‘This bloody thing. Every. Stinking. Time.”
This was our new King. He was six days into his new job and these were the last six words he uttered before sweeping imperiously from a room at Belfast’s Hillsborough Castle, leaving his wife and his retainers fluttering about like frightened pheasants at a shoot.
If it had been the irascible Henry VIII, he’d have been throwing a wobbly about another queen failing to deliver a male heir. One imagines George III losing it only after losing the American colonies, or possibly his marbles. And if it had been the late Queen … but, of course, with her famous sangfroid, it would never have been the late Queen.
As it was, this was her son. And Charles III was fulminating about a fountain pen leaking while he was signing a visitors’ book.
It wasn’t our new King’s first act of public peevishness in the days following his elevation to the throne. Shortly after his mother’s death, Charles got the hump about another pen, this time because it was in the wrong place. We must hope no disobedient writing implement disrupts the final act in his accession, his coronation at Westminster Abbey on May 6.
Generous souls might forgive His Majesty his outbursts. This, after all, was a son grieving the death of his mother; a 73-year-old chap feeling the strain of long-awaited responsibilities; a man worn out from being rushed from room to room while doing his best to look like a king.
Others might be less generous about His Majesty’s freakish humours. Like the former member of staff who told the Times that Charles was a man so intemperate that he would kick out at furniture in his rage. “He’s a demanding boss,” that insider said.
Another who worked for Charles, Sir Malcolm Ross, who became his Master of the Household in 2006, told author Tom Bower the prince called him “names I hadn’t heard since my early days in the army”.
Charles, the Times has also reported, has no interest in hearing criticism, either. This isn’t just with staff. One who dined with him reported the then-prince grew visibly irritated when challenged.
Is this who our new King is? A man of spleen and spittle? A know-it-all who will brook no opposition? Quite possibly. But is he also, as others report, an amiable cove, an inveterate hard worker, a visionary ambitious to do good, a small “c” conservative wanting to remake the old order, a philanthropist who has helped thousands of young people? Yes, he is all of those things, too.
In a 2011 biography of Charles’ mother, The Diamond Queen, British journalist Andrew Marr thought him nothing less than a puzzle – “and one suspects he would agree”. That said, Marr concluded, when Charles finally ascended the throne, he would likely be something else, too: an interesting king. But then, after his peculiar life, how could he be anything else?
Bruising childhood
If only he’d been a horse. Or a corgi. If he had been, our King might have had a rather happier childhood.
Charles was born, by Caesarean section, on November 14, 1948, to Princess Elizabeth when she was just 22. As befitting the arrival of a prince, there was a 41-gun salute and thousands gathered outside Buckingham Palace to cheer. Prince Philip, meanwhile, offered the not-quite-loving observation that his son looked like a “plum pudding”.
Tina Brown, in her 2022 book The Palace Papers, says Charles felt “bruised” by his childhood, misunderstood by his domineering father and deprived of an emotional connection with his mother, who he was taken to see at 9am sharp each day, and saw only occasionally in the evenings. Charles was raised, he told his biographer Jonathan Dimbleby, by his nannies.
“If the Queen had taken half as much trouble about the rearing of her children as she did about the breeding of her horses,” one private secretary told the historian and royal correspondent Robert Lacey, “the royal family wouldn’t be in such an emotional mess. She didn’t spend anything like enough time on the family.”
If they hurt him at home, they hit him at school. At his father’s insistence, Charles was sent to Gordonstoun, an infamous Scottish public school-cum-POW camp, an experience the macho Philip had relished in his youth, but that Charles hated. Privately, he described the place as “absolute hell”.
A former classmate told the BBC’s Good Morning Britain last September that Charles was badly bullied and very isolated. “It was a pretty harsh environment. On the rugby pitch you would see it; there were a couple of people who said they would ‘do Prince Charles’ and they would beat him up in the scrum, pull his ears and thump him.”
In the end, it wasn’t on the playing fields of Scotland that he become a man, but in Australia. He spent six months there, mostly on a school survival programme, Timbertop, where he chopped wood, cleared brush and went on long hikes in the snake and spider-infested outback. He visibly flourished, an equerry said later.
