The making of King Charles III

Charles Philip Arthur George, King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of his other Realms and Territories, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith, and Sovereign of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, was born at 9.14pm on November 14, 1948, at Buckingham Palace, London.

His mother, then Princess Elizabeth, was 22. A year earlier she had married Philip, a dashing naval officer and former prince of Greece who became Duke of Edinburgh.

Despite the grand titles, there was every hope that the young family might have some years of relatively normal family life, despite the princess being the heir apparent and Charles called the “world’s most famous baby”. It was not to be.

Charles’s grandfather, George VI, was aged 56, but in poor health — although this was kept from the nation. On the night of February 5, 1952, he died in his sleep. His daughter was crowned Queen Elizabeth II and Charles became the new heir to the throne at the age of three.

It was a role he would perform for the next 70 years and 214 days. No monarch in history anywhere has waited so long so assume the weight of the crown.

Almost as soon as he could walk, Charles was a public figure. There is telling newsreel footage from 1951, when Princess Elizabeth returned from an official visit to Canada.

The young prince is taken to meet his mother as she arrives in London by royal train. Clutching the hand of his grandmother, the late Queen Mother, the three-year-old has to shake every hand in the reception line.

He seems almost unaware of his own mother when she steps down from the train. She first kisses her own mother, bends down to give her first-born son the briefest peck on the top of his head, then gives a longer embrace to her sister, Princess Margaret.

This public formality, sometimes interpreted as coldness, would govern the life of the young Prince Charles, even through childhood and adolescence. It was a constant reminder that he was not the same as other boys.

At 10, he was sent to board at Cheam School, the first of two schools he would go to that were also attended by his father. Four years later, he was dispatched to Gordonstoun, a boarding school in the north of Scotland, and noted for its rigorous, even spartan, ethos. Charles would late describe it as “Colditz in kilts”, a reference to the notorious German prisoner of war camp.

He left as head boy and with relatively modest examination results — six GCE O-levels and two A-levels, a B in history and C in French. Nevertheless, he gained a place at the prestigious Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied archaeology, anthropology and, later, history.

University life also allowed him to indulge a youthful passion for drama. He joined the Footlights amateur theatre club and was famously photographed sitting in a dustbin in a review sketch. He graduated in 1970, with a 2.2 Bachelor of Arts — the first British heir apparent in more than a thousand years to earn a university degree.

Every prince needs a princess. That was the universal consensus as Charles entered his late twenties. Throughout the 1970s, the prince was linked with a procession of young women, whose elevated social status meant they could be considered potential brides for a monarch.

Charles is believed to have seriously considered marriage to at least two. Lady Amanda Knatchbull, a distant relative through Earl Mountbatten, her grandfather and uncle of Prince Philip, and Lady Jane Wellesley, the daughter of the Duke of Wellington.

Both these relationships ended like the others, brought down by the media glare and the realisation that Charles needed not only a wife, but eventually a queen. Few found the prospect, and the accompanying loss of personal liberty, appealing.

Two, however, would have lasting significance. In 1970, at a polo match, Charles was introduced to Camilla Shand, the daughter of a British army officer and an aristocrat. The two dated for a few months, but by the time he had completed his military service she was married to Andrew Parker Bowles.

In 1977, it was turn of Lady Sarah Spencer, daughter of the 8th Earl Spencer.

The relationship foundered, apparently because of issues in her private life, and her public declaration that “I wouldn't marry anyone I didn't love whether he were the dustman or the King of England”. But Sarah also had a younger sister, Diana.

Charles was 31. Diana was 18 and working as a nursery teacher. Innocent and demure — “Shy Di” as the tabloid press called her — almost overnight became the most famous woman on the planet.

Their engagement was announced on February 24, 1981, and a wedding took place at St Paul’s Cathedral in London on July 29. Billed as the “wedding of the century”, a live global TV audience of 750 million watched as Diana, in a dress with 10,000 pearls and a 7.6-metre train, rode in an open top coach through the streets of London, her prince at her side.

There was more jubilation the following June, with the birth of Prince William, a guarantee of the succession until well into the next century. Two years later, a second son, Henry — or Harry — was born.

Diana, as Princess of Wales, was growing in confidence. She had become an international style icon who could sell out any magazine that featured her on the cover or fill any event she attended.

She gained more attention for active support of people with Aids and HIV and for championing a ban on landmines, famously walking through a minefield in Angola.

On overseas trips, she was always the centre of attention, including during a visit to the Arabian Gulf and the UAE in 1989, when she was welcomed by UAE Founding Father, the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan.

