He will now wear the crown. After the tributes due to his mother and his funeral, Charles III will be the new figure of the kingdom with his wife, Camilla, queen consort, and not only on stamps and sterling notes. It is he whom the British will honor in the national anthem, which, for the first time since 1952, becomes God Save the King.
A prince honni
Charles is probably the one the British know the least about and whom they liked to jeer at, even hate. His family troubles, his disagreement with Diana followed by divorce and his death, his relationship with Camilla made him a hated prince. How many then openly demanded that the succession skip a generation and pass directly to William, his son?
But the water flowed under the bridges of the Thames. Charles will officially succeed Saturday, September 10, his mother Elizabeth II, as tradition dictates. He did not give up reigning as he could have done, like his uncle Edward VIII. At 73, he is an elderly king who will have a short reign in prospect.
His family problems are behind him, and his marriage to Camilla has calmed him down. His personality asserted itself. As much as his mother made it a point to pass no judgment on state affairs and show nothing of her feelings, Charles is talkative and, when he has things to say, he speaks.
A nation that must reinvent itself
Charles comes to power at a time when Britain has long since ceased to be the “empire on which the sun never sets” that his mother once knew. The British nation is disunited, it has moved away from Europe and must reinvent a future in the world. As monarch, his functions extend over a weakened Commonwealth, of which he is the head. An association of 56 independent countries and 2.4 billion people – he is the head of state of 14 of them – some of whom have already rejected the Crown by becoming republics, the rest are seriously considering doing so.
We know what he thinks about it. He said so openly last June 24, in Kigali, Rwanda, at the opening of the meeting of Commonwealth leaders. “I want to make it clear, as I have said before, that the constitutional regime of each member, whether as a republic or a monarchy, is solely for the decision of each member state,” also expressing his “sadness” for Britain’s slave past. Charles is a man of his time.
A man who says what he thinks
When the Johnson government launched the mechanism to send migrants to Rwanda whom the United Kingdom wanted to get rid of, he described it as “appalling”, strong enough for his opinion to be reported in the media. On architecture, one of his passions, on the environment – he is an ardent defender of organic farming, which he practices on his land – and the destruction of the planet, which concern him, he s expresses, and the British do not hold it against him. On the contrary.
Of course, the monarch ” is bound to respect the non-partisan obligations of the monarchy, enshrined in custom and practice, at least since the Hanoverians,” recalls the editorialist of Guardian, Simon Jenkins. The Crown must also guard against being used for political purposes. As Boris Johnson tried in 2019, trying to implicate the Queen in an illegal prorogation of Parliament, which was ultimately rejected, not by Buckingham, but by the Supreme Court.
“An ostentatious polemicist”
Charles has repeatedly stated that he wants to be a “king who acts”. He has already indicated that one of his priorities would be to “to modernize” the monarchy, by very quickly reducing the list of the royal family, in order to ensure not only its longevity, but also its effectiveness in meeting its obligations. The British will no doubt approve. Other reforms could intervene, it is also about the survival of the Crown.
As Simon Jenkins further writes, “Britain’s new king is an ostentatious polemicist. At the very least, his reign is unlikely to be boring. »