People in a hurry: King Charles III makes a mark in a hurry

After waiting 74 years to become king, Charles has spent his first six months on the throne meeting with faith leaders across the country and rearranging the royal residence.

London: King Charles III was a man in a hurry. After waiting 74 years to become king, Charles has met with faith leaders across the country, rearranged royal residences, made his first overseas state visit and spent the night at Windsor Castle during his first six months on the throne, including in England. Coach the football team. Then came the big news: He opened the royal archives to researchers investigating the royal family’s links to slavery.

“We’ve been amazed by Prince Charles who became King Charles, and we still call him Prince Charles because that’s what we think of him,” quipped royal historian Robert Lacey. “But, actually, he’s become monarch more quickly than people expected.” With only a few weeks until the coronation, Charles and the Buckingham Palace machines are running full throttle to show the new king at work. The public is seeing a new type of monarch as he seeks to weaken the monarchy and show that it is still relevant in a modern, multicultural nation where the 70-year reign of Queen Elizabeth II Criticism was revered.

The matronly manners characteristic of Elizabeth’s reign were eliminated. In was a more humane monarch who fought back tears as he addressed the nation after his mother’s death and sent a message when a pen spilled on his finger while signing a book in Northern Ireland. small temper. The public laughed heartily. The king now brings his own pen to sign emergencies.

As Elizabeth made her grand entrance by meeting her subjects who bowed and curtseyed before her, King Charles sat with his congregation during a visit to the gurdwara, or Sikh house of worship, in Luton, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) northwest of London on the floor.

On his first state visit, he demonstrated the ability to roll R correctly when switching between German and English in a speech to the German parliament, the Bundestag.
The Germans were impressed. The British were surprised. Who knew he could speak German? It was as if Charles, long derided as gray and stiff, had just walked into the room. Subtly, his personality came through, like the ever-changing pocket squares that added a pop of color to his conservative suits.

“Charles, the monarch, with his flaws and his virtues, has become a subject of more genuine interest,” said Lacey, author of “Battle of Brothers: William and Harry and the Inside Story of a Family in Turmoil.” . “I mean, what handkerchief is he going to wear? Maybe it’s going to be the Queen’s equivalent of a handbag.” Perhaps one of the reasons Charles was so eager to start was because he knew he wouldn’t have much time to make his mark .

The man who had been waiting all his life to become king referred to the passage of time during a formal dinner at the Presidential Palace in Berlin, saying he hoped he and Camilla would “live long enough” to come back and see the sapling they had just planted grow into a tree. But there are speed bumps on the horizon, some about history, others about family.
Charles has tried to move beyond historical issues by promising to make public the royal family’s ties to slavery, but some believe that commitment is not enough.

Laura Trevelyan, whose ancestors enslaved at least 1,000 people on the island of Grenada, says the king should do like her family and apologize. “I hope he can use some of the royal family’s wealth from the slave trade to improve the lives of descendants of slaves in the Caribbean and Britain,” she told the Times of London.

Then there is family. Charles continued to fend off criticism from Prince Harry, whose memoir “Backup” portrayed his father as aloof and unfeeling to a man who struggled with the death of his mother, Princess Diana, and then had to fight the royal family to accept his wife’s son , Megan, biracial American. Royal historian Hugo Vickers, author of The Coronation: The Coronation of Elizabeth II, likens the ascension of a new king to being appointed to a global business at a time when most people have retired. the chairman of the company.

In this job, he will also face religious, armed forces and political issues, in addition to managing the royal family and mediating family disputes. “It’s a big thing to take on at that age,” Vickers said of Charles, who turns 75 in November. “So, yes, I suspect he’s a man in a hurry.” But on another level, Charles’ long apprenticeship could also be an advantage, gaining more training and training than his mother. experience, the latter was only 25 when she became queen. Elizabeth, like all British monarchs before her, was educated by governesses, while Charles was sent to Hill House School in London at the tender age of 8 to experience the world beyond the palace.

Richard Townend, son of the school founder, was Charles’ contemporary at Hill House. Towne said his father created the school to dispel what he saw as a soldier, arguing that children who grew up knowing other cultures were less likely to go to war.

“What he wanted to do was create a school that was very different from other schools at the time, where half the kids were not British,” Townend said. “They come from all over the world, so children will learn to live with each other, different nationalities, different people, different colors, different races, different religions.” “He believes passionately that if children learn to live in peace with each other Get along and the world can only get better.” Charles eventually got a degree in history at Cambridge University and served six years in the Royal Navy before leaving to focus on his duties as heir to the throne.

As Prince of Wales, he founded charities, including one that helped young people get jobs, education and training. He started an organic food company and dabbled in urban planning. Charles was also an early advocate of conservation and environmental protection.

That said, he ruffled feathers when he lobbied government ministers and spoke out against projects he felt threatened Britain’s historic buildings, drawing complaints that he was breaking a ban on royal interference in politics. But the biggest controversy in Charles’ life was the breakdown of his marriage to Princess Diana because of his long-term relationship with the woman who would become his second wife, Camilla Parker-Bowles.

Many still remember Charles’ admission to adultery and the leaked recordings of intimate conversations between Charles and Camilla, including one in which he compared himself to a tampon.

It took Charles years to get over the failure of his first marriage, and many were slow to accept Camilla. In ‘Forgiveness’, Harry scathingly described the royal family’s efforts to restore Camilla’s image, suggesting that unflattering and untrue stories about him were leaked to the media in exchange for more senior royals to shine portrait.

Over time, Camilla’s charity work, her sense of humor and down-to-earth style won over the public, and she went from home wrecker to queen. She will be crowned alongside her husband at Westminster Abbey.

“This is a guy who has overcome problems and obstacles,” said Lacey, a history consultant for the Netflix series “The Crown.” “Despite all the problems he’s been through, he’s still loved. He’s loved for his mistakes and his virtues. We get a rounded number, and that’s what a personal representative monarchy is all about.”