The outline of Charles’s life has been scrutinised in great detail ever since the November evening in 1948 when the notification that the Princess Elizabeth had been safely delivered of an heir was posted on the railings at Buckingham Palace to the cheers of the waiting crowd (who were asked to keep quiet to avoid waking the baby).Ĭharles, Prince of Wales, walking along a Cambridge street while an undergraduate at the University of Cambridge. He is the oldest as well as the longest-waiting heir to the throne and Prince of Wales. He is as prepared as anyone could be for the role of head of state, and has been for more than half a century. Unlike his predecessors, especially Edward VII, he has been trained in the requirements and expectations of monarchy: he has seen the state papers, sat in on the meetings, and stood in for his mother at royal events. This would be a terrible legacy after all this time of waiting: a great humiliation for a deeply proud and self-conscious man who has had dinned into him all his life the special responsibilities he will one day bear. Can he manage the chief object of all his predecessors since time immemorial of passing on the crown untarnished, safely, to his heirs and successors? Or will he, through his own volition, end up as Charles the Last? Keeping up with the times and adapting to them has been the hallmark of this royal dynasty’s success and, unless he does so, he and the monarchy are sunk. So can Charles accomplish something similar? Can an older sovereign, succeeding an elderly one, engage the monarchy with a country whose population is mostly much younger than he is and whose future is with a coming generation, not a departing one? Particularly one whose politicians, business leaders, generals, police chiefs are decades his junior: 20, or 30 years younger, a whole generation with different experiences and skills. Charles and William inspecting the Ayrshire cattle raised at Duchy Home Farm.
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