Now it’s a year since a glut of articles asking “what kind of king will Charles be?”, maybe it’s not too soon for a first appraisal. Even allowing for the coronation – you try finding a conductor who doesn’t have anger management issues – some differences in reigning quality should by now be evident.
Has he met expectations? It’s not as if Charles lacked time or opportunities to plan for a job that, although it dawned on him early “with the most ghastly inexorable sense”, he never decided, like his reputation as a bit of a reformer, to repudiate.
Among the advances he might have, but has not, announced: Buckingham Palace and gardens as a public resource; a dramatic reduction in his property empire; an end to curtseying and bowing; purification of the honours system; the purging of Prince Andrew. Reform rating: 1 (out of 10).
However – area of improvement – Charles’s earlier promise that he would not meddle politically has been met. “You only have to look at Shakespeare plays, Henry V or Henry IV, Part 1 and 2,” he told the BBC, “to see the change that can take place. Because if you become the sovereign, then you play the role in the way that it is expected.”
Unless you’re Richard II. Maybe Charles avoids looking at Shakespeare’s less inspirational royal templates. Anyway, nobody expected him to use his authority to re-foist Andrew, the late paedophile’s friend, on disbelieving subjects. Yet there Andrew was, last week, being driven to church by William and Kate and not, as might have been understandable, for the purposes of exorcism.
Easily forgotten amid all the coronation goodwill was Charles’s terrible judgment, a besetting weakness unchallenged, when it hasn’t been exacerbated, by his preferences in courtiers. Months before he inherited, his failure of judgment was taken to be the only reason his charity could have considered a £1m donation from a member of the Bin Laden family. And what else accounts for Charles personally accepting millions of euros in Fortnum & Mason bags, his willingness to entertain a caring client of the Quintessentially concierge service (run by Camilla’s nephew, Ben Elliot)? Mohamed Amersi called it “access capitalism”.
Appraisal note: can Charles be sure that, if promotion has made him more cautious, listening might be a skill he still needs, in the absence of peers, to work on? Or did nobody warn him that if he wants to reverse the coronation boost to his modest popularity, there could be no more efficient way than by reminding everyone of the estimated £12m his brother paid last year (mystifyingly, given his denials of her allegations) to settle with Virginia Giuffre?
It was reportedly at Charles’s insistence, not mischance, that the family advertised its collective recovery from Jeffrey Epstein. A source told the Daily Mirror: “The king feels he has a lot on his in-tray and this is one issue he wants to draw a line under.”
Until, instead, the king drew a massive ring round it in luminous highlighter, the new reign was remarkable chiefly for its stasis. Or “continuity”, as his sympathisers call it. Is it by accident, design or organisational failure that, role-wise, after six decades in rehearsal, Charles has brought so little to it? Did Shakespeare ever do a king who hits the ground prone? Because a year on, one of the main things we know about Charles, thanks to an accredited royal expert, is that he is “comfortable in his own skin” and has let his hair grow.
Outside courtier circles, and certainly for anyone who remembers David Tennant’s luxuriant wig when he played Richard II, the king’s hair growth may not be the most compelling indicator of royal effectiveness. Richard’s very long hair, Tennant explained, came from thinking that nobody ever said to Richard, “Cut your bloody hair”. “We were trying to define what the story would be for a person who grew up without having to conform to any social norms.”
Not entirely – without further pushing this dismal analogy – unlike Charles, whose pre-coronation habits included, along with his tolerance for unsuitable donors, a propensity to tantrums and a weakness for creeps. Although there is no reason to fear the arrival of a successor Van der Post, Savile or disgraced bishop, nor is there much evidence, after a year, of more enlightened input.
There has, however, been positive feedback for a new royal project against food waste. An excellent cause, though not ideally argued by a notoriously extravagant collector of superfluous houses whose meals are supplied by state-funded servants.
Admittedly, Charles, as a proselytising composter, is an advance on the last role model in the field, his nephew-in-law, the aforementioned and ubiquitous Quintessentially entrepreneur and Tory fundraiser, Ben Elliot. Between 2019 and 2022, generously taking time from servicing the rich, Elliot, as Defra’s food waste champion, preached instructively on restraint. “We’ve adopted ‘leftover Mondays’,” he offered. But the government subsequently scrapped legislation that would have made food waste reporting mandatory for medium- and large-sized businesses.
As helpful as it must be to Charles to have another leftovers expert in the family, a different sovereign might have concluded from Elliot’s arguably underwhelming impact as a moral force that extreme wealth may not be the most useful qualification for anyone urging the less fortunate to, if not eat cake, turn it, when stale, into an appetising trifle.
Still, after a year of not much, it is activity to offset Charles’s considerable recreation, not only in Balmoral, or throughout Royal Ascot: Private Eye noted his two nights abroad for work, as opposed to five in Transylvania, touring his properties. And to continue the positive note, the insights of the past year can only assist problem-solving in the next. Look how deftly Charles, showing a resolve equally applicable to Andrew, evicted the Queen’s unwanted dresser.
Overall rating: 3.
• Catherine Bennett is an Observer columnist
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