Everything is known about Charles III (or his caricature), and at the same time almost nothing is known. Many contradictory things are known. He's a guy (with all due respect) who feels more comfortable in the company of Bach, Handel, Mozart, Shakespeare and Raine Maria Rilke than his son Henry (whom he was unable to hug after Elizabeth's death ) and his daughter-in-law Meghan. He talks to plants and throws furniture against the wall in his fits of rage.
Whoever is out of danger of contradictions should cast the first stone, but his – say those who have dealt with him the most – are monumental. Humble and condescending at the same time, depending on the moments. Pompous and approachable. Bright and insecure. Affectionate and irascible. perfectionist An aesthete – a decent watercolor painter – who told the world his sexual fantasies about Camilla, then his lover and now his queen (and that of all Britons). Shaggy, grumpy, riding fury and self-pity, but stubborn to be relevant and improve the lives of his less favored subjects. Humane and very capable of looking over others' shoulders, and treating his subordinates and interlocutors with contempt. He thinks he is intellectually superior and hates being criticized.
His mother never got involved in politics (except to advise Scots to think twice before voting for independence), but he – as far as the constitutional order allows – wants to be an activist monarch , and in six months of reign he has already shown it, with gestures but not words. On the side of Ukraine and against Putin and the authoritarian regimes (Russia, China, Iran...). Support for the Good Friday Agreements and no enthusiasm for Brexit, and his government's policy of sending asylum seekers to Rwanda. Europeanism (on his first official trip abroad he went to Germany and not a Commonwealth country, and is now set to visit France to strengthen ties with Macron and reaffirm Britain's place on the continent).
One advantage of being king over being president or prime minister is that you're not subject to election cycles, and you have all the time in the world (or what's left at age 74) to make a difference, if that's what you want. Which in your case it is. He knows how to wait. He's only been king since September, but he was Prince of Wales for fifty years, which is saying something. He'll be careful not to go off the script, but he doesn't plan on abandoning the causes he believes in fervently. The environment, a field in which he was a pioneer and installed containers for recycling bottles in his residences when no one else did. Biodiversity, sustainable agriculture, organic gardens, the war on plastic and industrial production methods, green energy, the deforestation of the Amazon.
If some criticize that Joe Biden is "too old" to run for re-election, Charles III is the king who has acceded to the throne at the oldest age in the history of the United Kingdom, by far. His birth at Buckingham Palace in 1948 is a long way off, and also when, at just three years old, he already became first in the line of succession. It was a different world and a different country.
He would like to be seen as a reformer and moderniser, egalitarian, champion of inclusion, the face of 21st century Britain. He has attitudes and opinions that displease the left, and others that offend the right. But essentially he is an aristocrat to the core, very rich (his fortune is estimated at 1.3 billion euros, although it is difficult to distinguish what is his personally and what belongs to the Crown), fond of polo and cars sports (he bought his first Aston Martin in 1970), fearful of a Labor victory at the next election, who has had a privileged life in a glass cell. Of course, with a few cards up his sleeve, such as a cameo in the TV series Eastenders, and an official magician's certificate that was obtained with a trick that left the examiners speechless.
If Britain is said to have lost an empire and has not found its place in the world, Charles himself has complained many times that he does not know what his place is in life, while he waited and waited and hoped that Elizabeth II gave way to him, and devoted himself in a somewhat quixotic way to chasing windmills. As a child he was looked after by nannies while his mother was dedicated to being queen, he had an authoritarian father, and at school he was the victim of bullying, factors that have contributed to his insecurity and desire for approval. To be, in addition to monarch, the tribe of the people.
Vulnerable, emotional, complex, dedicated to the search for harmony (social, political, spiritual), he is not perceived as a romantic figure. His aspiration for modernity collides with the importance he attributes to the formal aspects of his role, cutting ribbons and presiding over banquets. With the feudal liturgy, rites of a millennium of antiquity, which he used in his coronation. As much as Gaelic texts have been read and women clergy have participated (as extras), he has promised to defend the Protestant faith in an agnostic country where only 2% of the people go to Anglican Masses, less than half are Christian and 40% are not believers.
Charles III has so far enjoyed a kind of constitutional honeymoon as the country transitions from one era to another. From a silent queen to a monarch who insists on being listened to, obsessed with not being perceived as an old, vain and self-destructive King Lear.
