King Charles navigates challenging year amid cancer struggles and monarchy uncertainties
Britain’s King Charles III, who marks a year since his coronation today, has seen his reign blown off course by illness but aims to get it back on track to establish a renewed bond with the public.
His disclosure in February that he had cancer diagnosed, followed by a similar palace announcement in March that his daughter-in-law Kate, the Princess of Wales, had begun cancer treatment, has shaken the 1,200 year-old monarchy, which serves not only the UK but also 14 overseas realms including Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
Faced with the tough task of following his mother Queen Elizabeth II after her unprecedented 70 years on the throne, the king’s reign got off to a strong start with a much smoother transition than many of his countrymen expected.
But his and Kate’s enforced absence from public duties – initially while they recovered from a prostate procedure and abdominal surgery respectively and then later began cancer treatment – has left a vacuum in the normal work of the monarchy and prompted concerns about the future.
Both royals have won plaudits for being open about their treatment but there are significant unanswered questions over the specific type of cancers they have and their prospects of a full recovery.
For the British, who have largely remained supportive of the king and his family according to opinion polls, there was the reassuring sight last Tuesday of King Charles, 75, returning to public-facing duties with a visit to a cancer treatment centre in London.
Buckingham Palace officials have said he hopes to step up his public appearances in May and June, the busiest months in the royal calendar, but that will be subject to advice from doctors, who are increasingly positive about his prognosis.
Royal biographer Ingrid Seward, whose latest book, My Mother and I, about the relationship between the king and the late queen, has become a bestseller, believes the way he has handled his illness and shared his experiences with the public has won him sympathy and greater support.
“The common man can now relate to him much more than he did before,” she said, while acknowledging: “He does look very pale and tired, with red eyes.”
Holding hands with other cancer patients and talking frankly about the emotional strains of his diagnosis, the king displayed his vulnerability during the visit on Tuesday. He told one patient: “It’s always a bit of a shock, isn’t it, when they tell you.”
Sally Bedell Smith, an American royal biographer, agrees it has improved his standing.
“If he is able to make his way through this treatment and have a normal life, which is the case for a lot of people these days, I think it will enhance his popularity,” she said.
The king spent half a century using his position to speak out about controversial subjects such as climate change, architecture, education, complementary medicine, youth unemployment and other issues in a break with
his mother’s much more traditional ribbon-cutting approach to monarchy.
“She was not an advocate in the way that Charles was for all those years as Prince of Wales,” Ms Bedell Smith said.
“He wanted to save the world and he found ways of raising his voice.”
Since becoming king, however, he has bitten his tongue and toned it all down, while still using his convening powers to bring together policymakers working to limit climate change and other challenges.
The king has not abandoned activism entirely. He has encouraged interfaith understanding at home and in the Middle East. He has also made it a cornerstone of his reign to help to heal divisions over the legacy of slavery and Britain’s colonial past. He has commissioned research into his royal ancestors’ involvement in the slave trade going back to Elizabeth I in the 16th century.
In Kenya on his first state visit to a Commonwealth country as king in October last year, he expressed his sorrow and regret over Britain’s execution, torture and maiming of up to 90,000 Kenyans suspected of supporting the Mau Mau independence rebellion between 1952 and 1960.
“The wrongdoings of the past are a cause of the greatest sorrow and the deepest regret,” he said.
“In coming back to Kenya, it matters greatly to me that I should deepen my own understanding of these wrongs, and that I meet some of those whose lives and communities were so grievously affected.”
Back home he marked his 75th birthday and coronation year by launching a project to use surplus food in the supply chain to help 13 million people in the UK struggling to feed themselves.
The big question he and his advisers face, like other constitutional monarchies across Western Europe, is how to move with the times and remain relevant to younger generations while acting as a force for national unity and continuity.
His elder son and heir, Prince William, who like the king has been absent from the public stage for much of the year while he tends to his sick wife and their three children, has previously faced criticism of his work ethic.
Scarred by his own troubled childhood, his often-absent parents’ divorce, and his mother’s untimely death in a 1997 Paris car crash, Prince William, 41, vowed to put his wife and children first long before her health problems.
The heir to the throne also argues that his family will have to change the way they operate as Britain’s constitutional monarchy, like those in the rest of Europe, eventually slims down to perhaps four or five taxpayer-funded working royals from the current 11.
The Windsors are already down from 15 a few years ago.
“There aren’t enough people to be able to support the number of charities that they used to support,” Ms Seward said, as the king was completing a review last week of 1,000 royal patronages, jettisoning some and taking on others held by his late mother.
Prince William and Kate, 42, have focused instead on trying to change Britain and the world for the better through a small number of causes and charities supported by their Royal Foundation.
She campaigns for better support for children in the first five years of life, arguing many adult social problems including addiction, crime and family breakdown stem from trauma in those early years.
He wants to end homelessness in the UK and use his £50 million ($62 million) Earthshot Prize to bring innovators, investors and governments together to solve the world’s biggest environmental problems.
“The thing that ties it all together for me is about social leadership,” Prince William said in Singapore in November.
He said his family had long helped to throw the spotlight on issues but he added: “I want to go a step further. I want to actually bring change and I want to bring people to the table who can do the change if I can’t do it.”