The pomp and power of the 10-day mourning period have settled the new King on the throne. Can he keep his people’s trust, and shape his country’s destiny?
This week, Buckingham Palace has rolled out with near pinpoint precision a meticulously timetabled and choreographed carousel of pomp, pageantry, ritual and ceremony.
But amid the nationwide chorus of trumpet fanfares, church organs, military bands and bagpipes, in Northern Ireland there was a single, discordant note.
King Charles III was meant to be signing a book, when the fountain pen began to leak. “Oh god, I hate this,” he said, standing up in frustration. “I can’t bear this bloody thing, what they do every stinking time,” he spat petulantly, storming out.
It was less than a minute, and it came in a week of enormous stress on a man who has all at once lost his mother and also assumed a role he has awaited for seven decades.
But it threw into sharp relief a difference between the King and his mother. She would almost certainly have handled a problematic pen more deftly, diplomatically and decorously, possibly with a sprinkle of self-deprecation.
It’s unlikely to be the only difference the British sovereign’s subjects begin to perceive between their new and former heads of state. It could well be the tip of an iceberg, and one that could sink the monarchy if King Charles can’t navigate a careful course.
He has gone out of his way to stress a continuity of style, approach and values between himself and his mother. But the very fact that he has felt the need to do so suggests he knows where his vulnerabilities lie.
The first week has been the easy ride. Everything is stage-managed, the audience is primed, and all he had to do was walk in, deliver the lines, act the part.
Britain has put on a glorious historical cosplay of uniforms, medals, carriages, flags, priests, choirboys, cathedrals and castles.
As the palace intended, Britons across the country have responded to the evocation of what are imagined to be timeless traditions with a media-framed outpouring of sentimental patriotic pride.
And as the palace hoped, the fathomless esteem for the seemingly eternal Queen has rubbed off on her son.
In May this year, 32 per cent of Britons told the polling firm YouGov that they thought Charles would make a good king, while 32 per cent said he wouldn’t, and 36 per cent weren’t sure – figures that have been stable for years.
In a survey this week, though, the figure backing him to make a good fist of it surged to 63 per cent. Only 15 per cent doubted him, and just 22 per cent were unsure.
Even as people reflect fondly and nostalgically on the Queen – in many cases, “mourn” is probably too strong a word – they are transferring this misty-eyed affection to her successor. “God save the King!” is shouted with often exuberant brio.
Queen Elizabeth II lies in state in an empty Palace of Westminster Hall. Getty
The Queen’s funeral procession makes its way from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Hall on Wednesday. Getty
The frequently snarky and hyperventilating media have rediscovered a reservoir of deference. The leaky-pen incident was widely covered but did not generate the usual column inches of outrage and analysis.
With the exception of the left-wing Guardian’s focus on a rather brutal round of sackings at his Clarence House operation, the King has been allowed to appear magisterial and benign.
But can he keep it up? He has been an outspoken Prince Hal for decades, and may find it hard to let go of his interventionist instincts, his reflex crabbiness and his sometimes seemingly involuntary penchant for little flurries of controversy.
If he is to safeguard the monarchy’s influence and position at the apex of Britain’s unwritten constitution, he cannot afford too many missteps that chip away at the public’s affection, and with it their willingness to lend him legitimacy.
One challenge the King faces is that the British public has developed a thirst for imagined intimacy and emotional connection.
Particularly after the death of Diana, the Queen cultivated a more grandmotherly image, using her televised addresses to deliver carefully curlicued communications of sympathetic concern. Prince William has now facsimiled her neat balance of reserve and revelation.
Plenty to think about … King Charles III. Getty
Prince William has now facsimiled his mother’s neat balance of reserve and revelation.
Charles, however, has struggled. In his case, revealing himself is more fraught with risk, as the public has never warmed to him as they have to other royals, especially after the Diana imbroglio.
But his hand has been forced. The sheer soap opera of his marriage to Diana meant he was never able to cultivate the reserve that his mother and son have managed.