Following Charles’ investiture as Prince of Wales in 1969, and his graduation with a 2:2 in history from Cambridge in 1970 (he is the first British monarch to have a university degree), he further buffed his image as a nascent action man by following, after a stint in the RAF, his father Philip and father-figure Lord Louis Mountbatten into the Royal Navy.
According to Brown, the foppish, bookish Charles did his best to live up to their famous naval careers and be one of the chaps in the officers’ mess.
He wasn’t wholly successful. The lowest point in his naval career came in 1976 when, after being given command of the minesweeper HMS Bronington, he almost managed to cut an undersea communications cable between Britain and Ireland after ordering his ship to drop anchor in the wrong spot. A “strong rebuke” was issued from on high. He left the navy, aged 28, in December that year with what Brown describes as “obvious relief”.
What wasn’t so obvious, to him at least, was what he should do next.
“My great problem in life is that I do not know what my role in life is,” he told the Cambridge Union Society a couple of years later. “At the moment, I do not have one. But somehow, I must find one.”
His most pressing job was quite obvious: to find himself a wife and produce an heir. This wasn’t uncomplicated. The frankly medieval rules of royal marriage at the time required his bride be virgo intacta. And where, in the sexually liberated 1970s, was one supposed to find one of those?
Instead of virgin hunting in the shires, Charles set about doing the opposite. As the Queen’s long-time adviser Martin Charteris observed, he earned himself a reputation for “hunting, shooting, polo and fornicating”. Though it might be hard to believe now, he became Britain’s reigning “playboy prince” during the 1970s and, with his bespoke Savile Row suits, Jermyn St shirts, handmade shoes and multitude of girlfriends, he was quite the randy dandy.
In her 2007 book The Diana Chronicles, Tina Brown says Charles dated actresses, models, socialites, colonial fly-bys, Peace Corps types, saucy female grooms and daughters of his parents’ friends, “but there wasn’t a single virgin among them”.
The holy oil
For insiders, it is Operation Golden Orb. For the rest of us, it is Charles III and Camilla’s coronation as King and Queen of the UK and 14 Commonwealth realms.
On Saturday, May 6, British time, one of the most ancient rites in Britain will take place at Westminster Abbey in London. Charles will arrive at the abbey to trumpets and cries of “God save the King”, before sitting in the coronation chair. The heart of the ceremony will be the Archbishop of Canterbury anointing the new monarch with holy oil beneath a gold cloth. This was not shown on TV during the Queen’s coronation in 1953, and it is unknown whether it will again be hidden.
The archbishop will then present the King with the royal orb, sceptre and rod and place the 17th-century St Edward’s Crown on his head. Camilla will then be crowned. Following the ceremony, the King and Queen will proceed to Buckingham Palace in the Gold State Coach, built in 1762.
Street parties and a coronation concert are planned in Britain. Here, commemorative coins and stamps will be issued and a gun salute held. Prime Minister Chris Hipkins and others will travel to London to attend the ceremony. Hipkins has also announced a $1 million donation to Trees That Count to fund the planting of more than 100,000 native trees to mark the event.
But it’s unlikely Kiwis will party like it’s 1953. Then, there were parades and fly-pasts, a special lunch was served on a Tasman Empire Airways flight between Auckland and Sydney, a giant crown was placed in Christchurch’s Cathedral Square, 2000 medals were handed out to “leading citizens” and the acting prime minister, Keith Holyoake, broadcast a nationwide coronation message to schoolchildren.
And, of course, there was Edmund Percival Hillary: news that he and Tenzing Norgay had conquered Mt Everest came on the day of the coronation and was dubbed a special “coronation gift”. It is certain New Zealand’s present to King Charles III will be rather less history-making.
Marriage and love
It is a matter of record, not to mention endless media stories and books, that the woman he became fixated with, and the love of his life, is Camilla Shand, whom he first met in 1971. Unfortunately, after a six-month affair, and though he declared his love for her before joining an eight-month naval patrol, Charles didn’t propose. While he was at sea – and possibly all at sea – she agreed to marry a bounder called Andrew Parker-Bowles. This was, or so it seemed then, all for the best. Camilla was viewed as wholly unsuitable by the palace. She had “a history”.
