At a time when most people think about retirement, Charles has just started his “real” job. He became king on Thursday, September 8, on the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II. Charles Philip Arthur George, 73, now Charles III, has the difficult task of succeeding a queen much appreciated by the British, unifying and reassuring, a “beacon”, in turbulent times, which guarantees a certain stability.
An original character, who handles humor and irony like second nature, Charles has been walking around with his somewhat awkward silhouette for more than 60 years, from inaugurations to official meetings. And he has been preparing to be king for just as long.
Becoming Prince of Wales at the age of 3, when his mother became queen, he lived a childhood both quite lonely – his parents sometimes leave him for long months on official trips – and in the public eye. .
Throughout his childhood, his father, Prince Philip, tried to toughen him up, sending him to the Scottish institution he himself had attended as a child, and where Charles was bullied at school. But Charles, very close to his grandmother, the “queen mother”, remained the sweet and dreamy boy that he was, passionate about fishing, the countryside, art and imagining himself becoming an actor.
an unloved prince
After this privileged but not very happy childhood, his marriage to Diana, in the form of a fairy tale, quickly turns into a fiasco. He is jealous of the Princess of Wales, much more popular than him, and above all he is still in love with Camilla Parker Bowles, his childhood sweetheart and his mistress for years, whom he has not been able to marry.
The Church is also involved. For the archdeacon of York, “the prince did not respect his oath before God”: “If he did not respect it on this occasion, how could he go to Westminster Abbey and take the oath again at his coronation?” .
During an interview at an event in 1994, Charles confirms that he cheated on Diana and had an extramarital affair with Camilla. When asked if he was faithful to his wife, the Prince of Wales replied “yes”… “until it became clear that the marriage was a total failure.”
BBC interview of Diana in 1995revealing that “there were always three” in this marriage, then the death of the death of the princess in 1997, it didn’t help Charles’s popularity.
The British do not forgive him for making Diana unhappy. The Serie The crownwhose fourth season in March 2021 revealed the dark side of Charles’s marriage and his romance with Camilla, reopened these wounds, tarnishing the image that the prince had managed to develop over the years.
Set in the 1980s, this fourth season “makes Diana the victim and Charles the villain, when they were both victims,” royal specialist Penny Junor told AFP last year.
If he ended up marrying Camilla in 2005 and the British accepted her, he never won their hearts. Is it her age, her clumsiness, or her overly loquacious passions that are sometimes seen as bordering on political interference? He was only 56% in favor in a recent YouGov poll in May, far behind the Queen (81%), her son Prince William (77%), her daughter-in-law Kate Middleton or her sister Princess Anne. Camilla exceeded 48% of positive opinions.
Camilla, queen consort
Charles has managed, in recent years, to rehabilitate his image and make Camila accept, once the most hated woman in England. “Her position of hers has certainly evolved and there has been a huge and very long process of rehabilitation since she was described as a rottweiler in the Diana era,” royal family historian Anna Whitelock said. daily express last November.
An important sign of this rehabilitation, the queen announced last February, on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of her accession to the throne, that Camila would be queen consort with Carlos when he became king.
When the couple married in 2005, Clarence House released a statement saying that Camilla would become a “princess consort.” But it was then about appeasing public opinion, divided over the union of Carlos and Camila, as the sunday time.
According to royal expert Richard Fitzwilliam, “People are realizing that Camilla is ideal for Charles and that the team they put together works wonderfully.”
carlos hobbies
A man of passions, Charles filled this very long wait as best he could, an early advocate for the environment, lover of alternative medicine, passionate about sustainable urban planning, and an inspired gardener who talks to his trees. Since 2007 he publishes his “ecological footprint” (total 3,133 tons of CO2 in 2020 compared to 5,070 in 2019).
Altogether he is chairman or benefactor of more than 420 charities, chief among which, the Prince’s Trust, has helped more than a million struggling young people since its inception in 1976. These passions have led him to meddle in the affairs of status and sometimes to get out of his role.
A meddling king?
While Queen Elizabeth has never expressed her opinion in public, Prince Charles has not had the same reservation. Therefore, he has intervened a lot on the issues that are important to him. “He would write memos to ministers and members of government on topics close to his heart, whether it be ecology, architecture or the welfare of soldiers,” said Sylvie Berman, diplomacy consultant at BFMTV. .
From equipping British troops in Iraq to treatment with medicinal plants, to the slaughter of badgers to fight bovine tuberculosis, between 2004 and 2005 Prince Charles left 27 handwritten letters to Tony Blair’s Labor party in government.
Dubbed “black spider memos” because of the prince’s particular handwriting -full of exclamation points and strikethroughs-, these letters were made public in 2015 by court order, 10 years after the left-wing newspaper revealed the case. The Guardian.
If they do not contain a sensational revelation, these letters undermine the principle of neutrality, which requires that the future monarch refrain from any interference in the politics of the government resulting from democratic elections.
“There he will follow the rule, being less interventionist, but perhaps because of his personality and his skills, he may be tempted to play a role, not political, but different from that of the queen”, analyzes Sylvie Berman.
In 2018, Prince Charles had also stated in an interview with the BBC: “The role of monarch and that of Prince of Wales are totally different. I will not be a nosy king. I am not that stupid.”
splashed by business
In 2021, Prince Charles is affected by a case that affects his foundation. Middlemen are suspected of paying for access to the prince or favors to obtain honorary titles for wealthy donors.
Prince Charles’s former valet Michael Fawcett is suspected of using his influence to help Saudi businessman Mahfouz Marei Mubarak bin Mahfouz, a generous donor to charities linked to the British monarchy, win an award.
According to sunday timeMahfouz, 51, was appointed Commander of the British Empire by Prince Charles in a private ceremony at Buckingham Palace in November 2016, an event that had not been published in the official list of royal engagements. Benefiting from such a distinction made it possible to support the request for British nationality by the Saudis. Mahfouz, who denies any guilt, would have spent large sums of money on restoration projects of particular interest to the Prince of Wales, according to the weekly. Michael Fawcett resigns in November 2021.
The press reveals that the foundation of Prince Charles would have agreed to receive several hundred thousand euros from a Russian donor, which led to the opening of an investigation by the independent body that regulates the activity of charitable associations in Scotland. The president of the Foundation, Douglas Connell, resigned, while defending himself against any irregularity.
Finally, last July, the sunday time He also revealed that Prince Charles would have accepted a donation of one million pounds sterling – around 1.1 million euros – earmarked for his foundation and paid for by two members of Osama Bin Laden’s family.
Source: BFM TV
