The madness of King Charles

In the not-to-all-distant future, the face of this country will change. Decades have been spent speculating about what King Charles III (if that is the name he chooses) will do with his power, whether the monarchy can survive Elizabeth Windsor’s demise, and how he will “reshape” the Crown in his own image. Throughout all that time, never has a consensus emerged that any of us really want the man to replace his mother. Can we really imagine him making that Christmas address with the bland authority we’ve become so used to? Would he be able to balance on the tightrope of regal small talk, able to say enough to fill the time but never enough to say anything new? The reason the current incumbent’s death will be greeted with such inevitable hysteria and the preparations are given such gravitas is because we know that those old principles won’t survive, that the image of the monarchy, and indeed of the country, is fully tied up with the impressively nondescript nature of its most famous resident. And we know that the next one can never live up to it all.

The recent spew of revelations about Charles’ public and private lives are most remarkable for the very lack of real interest with which they have been received. The heir to the throne uses his family connections and position to secure regular wads of cash for the Conservative Party. So what? We all knew he was a Tory anyway. His valet resigns in controversy again, this time for using Charles’ charitable trust to get an honour for one of his favourite clients? The man’s never been able to surround himself with good people. The Prince about to become head of the Church of England, the Armed Forces and, at least in theory, the British people, is also in awe of wealth , privilege and pseudo-science ? Who knew?

The Prince of Wales should worry us now for the bravery with which he continues to make his merry way with arms dealers, bullies and cranks. After seven decades of rehearsal for his greatest role, he seems still to have learnt nothing from his mother’s skills in keeping one’s mouth shut. When the “black spider memos” were released, the obscure nature of their subject matter lulled most of us to conclude that his ramblings to ministers over his pet hobbies were little more than eccentric, perhaps admirable, devotion. None of them was ever earth-shattering; complaints about the disenfranchisement of rural folk, whataboutery on political ly correct culture, and a series of screeds on the frightfulness of the modern architecture across the land. Now most of us turn a blind eye to his dealings with Mohamed Amersi and his second wife’s cousin Ben Elliot, who just so happens to be the chairman of the Conservative Party, as well as the owner of a business based on the pleasuring of every oligarch’s needs. The various links of high society are opaque enough to avoid popular outcry.

After all, he is at least not broadcasting his views on current affairs to the nation in television monologues (as some supposedly impartial presenters are inclined to do) or spouting his every reaction to his social media following. Simply a bit of old-school backstage lobbying. Nothing the Prince has interfered with has made many ask whether the famously fragile British “unwritten constitution ” will be able to survive two decades of such an aberration from the polite silence we have all grown used to. “Access capitalism” has Charles as its best exponent, where the glamour of privilege, the allure of hard cash and the unmentionable realms of secrecy continue to protect those who have been dealt every generous favour and handout. 

Yet when his time comes, these little scandals will not weigh heavily on the hearts of the people in this country or the next, as they gaze on the pomp and glamour of his ascension and the flower of British pageantry is rolled out to remind the world that we can still do royalty as we did in the old days. Then he will be like the son newly released onto the wider world, with his past misdeeds cast aside to avoid any familial shame. Maybe I’m being too cynical; but it seems patently obvious that the monarchy leaves a remarkable blind spot in the otherwise reasonable and democratic national mindset. So what if we get no say in the next name at the top of the national masthead? They haven’t got any power anyway, and what’s more we like the old Queen. Well, the most potent question republicans can ask is whether anyone really does like her son very much at all. And whether his misdemeanours will show any sign of abating once his powers are finally granted.

Her Majesty has had four children. Two of them (Anne and Edward) have opted for a backseat role in the running of the family firm. The others (Andrew and Charles) have either become, in the first case, ostracised for his potentially criminal behaviour and penchant for bringing himself and the whole show into public ignominy, or in the case of the eldest, supported by a whole royal apparatus against the follies of his attempts to “be himself”, as his supporters may see it. The most troublesome truth about Prince Charles is that he still does not fit into the mould his forebears have left for him, and still threatens to offer that culture shock from the throne which has been so close for so long. And the greatest absurdity about the British monarchy is that it still expects people to fit in that mould, to become something to which aptitude or taste are irrelevant, and to keep the sails of the system blowing, no matter what the strength of the social wind which defines all those below it.

Charles, then, is temperamentally unfit for a role he should never have to hold. Do his subjects bear any compassion for his plight? Or do the majority instead expect him to follow Admiral Nelson’s orders and do his duty nonetheless? I fear the latter, since, without wishing to echo too much the Duchess of Sussex or the late Diana Spencer, compassion has never been central to our royal system. Ultimately, the system needs to survive, so someone must bear the burden. Only a revolution of some kind could remove it after all. And that would be far too unlike us. 

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