The 18-year-old Lady Diana Spencer had no such problems. “I knew I had to keep myself tidy for what lay ahead,” she famously said. On July 29, 1981, though they had met fewer than two dozen times, he married her at St Paul’s Cathedral. She was 19, he now 32. Within short order, she duly produced Charles’ heir and spare. All was as it should be, except it wasn’t.
Given the millions of words spilled describing their unsuitability, their fights, affairs, internecine war through the press, the divorce and Diana’s death, we won’t rehearse all the heartache and tragedy here. But it seems reasonable in 2023 to conclude that, though he has now been happily married to Camilla longer than he was unhappily hitched to Diana, many of Charles’ woes have flowed from his failed first marriage – up to and including his apparently poisoned relationship with his second son, the disputatious Harry.
The sad reality is, though the sainted Diana has been dead a quarter of a century, Charles cannot seem to lay her ghost. What came first: the rising of her star, or the setting of his? Even before he married Diana, the once-playboy prince had evolved in the public mind into a fuddy-duddy who talked to his plants and muttered about modern architecture. She, on the other hand, was perfect tabloid fodder. It was inevitable he would have to live in the shadow of her celebrity and glamour, but it made him jealous and resentful.
By the time the Wales’ marriage had devolved into open warfare and Charles had quietly returned to the comforting bosom of Camilla, his public image was in tatters. Before Diana, he was the most likeable of the royal family for 70% of respondents in one poll. After Andrew Morton’s tell-all 1992 biography, Diana: Her True Story, and the publication of the excruciating “Camillagate” phone call, Charles’ approval rating plummeted to just 4% and more than a third of Brits thought he should never be king.
According to the Times, he feared Diana’s death, in 1997, would be an even greater blow to his popularity, and it might even tear down the edifice of the monarchy. “They’re all going to blame me,” was his first reaction to news of her death, according to Robert Lacey. To a large extent, Charles’ popularity has never fully recovered from their divorce and her death.
Prince of causes
But it wasn’t only those awful sagas that made him a Savile Row Eeyore. As Brown observes, he has a “self-pitying paranoia” about not being appreciated for his good works, moaning endlessly to those around him about being “undervalued by his mother, the nation and the press”. And in this, our new King may have a very good point.
Though the media has obsessed over his private life, in his public life Charles has spent years being an advocate for ideas and causes he believes in. His first foray was the Prince’s Trust, a charity he started with his £7400 severance pay from the Royal Navy. Its focus is helping needy kids, the most famous of whom became Luther actor Idris Elba.
This sort of patronage is expected. But in The Diamond Queen, Andrew Marr says that as a prince, Charles “pushed the boundaries” of what royals are supposed to do. Though he studiously avoided “direct interventions” on issues such as the Iraq War and Brexit, he has strong views on many things and has not shied away from making them public.
Though sometimes mocked, he has been surprisingly prescient. As early as 1970, when just 21, he spoke out about the threat of pollution and plastics to the environment. In the 1980s, he told farmers they should be using renewable resources and not herbicides and pesticides. He has spoken out about climate change and railed about genetically modified foods – and he’s practised what he’s pontificated about. He turned, for example, his Highgrove estate into a sustainable, organic, GMO-free farm which, since 1990, has sold organic products, raising nearly $60 million for his charity.
His advocacy hasn’t been untroubled. His “black spider memos” to British government ministers got him labelled the “meddling prince”. Courting what Prince Philip called “foreign toadies” for money for his charities led to the “cash for honours” scandal in 2021. His views on one modern architectural project led to a rebuke from a British high court judge for effectively killing the development.
Fit for duty
It is worth keeping in mind that during all her long years, the Queen kept her private views studiously and constitutionally to herself. Conversely, one biographer concluded, Charles saw his constitutional duty as the heir apparent to use his position to advocate, some might say crusade, for change. But what now the heir is the King? Charles is not stupid. He has said so. Asked in 2018 if he’d be outspoken as King, he tersely replied, “I’m not that stupid. I do realise that it is a separate exercise being sovereign.” This may be so. But by now we know what he really thinks.
