is not a crook, not a bully, and not a hypocrite Royal biographer Penny Junor
huge wedding at St Paul’s Cathedral, and the marriage almost immediately began to fray, the pair unable to overcome their 12-year age gap, their huge differences in world outlook, Diana’s concerns about how she fitted into the royal family, and Charles’s continued affections for Camilla.
Their sons William and
Harry were born in 1982 and 1984, but Charles and Diana both became embroiled in love affairs and, after a series of scandals, divorced in 1996.
The glamorous Diana reinvented herself as a popular princess who travelled the world doing charitable work, and there was global mourning when she died in a car accident in
Paris in 1997.
They were dark times for Charles, who bore the backlash from the public who were furious over what was perceived as an uncaring royal response to Diana’s death. “Nobody knows what the utter hell it is to be the Prince of Wales,’’ he wrote in a self-pitying letter in 2004.
But by 2005, after years of careful work to repair both their reputations, Charles married Camilla in a low-key ceremony at Windsor.
Middle-aged and finally married to the woman he had loved most of his adult life, Charles found happiness and a better sense of purpose.
He became a passionate gardener who turned his rural estate, Highgrove, into an eclectic showpiece, ramped up his charity work, and in recent years took up more official travel on royal duties after his mother gave up long-haul flying in 2011 at the age of 85.
He showed sound business initiative and developed his private investment company, the Duchy of Cornwall, into a business that holds $1.7bn in assets as the fourth-biggest landowner in England. Much of its wealth comes from its booming business in organic foods. Charles himself is the largest individual private landholder in the UK.
His Prince’s Trust charity,
founded in 1976 with his last navy pay
cheque, has been a huge success and more than a million young people have benefited from some of his employment, selfhelp and training programs.
“All those things happened but the problem that he has had, of course, is that he has had these two very difficult marriages, which have been controversial for one reason or another,” Mr Vickers said.
“That has to some extent eclipsed the good things that he’s done.’’
An unflattering biography, Rebel Prince, by journalist Tom Morton, reinforced the notion he was an eccentric man, out of touch with ordinary life in a way his mother never was.
The book included claims Charles had once screamed in horror and asked Camilla what was sitting atop their sandwiches. She had told him it was cling film, something he had never encountered.
Morton also claimed that a policeman accompanying Charles would carry a premixed martini for him to drink when he arrived at a dinner or function, and sometimes the host would be handed a bag that would contain the food he would eat that night. There are reports of him arriving for weekend visits at posh country estates in a helicopter because he had so much luggage, and sometimes sending a truck the day before to take his own bed and toilet seat.
Royal biographer Penny Junor, who has known Charles for more than 30 years, wrote to the Mirror in his defence after Morton’s book was published.
“Prince Charles has his foibles, but he is not a crook, not a bully, and not a
hypocrite,’’ she wrote. “Yes, he is spoilt, he is petulant, he is pampered, and there is no denying he takes everything but the kitchen sink with him when he goes to stay away from home for any length of time. He also has a terrible temper and has a great tendency to feel sorry for himself. I have been writing all this for years, and so have others.’’
In recent years, Charles had been working behind the scenes to create a slimmeddown monarchy. This would reduce costs, and would in practice restrict those who appeared at ceremonial occasions such as on the Buckingham Palace balcony for the Trooping of the Colour to just those who are direct heirs to the throne, and their families.
While his efforts alone have not been successful, other events have resulted in a reduction of the “working royal’’ cohort. His brother Andrew retired from public life in disgrace over his friendship with the billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. His son Harry and wife Meghan quit the royal family and moved to California after falling out with the palace hierarchy.
Mr Vickers said Charles brings enormous experience to the role of sovereign of the UK and Commonwealth.
“He met Churchill as a little boy; he met president Nixon, for better or for worse; and he will have met all those prime ministers throughout the ages,” he said. “I think he will need lots of support and lots of open minds as to what sort of king he will be.
“He obviously isn’t going to be there as long as his mother and there is another generation coming forward.’’