King Charles III: A Modern Monarch

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A wreath of flowers, leaves and herbs, some from Charles’s own gardens at Highgrove and Clarence House, rested on his mother’s casket at her funeral with a note that read: “With loving and devoted memory, Charles R.” The outpouring of grief that followed the Queen’s death showed the depth of devotion to a royal head of state who inspired respect and admiration for her unwavering sense of duty to her country. This made life-and-death sense in 1688. Today it is absurd. Charles’s swearing of his coronation oath flies in the face of the realities of modern Britain. Most Britons are not Christians. Few of those who are Christians are practising Anglicans. We are a more secular and pluralised nation and likely to remain one. In the blunt language of University College London’s Constitution Unit, the coronation oath “reflects a period of history that is now over.”

The then Lady Diana Spencer and Camilla Parker-Bowles at Ludlow Races in 1980. Photograph: Express Newspapers/Getty Images As well as his wife and daughter-in-law, he could also call upon the Duchess of Edinburgh to host the ceremonies, when the member of the Royal family places the decoration on the recipient and congratulates them on their honour. (Those who are receiving a knighthood kneel on an Investiture stool to be dubbed – more on that, later.) I mind about the inclusion of other people’s faiths and their freedom to worship in this country,” he said in 2015. “It’s always seemed to me that, while at the same time being Defender of the Faith, you can also be protector of faiths.” There have been suggestions that the coronation oath might be altered accordingly. His charity, the Prince’s Trust, has performed valuable work in helping disadvantaged youngsters to claw themselves out of the ghettos, but it still carries the whiff of noblesse oblige. And the tales leaching out about his keen sense of his own dignity: not the apocryphal toothpaste-squeezing valet, or even the range of soft to hard boiled eggs laid out for his delectation each morning, but the large personal entourage of butlers and flunkeys and the occasionally peevish and self-pitying outbursts tell their own story.

Despite all the necessary flourishes, this is likely to be a coronation shorter and smaller in scale than Queen Elizabeth II’s in 1953, and with a far more modest procession. More than 8,000 guests attended Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation, and Westminster Abbey had to be closed for five months to allow extra seating to be built. This time around, it seems likely the maximum number will be somewhere around 2,200; the Abbey’s normal capacity. The engagement became official in February 1981 – Charles famously answering “Whatever ‘in love’ means” when quizzed about his feelings – and they married at St Paul’s Cathedral on 29 July. They made their home at Kensington Palace and went on to have two children – Prince William Arthur Philip Louis, born on 21 June 1982, and Prince Henry Charles Albert David, known as Harry, two years later on 15 September 1984. We have seen more of him, heard from him more often and giggled at his eccentricities and sheer oddness more regularly for decades than was possible with any of his predecessors. But since Charles is a more complicated, difficult and reserved man than modern celebrity allows, his popularity is decidedly limited: he is not loved or even liked much, nor particularly admired or respected, and this is a very great handicap to overcome in his new role. Tom Bower’s biography claimed that Charles made five outfit changes a day, and travelled with his own orthopaedic bed and toilet seat as well as a supply of Kleenex Premium Comfort loo paper. Clarence House made no comment.

A poll published by the Guardian in 1995 found that 49% of British people expected to see the end of the monarchy in their own lifetimes. The King founded the Trust in 1976 to help disadvantaged young people in the UK gain access to education, jobs and training. He set up the charity using his Navy severance pay to fund 21 pilot initiatives – including providing a grant to a 19-year-old woman to run a social centre for London’s Haggerston Housing Estate. The Trust’s Enterprise Programme was launched in 1983 and, within three years, had helped 1,000 young people launch their own businesses. just an enormous honour and privilege[…] and the coronation weekend is going to be a time of bringing the country together.”Ahead of King Charles III’s coronation, experts at the UCL Constitution Unit and the UK in a Changing Europe initiative, have released a major new report on the monarchy. This is the latest in a series of reports on the monarchy by the UCL Constitution Unit. He has also chosen to invite, for the first time, members of foreign royal families. For centuries, convention dictated that no other crowned royals should be present at the coronation of a British monarch because the sacred ceremony is intended to be an intimate exchange between the monarch and their people in the presence of God. But as part of his plan to bring the ceremony up to date, King Charles has decided to move on from the 900-year-old tradition by inviting his crowned friends, including European royals and rulers from Arab states. Among those expected to attend are King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima of the Netherlands, Prince Albert and Princess Charlene of Monaco, and King Abdullah and Queen Rania of Jordan. The decision typifies the failure of the British state, under Charles as under his mother, to find ways of building consent for reform of the monarchy. The upshot is that this coronation does not mark the start of a new era. It is merely the continuation of the old one. A chance to do things more sensibly has been squandered, not just by the king and the archbishop, but by the rest of us too. In 1974, an Observer journalist said to Charles: “The Queen is still a youthful monarch. It looks as though you will have to spend many years as Prince of Wales,” and asked: “Should monarchs reign until death? Is there a case for retirement?” Charles replied: “No, I certainly don’t think monarchs should retire and be pensioned off … The nature of being a monarch is different. There’s plenty I can do.” It was in 1977 that Charles first met 16-year- old Lady Diana Spencer while visiting her home – Althorp – with her elder sister, Charles’s former flame Lady Sarah.