Charles has spent the entirety of his 73 years in the public eye, during which his personal foibles and intemperate opinions have been headline material
When Queen Elizabeth II ascended to the British throne in 1952, her subjects mostly knew her as a young princess born in relative obscurity who had given a speech on her 21st birthday pledging to spend her life “devoted to your service.”
King Charles III does not benefit from the same blank slate: He’s spent the entirety of his 73 years in the public eye, during which his personal foibles and intemperate opinions have never failed to make headlines, cause international incidents or spur the occasional big-budget TV series.
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Below, a sampling of the less-discreet comments that have defined King Charles’ public profile.
“I can see that I shall just have to get married as soon as possible and then all these people might relax a little…. I still think my solution of marrying a girl from each commonwealth country is the best one.”
This is from a love letter penned by Charles in 1980 to a Canadian woman who had reportedly met the prince in 1975 while working at Montreal’s British Consulate. The woman, whoever she is, ultimately rejected Charles’ flirtations — and then sold the letters for five figures in the early 2000s. The most embarrassing moment from Charles’ love life to go public, however, was a recording of a raunchy phone call between himself and his then-mistress (and now Queen Consort) — although we won’t be detailing that here.
“I hate doing this. Bloody people. I can’t bear that man anyway. He’s so awful, he really is.”
This comment was captured on a hot mic in 2005. Midway through a Swiss ski holiday with his two sons, William and Harry, Charles gave a press conference to the ever-present throng of paparazzi in the hopes that they might give him some peace. The quote above, muttered to the young princes, was directed at BBC correspondent Nicholas Witchell, who had been asking Charles about his upcoming marriage to Camilla.
“Whatever in love means, you can put your own interpretation.”
It’s now very clear that Charles’ 1981 marriage to Diana Spencer was a disastrously loveless union that probably shouldn’t have happened in the first place. The above quote is usually cited as the first sign that something was amiss. During Charles’ first press conference with his bride to be, a reporter asked if the couple was in love. Diana replied “Oh, yes,” but Charles gave the cryptic response above.
“And now Putin is doing just about the same as Hitler.”
During a visit to Halifax in 2014, Charles said the above to a Canadian woman expressing concern over Russia’s recent annexation of Crimea. The comment sparked a major diplomatic row between Russia and the U.K., and drew condemnation from British parliamentarians who accused Charles of trying to steer British foreign policy. History would end up somewhat vindicating Charles for the comment, though: Just eight years later, Vladimir Putin would stage an all-out invasion of Ukraine on the very Hitler-esque justification that war was needed to protect Ukraine’s Russian-speaking minorities.
“My wife is feeling much better now than she was in the early afternoon, and it’s due entirely to the extremely advantageous conditions that pertain in British Columbia: The weather and the general fertile conditions, which have ensured she’s about to have sextuplets, which is really why she fainted. It’s not actually true.”
Princess Diana was famously seen to faint during a visit to Vancouver’s Expo 86. As Diana would reveal later, the collapse was in part due to her bulimia, as a result of which she had effectively being going without food for several days. The bizarre quote above was delivered by Charles at an engagement that evening, and it’s since been used as evidence that he belittled or dismissed his wife’s eating disorder.
“It has long been one of our great ambitions to visit every county of this majestic land before senility totally overtakes us.”
Charles and Camilla have been spending a fair bit of time in Ireland, a country that his mother only saw once during a historic 2011 state visit. Given Ireland’s violent separation from Great Britain just before Elizabeth’s birth, the country was long a bit of a no-go area for British monarchs. But as the quote from March indicates, the taboo has definitely worn off for Charles. Meanwhile, Charles has a bit of a habit of joking about his advanced age. Last year, when asked about a health scare involving his mother, Charles replied “once you get to 95, it’s not quite as easy as it used to be. It’s bad enough at 73.”
“Indonesia and the other rainforest nations are stewards of the world’s greatest public utility. The rest of us have to start paying for it, just as we do for water, gas and electricity.”
The one major distinguishing factor between Charles and his mother – and the one deemed most likely to get him into trouble as monarch – is his penchant for activism. While Elizabeth II strenuously kept her political and social opinions to herself, Charles is an outspoken advocate for everything from green policy to organic farming to alternative medicine. In 2008, during a visit to Indonesia, he expressed his not-uncontroversial view that we should all be paying taxes to equatorial nations in exchange for them promising not to level the rainforests.
“Hernia today, gone tomorrow.”
The royals spend an awful lot of their time tolerating the tedium of British officialdom, and a good coping strategy is apparently to keep a ready arsenal of dry quips and bad puns. The above quote was how Charles addressed the press upon his 2003 release from hospital for hernia surgery. Around that same time, after having his path blocked by screaming anti-monarchist protesters in Montreal, Charles would respond with an understated, “I fear there was a little local disturbance.”
“My old Aston Martin, which I’ve had for 51 years, runs on — can you believe this — surplus English white wine.”
During a 2021 interview with the BBC in which Charles was talking up the need for dramatic action on climate change, the prince noted that his vintage sports car runs on a unique renewable fuel distilled from surplus wine and whey left over from the production of cheese. The comments drew criticism over the fact that the prince’s “wine-and-cheese-fuelled” car did not seem to indicate a practical grasp of the realities of decarbonization.
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