Assuming he keeps his views to himself, what kind of King will the once plain-speaking prince make? For a start, he will be hard working. Prince Harry has revealed how his father would rise early to do handstands in his boxer shorts for the good of his back. He eats fruit, seeds and yoghurt, and begins work at 8am sharp. His official duties run from 10am-5pm (he does not eat lunch, apparently), but he often labours – apart from a 90-minute dinner break from 8.30pm – until midnight.
He is clearly a happy, hard-working King, too, due to his obviously contented marriage to Camilla. She, according to Tina Brown, is Charles’ “sexual and emotional comfort food”, and has worked tirelessly to help him restore his public image – as he has worked tirelessly to have her accepted by a public who saw her as Diana’s nemesis.
In the coming years, we will get a measure of how much steel is in the King’s spine by how he deals with the dumpster fires started by Princes Andrew and Harry. He made clear in March how he intends dealing with the former, reportedly winding down the money spigot and suggesting Andrew downsize his digs to Frogmore Cottage, the residence Charles has stripped from Harry and Meghan. Andrew may or may not go quietly; he was said to be considering a tell-all book, presumably for the money, though he’s now thought to have changed his mind.
Snitching on the family has certainly worked for Harry. And Charles will struggle to resolve his fractured relationship with his tiresome second son, given criticising his family has now become Harry’s lucrative career.
Charles is said to have long planned his first six months as King. And, the Evening Standard reports, modernisation is already under way, with the intention of a “smaller, cheaper and less-accident-prone” royal family, with one member saying Charles “wants fewer of us, and more of us to earn a living outside the family finances”.
As well, Charles is said to be cutting administrative jobs and reviewing the royal residences. All of which may add up to a leaner, tidier, more European-style institution – a good thing.
However, Charles may still struggle for admiration. Before the Queen’s death, his popularity was 42% in Britain’s YouGov poll. By year’s end, it was 56%, though he was only the fifth-most-popular royal, behind his sister Anne and the new Prince and Princess of Wales, William and Catherine, and his late mother – who was still on top.
A ‘Kiwi’ King?
In Britain, it might not be so vital that Charles III be as popular as Elizabeth II. Out here in the Commonwealth, it could be very different now his mother has gone. Jamaica, for one, will hold a referendum on becoming a republic by 2025. Australia’s new high commissioner to the UK said this month that scrapping the monarchy was “inevitable” for his country.
New Zealanders, at least for now, seem happy with the status quo. A TVNZ poll taken after the Queen’s death found 50% want Britain’s monarch to remain our head of state, with 27% in favour of a republic. There appears no political appetite for a change, either.
Monarchy New Zealand’s Sean Palmer believes Charles might actually be “the most Kiwi King we have had” due to his staunch environmentalism, his commitment to multiculturalism and because he’s been a spokesman for the wool industry. “Well, I mean, that must make him popular with New Zealand’s 25 million sheep.”
Charles’ future popularity, or otherwise, in New Zealand may be beside the point. According to Lewis Holden, of republican group New Zealand Republic, the country has remained a monarchy despite the ups and downs of individual royals because of sentimentality and apathy.
“When we ask people who support the monarchy, ‘Why?’, we find the No 1 reason is, ‘We can’t be bothered changing the status quo.’ Our challenge has always been to convince people this is a constitutional issue and a symbolic issue for our country.”
He says the debate has nothing to do with political affiliation. “It’s about age and, to a certain extent, ethnicity.” As the influence of the baby-boom generation fades, he believes change is likely.
Palmer takes the opposite view. He says that throughout his years defending the constitutional monarchy, there have been many predictions that its demise was just around the corner.
“And it’s never just around the corner. I think part of that is because New Zealanders just don’t want it to be. We’re a practical people.”
As for the future, Holden says New Zealand will probably be a republic by 2050, whereas Palmer thinks we’ll be talking about King William V’s reign as the constitutional head of New Zealand.
Of one thing only can we be certain: whether Charles’ reign as King is long or short, it will be fascinating.