A look at King Charles’ reign has a distinct point of view
In September 2022, hours after Queen Elizabeth II was photographed at her Scottish castle saying goodbye to one prime minister and welcoming another, Britain’s longest-reigning monarch was “quite buzzy” chatting with houseguests over drinks. Although her health was known to be declining, few realized how close the 96-year-old was to the end of her life.
When the queen remained in bed the next morning and – citing “medical advice” – canceled plans to remotely join a meeting of cabinet officials, her eldest son quietly changed his schedule and traveled to her side.
But misperceptions over Elizabeth’s condition would lead then-Prince Charles to leave Balmoral Castle. (“At that stage,” a staffer later said, “people were still thinking in terms of days rather than hours.”) He was collecting mushrooms, and his thoughts, at his nearby home when he was summoned back, a new book reports – and learned en route that the queen had died.
Journalist Robert Hardman details Elizabeth’s final hours and her son’s nascent reign in “The Making of a King: King Charles III and the Modern Monarchy.” Among the bits that royal watchers will gobble like chocolates:
In her final red box of state papers, Elizabeth left sealed letters for her oldest son and principal private secretary. “We will probably never know what they said,” Hardman writes.
After Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, announced in 2021 that the queen had blessed the couple’s decision to call their daughter Lilibet, the monarch’s childhood nickname, the queen was “as angry as I’d ever seen her,” a staffer later said.
Contradicting Harry’s account that he learned of his grandmother’s death from the BBC, a palace staffer claims that there were repeated attempts to inform him, “but no calls were going through because Harry was airborne.”
Some at the palace worried less about what Harry’s memoir, “Spare,” said than its “relative lack of detail” about recent life events, which they thought “suggested either a sequel or, perhaps, a memoir by Meghan in due course.”
The queen had “multiple” health conditions and knew she would not live to age 100. (Buckingham Palace refuses to comment on claims that she had bone cancer, Hardman notes.)
The queen’s private secretary summarized her final minutes for posterity. “Slipped away. Old age,” reads part of a short memo stored in the Royal Archives. “She wouldn’t have been aware of anything. No pain.”
“This is not an authorized portrait of Charles III,” Hardman writes. “It is, however, an authoritative one since I have been able to hear from those who have played a key role in this pivotal period in royal history.” Put another way: Hardman, who had access to royal records, friends and staff, has assembled an impressive account of recent events in the House of Windsor. It’s also decidedly pro-establishment.
In multiple references to Charles’ position as head of the Commonwealth, Hardman lauds the king’s work over time: “Since the role is not hereditary, it was not always clear whether Prince Charles would indeed take over. Ultimately, his dedication to both the organization and to the environment resulted in a unanimous endorsement, in 2018.”
Oddly, Hardman makes no mention of Elizabeth’s remarks to Commonwealth leaders days earlier that it was her “sincere wish” that her son would eventually hold the role. The BBC’s diplomatic correspondent called her speech “the culmination of a concerted operation by the British government and royal establishment to present this decision as a fait accompli against which it would be almost impossible to argue.”
Yet Hardman credits the queen’s 2022 announcement of her “sincere wish” that Charles’s second wife, Camilla, be known as queen consort with smoothing the way to that title.
Hardman, whose previous works include biographies of Elizabeth, wrote and co-produced the recent BBC documentary “Charles III: The Coronation Year.” Interviews for that program inform this book, which is liberally laced with quotes from the king’s sister, Anne, Princess Royal, as well as from Camilla’s sister, Annabel Elliot. Hardman also draws on conversations he had with Charles for earlier projects.
The book includes historical information on Elizabeth’s 1953 coronation and touches on various issues facing the monarchy today. Will it be “slimmed down”? “The idea has been shelved” now that fewer relatives are “working” (read: funded) royals.
On race and reparations, Hardman presents Charles as carefully studying past events – and argues that there is peril in attempting, centuries later, to assign liability for past atrocities. The king “could find himself in constitutional trouble” were he to make decisions or statements that “cut across British government policy, be it regarding slavery, reparations or ownership of museum artifacts.” As one adviser put it: “It’s all very well people constantly demanding historic apologies from the King, but it is not always clear who should be apologizing for what.”
Ultimately, Hardman writes not another biography of Charles but about
factors shaping his early reign, and predicts he will happily carry on “as long as he has Queen Camilla at his side.” Easy as Hardman makes this story to read, the tale evokes an element of the criticism he levels at Harry and Meghan’s Netflix program: “not so much a documentary series as a curated selfportrait.”