But behind the scenes, things were falling apart. Diana later revealed she had nearly called off the wedding when, the day before, she discovered Charles had given Camilla Parker Bowles a bracelet with their initials as a token of his affection.

By the time of the UAE visit, Charles had begun an extramarital affair with Camilla, while Diana was involved in a relationship with Maj James Hewitt, a cavalry officer who had given her horse riding lessons.

The couple’s deep unhappiness became increasing obvious and, in December 1992, prime minister John Major confirmed their formal separation. The couple divorced in August 1996, apparently on the advice of the queen.

A year later, Diana, now in a relationship with Dodie Fayed, son of the Egyptian billionaire Mohamed Al Fayed, was involved in a high-speed car accident in the Pont de L’Ama Tunnel in Paris. The princess was pronounced dead at hospital at 3am on August 31, 1997. She was 36.

What followed was a public outpouring of grief never previously seen in Britain. There was anger too, directed at the royal family, who were slow to respond to the national mood, and at Charles, who was blamed for breaking up the marriage.

At her funeral at Westminster Abbey, Diana’s brother, Earl Spencer, could barely contain his fury, telling mourners and the 2.5 billion watching on television “she needed no royal title to continue to generate her particular brand of magic”.

As Queen Elizabeth entered her eighth decade of rule, it was clear that the duties of the crown were becoming more than her health could take.

The appearance of Charles in her place at the state opening of parliament in 2022 brought home that the prince was not just deputising for his mother but might soon replace her.

Public appearances by the monarch were increasingly curtailed or cancelled. The queen’s final public appearance, on September 6, 2022, was to receive Liz Truss as a new prime minister — a footnote in history for the short-lived Conservative leader.

Late in the afternoon of September 8, 2022, Buckingham Palace announced that the Queen had died peacefully at Balmoral, her Scottish estate.

In Britain, the monarch may die but never the monarchy, and so, seamlessly, invisibly, the title instantly passed to her eldest son, sitting at his mother’s side.

God Save the King! An unfamiliar phrase to almost everyone in the UK under the age of 80. Charles III is the oldest British monarch to take the throne. Now 74, his is unlikely to be a lengthy reign, but there is every sign he intends to make his mark.

As Prince of Wales, Charles had made his views known on a wide range of topics as diverse as global warming, and genetic modification. He would often write to government ministers in what became known as the “black spider memos” because of his handwriting.

As king, he made it clear there would be less controversy. Addressing the British people for the first time as monarch, he accepted “my life will of course change as I take up my new responsibilities”.

“It will no longer be possible for me to give so much of my time and energies to the charities and issues for which I care so deeply,” he acknowledged.

His duties and responsibilities, including the Duchy of Cornwall and the Prince’s Trust, are now handed to William, the new Prince of Wales.

The king will probably take a greater interest in culture than his mother, supporting a school for traditional arts through his Prince’s Foundation and with a love of music that includes classical composers but also Leonard Cohen, the Three Degrees and Miriam Makeba.

Nor will he turn his back as a champion of the environment, views for which he was once regarded as “almost dotty” in his words, but which now seem farsighted.

There was speculation that he might attend last year’s Cop27 climate summit in Egypt. It did not happen, but the king has already met Dr Sultan Al Jaber, the UAE's Special Envoy for Climate Change and president-designate for Cop28, which will be held in Dubai this November.

The greatest changes will no doubt come, though, from within the Royal Family. Charles has made it clear through his actions so far, that “The Firm”, as the royals like to call themselves, will face a good deal of downsizing.

At its core will be the so-called “working royals”, including William, Charles's sister Anne, the Princess Royal, and youngest brother Edward, the new Duke of Edinburgh, who are all active with public duties

Others, like the disgraced Prince Andrew, and his two daughters, Beatrice and Eugenie will be expected to fend for themselves without taxpayer funding. Andrew has lost not only his regimental commands, but also his 30-room home in the Royal Lodge at Windsor.

There is no place either for Charles's other son, Harry and his wife Meghan, who now live in California and are unlikely to resume the royal role they gave up in 2020. Estranged from the family, Harry and Meghan lost the right to use Frogmore Cottage on the Windsor estate as a UK base.

Charles wants to be seen as king for all of the UK's people, regardless of creed or colour.

Britain in 2023 is almost unimaginably more diverse than at his mother’s coronation 70 years earlier, something the new monarch seeks to celebrate. While still head of the Church of England, Charles has invited representatives of the Muslim, Jewish, Hindu and Sikh faiths to take part in the coronation.

With polls showing declining support for the institution of royalty, especially among the young, the greatest challenge in the life of the new, but yet old, king may still be to come.