King Charles waited more than 70 years to become King, and since he’s taken the throne, the monarch seems to have a new energy. Despite his cancer treatments, The King keeps up with a busy program of local royal engagements and overseas trips, and one royal biographer wrote that much has changed since Queen Elizabeth died in 2022.
In his biography of the late Queen, Elizabeth: An Intimate Portrait, Gyles Brandreth writes that King Charles “is a good man with a good heart” and praised his abilities to be a “fine King.” However, the author noted that when he was the Prince of Wales, Charles might’ve been more of an Eeyore than a Tigger.
“Sometimes in the past, he seemed to walk about with an invisible rain cloud hovering over his head," Brandreth, who has been close with the Royal Family for decades, wrote. “Not so now.”
“He is equal to this moment and you can see it straight away—in his bearing, in his tone of voice, his turn of phrase,” Brandreth continued.
Fellow royal biographer Robert Hardman agreed with the sentiment in a recent interview with Marie Claire. “I think he really enjoys being The King,” Hardman, who has been covering Charles for more than 30 years, said. “He is, I would say, as happy as I’ve ever seen him.”
Hardman added that like Queen Elizabeth, “when the buck stops with you” it can feel “quite lonely at the top,” but King Charles seems to feel “a genuine sort of purpose and an energy” now that he’s King.
The author and royal journalist continued that King Charles has managed to maintain a positive attitude despite his health or the many issues plaguing world politics. “Despite everything that's going on, despite the cancer diagnosis, despite the estrangement from his son [Prince Harry], despite the fact that the country is in a dreadful state and the whole world's falling apart…he's a happy monarch,” he said.