“He was unhappily married to the most famous woman in the world,” commentator Sam Leith wrote in the Spectator magazine. “Every twist and turn of that relationship was tracked in the media, and the world gleefully passed judgment on the messy adulteries and recriminations which followed.
“Whether he likes it or not – and I suspect that he doesn’t like it one bit – His Majesty comes to the throne not only in a more emotionally unbuttoned age, but as a monarch whose emotions have been part of the public conversation.”
It is a process of adaptation. He grew up in a world of Anglican reserve, so that emotional outpourings typically take the form of an eruption, like the pen incident.
To meet the needs of this era, he needs to be able to emote, when required, in a way that inspires warmth rather than recoil.
As Atlantic Council senior fellow Ben Judah wrote on the website UnHerd this week, this is a mawkish epoch, of Paddington Bears and cellophane bouquets piled up at the palace gates.
“None of this has the Christian certainty of Elizabeth’s coronation. It has all the hallmarks of the post-Anglican way we mourn now, how we festoon grief with lilies, postcards and teddies,” he said.
The King clearly recognises that he needs to hit this register. His speeches this week have all led with his feeling about his “darling Mama”, his sense of loss, and his gratitude to the British people for their support, before any turn to the topic of his kingly duties and responsibilities.
His other strategy, which became evident in recent years, is to neutralise this problem by deploying a kind of humorous, harmless grandfather-uncle persona. That isn’t an option this week, though, when the required mood is solemn, sombre and epochal.
The impressive array of lavish buildings, disciplined military paraphernalia and baroque rituals doesn’t just rally the King’s subjects; it also projects an image or vision of his country’s place in the world.
The identities, influence and prospects of King Charles and Great Britain are intimately, intricately bound together.
The Queen was symbolically intertwined, inextricably, with ideas of empire, of military victory, of a country that mattered in the world and wanted to shape events and destinies.
Through no fault of his own, the King’s adult life has coincided with a period of change and dislocation, sweeping away social norms and codes that had governed British life for several centuries.
Britain, particularly England, has struggled to fit comfortably into its contemporary skin, or even really know or understand what that is. This is true geopolitically, but particularly domestically.
The bonds uniting the UK’s four nations have loosened, the glue holding society together has weakened, the relatively conservative liberal consensus underlying British politics has fractured.
The King has been caught up in some of this, but must now try to exercise a convening, unifying role that bridges some of Britain’s gaps and fissures.
This is a role he has long aspired to play; the question is whether he really can. It is notable that the crowds lining processional routes have been far less ethnically diverse than the country at large; and that the young have, according to opinion polls, felt far less exercised about the Queen’s death than the old.
Prince William, King Charles III, Prince Richard, Princess Anne and Prince Harry walk behind the coffin during the procession for the Lying-in State of Queen Elizabeth.
The crowds are large, but the polls suggest many people are indifferent to, or dislike, the monarchy.
For all the claims of a nation united in grief and mourning, there are many people who are at best indifferent to the royal family. Some even harbour antipathy: between a quarter and a third of people support the UK becoming a republic, and that figure is higher in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
There is almost no chance that Britain will become a republic – the degree of constitutional flex required would probably snap the whole.
But there is every chance the monarchy could edge quietly from the nation’s central consciousness, becoming a collection of potent land owners and charitable campaigners, with a discreet ambassadorial and constitutional function. Less like the former Prince Charles, more like Princess Anne.
This looks very much to be the ambition William has for the royal family, and which he will continue to model in his significant new role as Prince of Wales.
The question is whether the British people will go along with this? Will they be prepared to let the royals retreat into a redoubt of earnestness and eccentricity? Or will they still look to their monarch to guide, counsel, represent and embody the nation?
If they expect the latter of King Charles, which is what they received from Queen Elizabeth, he will have to try to rise to the occasion, as he has sought to do this week.
For, as he himself has said: “Something as curious as the monarchy won’t survive unless you take account of people’s attitudes. After all, if people don’t want it, they won’t have it.”
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