![]() Diana hailed from one of Britain’s oldest families, and as a 19-year-old kindergarten teacher she was far from a socialite whose romantic history might ruffle royal feathers. Lady Diana Spencer was 12 years Charles’ junior, and they had met only around a dozen times before he asked her to marry him. She had also been in several relationships already, and “the conventions of the time called for the heir to the British throne to marry a woman who appeared to be at least virginal,” Smith wrote in her book.Ĭamilla was also courting another man, Andrew Parker Bowles, whom she would marry to Charles’ dismay while he was away on Navy duty, in what Smith calls “Britain’s upper-class Venn diagram of infidelity.” So Charles was left at a loose end, struggling to draw from the diminishing pool of debutantes who satisfied the stringent royal criteria. Her family was not aristocratic enough for her to be a suitable wife for the heir to the throne. But Camilla Shand, as she was then called, would only loom in the background for the best part of three decades. In 1994, a TV documentary captured a child asking him, “Who are you?” to which Charles replied, “I wish I knew.”Ĭharles had a long love affair with the woman who later would become his wife. He had entertained ambitions of being a train driver, a soldier and even a big-game hunter, he said, “until I realized I was rather stuck.” That tortured listlessness did not fade. He graduated with middling grades, later describing the experience as “a prison sentence.”Īt age 21, Charles told a BBC radio program that realizing he would be king was “something that dawns on you with the most ghastly, inexorable sense.” The queen crowns Charles the Prince of Wales at Caernarvon Castle in Wales on July 1, 1969. This is “absolutely the story of his life” - Charles’ family “constantly trying to shove him into this mold, because he was the future king, that he just didn’t fit,” Brown said. Lisa Sheridan / Getty ImagesĬharles was a “very sensitive and emotional young man,” so his “alpha male” father tried to toughen him up by sending him to Gordonstoun, a rough, spartan boarding school in Scotland, according to royal biographer Tina Brown, speaking with NBC News’ Keir Simmons for his podcast “Born to Rule” this year. The queen with Princess Anne and Prince Charles, age 4, at Balmoral Castle in 1952. ![]() His mother and disciplinarian father were often absent, touring the Commonwealth for months at a time and missing Charles’ first two Christmases and his third birthday. It was not an easy childhood, Smith and other biographers and royal historians agree. Less than four years later, he became heir to the throne after the death of his grandfather George V. The “newborn heir was brought to the vast gilded ballroom by the royal midwife” and placed in a cot “for viewing by the royal courtiers,” Sally Bedell Smith wrote in her unauthorized biography, “Prince Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life.” No sooner had Charles been born than he “officially became public property,” Smith said. By contrast, the new king has always appeared an awkward fit. ![]() ![]() The queen always seemed preternaturally suited for this quiet, obliging role, replete with towering soft power but little hard power. “So, of course, you operate within the constitutional parameters.”Įven so, some critics believe his on-the-record views could cause a constitutional crisis if the government adopts a position he has previously backed - from supporting farmers to approving controversial architecture - even if there is no evidence he has actually intervened. ![]() Because if you become the sovereign, then you play the role in the way that it is expected,” he said. “You only have to look at Shakespeare plays, ‘Henry V’ or ‘Henry IV’ part I and 2, to see the change that can take place. The new king has said he will take a different approach as monarch from his opinionated time as prince, telling the BBC in 2018 it was “complete nonsense” to suggest he would be openly political, because “I’m not that stupid.” ![]()
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