causes.
Along with Charles’s independence has come a boldness to proselytize for his causes in speeches, publications, and regular letters to government ministers in his distinctive scrawl. “There is nobody I admire more for his energy, ambition and enthusiasm,” said Sir Malcolm Ross, who served for two years as Charles’s Master of the Household after eighteen years in the senior ranks at Buckingham Palace. “He wants to save the world. The problem is he wants to save the world this afternoon and every other day.” In recent years Charles has urged that the global economic system be overhauled and questioned the values of a materialistic consumer society, denounced climate change skeptics, called for a “revolution” in the Western world’s “mechanistic approach to science,” and praised Islam for its belief that there is “no separation between man and nature.” He has twice taken on one of Britain’s most prestigious architects, Sir Richard Rogers, and derailed his multimillion-dollar projects for being incompatible with their neighborhoods, much to the relief of nearby residents.
His outspokenness has periodically put him at odds with his family, especially his father. After Charles first condemned genetically modified crops in 1998 for jeopardizing the delicate balance of nature, Philip vehemently disagreed on the grounds that such crops are necessary to feed the world. In 2000, when Charles intensified his attack on bioengineered agriculture, both his father and Princess Anne publicly took issue with his position, which his sister witheringly called a “huge oversimplification.” Philip pointed out in an interview with
Tony Blair, whose government supported genetically modified farming, had already complained a year earlier to the Queen about Charles’s public pronouncements and had fumed to Alastair Campbell that the prince was using “the same argument that says if God intended us to fly, he would have given us wings.” The prime minister expressed his concern privately to Charles through cabinet minister Peter Mandelson that his remarks “were becoming unhelpful” because they were “anti-scientific and irresponsible in the light of food shortages in the developing world.”
The Queen has typically remained above the fray and avoided confrontation with the heir apparent. “She has allowed Prince Charles to work at his interests, his aims and his ambitions,” said Malcolm Ross. At the same time, she has found many of his ideas baffling, and has expressed concern to her advisers when he has become embroiled in public controversies. “It is not a cozy relationship, and never has been,” said Margaret Rhodes. “They love each other, but the family is not set up to be cozy.” In recent years tensions between the Queen and her heir have eased, and they regularly meet for a private dinner.
She has gradually called on Charles to share more of her duties, presiding over investitures, receiving dignitaries in audiences, and reading sensitive documents in his own dark green boxes. Palace courtiers anticipate that if Philip dies before the Queen, additional responsibility will shift to Charles, who will become more of a chief executive officer to his mother’s chairman of the board. “That will be a defining moment,” said one of her former advisers. “Prince Philip is such a part of her life and her role.”
Advisers who work with mother and son see contrasts in their approach to the duties a sovereign is expected to carry out. The Queen has investitures down to a science, allocating forty seconds to each of the nearly one hundred encounters during the hour-long ceremony in the Buckingham Palace ballroom. After a quick prompt from her equerry, she leans forward to present the insignia, smoothing the sash or ribbon, as Cecil Beaton once said, like a “hospital nurse or nanny.” Keeping eye contact, she smiles brightly, steps back, asks a question, and listens intently until her inner alarm sounds and she extends her hand to say goodbye. When Charles does the honors, he tends to linger and chat more, which lengthens the proceedings by as much as fifteen minutes.
Elizabeth II is more efficient, systematic, and disciplined than her son in other ways as well. She never falls behind on her official boxes, while he often does when he gets caught up in what one of his aides described as “furiously writing letters, rewriting speeches, and reading documents”—behavior the Queen would consider self- indulgent. (In 2009–10 he personally wrote 1,869 letters.) He avoids reading newspapers, a hangover from the Diana era, preferring to get daily reports from his aides and a digest of current events from
At various times Charles has ruminated to friends and colleagues about the possibility of his mother’s abdication, once drawing a sharp rebuke from her in November 1998 when his press secretary, Mark Bolland, leaked to the media that the Prince of Wales would be “privately delighted” if his mother were to step down from the throne. When confronted by the Queen, Charles apologized and said the story was untrue. The idea of abdicating is anathema to Elizabeth II, who takes seriously her oath and anointment with holy oil during her coronation. When George Carey went to her in 2003 to say he was ready to retire as Archbishop of Canterbury, she sighed and said, “Oh, that’s something I can’t do. I am going to carry on to the end.”
The only caveat, as the Queen said to her cousin Margaret Rhodes, would be “unless I get Alzheimer’s or have a stroke.” “But even then she wouldn’t retire,” said Rhodes. If the Queen were incapacitated, Prince Charles would become Regent, acting on her behalf under the terms of the Regency Act of 1937.
In the royal tradition, the Queen, her husband, and her eldest son have state funeral plans with scripts they have approved. The name of Philip’s “Forth Bridge” plan derives from the bridge over the Firth of Forth in Scotland, Charles’s “Menai Bridge” is named after the span that connects the mainland of Wales and the island of Anglesey, and the Queen’s “London Bridge” is self-explanatory. All three plans are overseen by the Lord Chamberlain’s office and have similar elements stretching over nine days from death to burial, with processions, lying in state, and services mapped out. “The principals don’t tweak the plans,” said Malcolm Ross, who was involved in the preparations. “We report back to reassure them. The last thing they want to do is crawl all over their own funerals. They are more involved with the basics.” At least once a year, senior Palace aides talk through the arrangements and do tabletop exercises.
Although Edward VII, George V, and George VI had funerals at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, after lying in state at Westminster Hall, the Queen has planned her service for Westminster Abbey, where George II was the last monarch to have a funeral, in 1760. Both St. George’s Chapel and the Abbey are “Royal Peculiars,” which means they belong to the sovereign rather than a diocese. But according to a former senior Palace official, the Queen regards the Abbey “as the central church to her and to the Church of England.” Burial will be at Windsor, where her parents and her sister are interred at St. George’s Chapel.
When asked by NBC’s Brian Williams in a television interview in November 2010 what would happen when his mother died, Charles gave a tortured reply. “It is better not to have to think too much about it,” he said. “Except, you know, obviously, if it comes, then you have to deal with it. I think about it a bit, but it’s much better not. This is something that, you know, if it comes to it, and regrettably it comes as the result of the death of your parent which is, you know, not so nice, to say the least.”
In the same conversation, the Prince of Wales addressed for the first time the tricky matter of his wife’s status on his accession. When he married Camilla Parker Bowles, in 2005, Palace advisers finessed the question of her eventually becoming queen by saying she wished only to be “Princess Consort”—a title devised to placate those who still sympathized with Diana. As Camilla has conscientiously carried out her duties by his side, formerly hostile public sentiment about her years as Charles’s mistress has softened. Privately, he has indicated that he wants her to be his Queen Consort, just as his grandmother was for George VI. Anything less would constitute an unacceptable “morganatic” marriage of two unequal partners. “The settled rule and strong custom says the wife shall take the style and precedence of the husband,” said royal historian Kenneth Rose. “In settled law there is nothing to prevent Queen Camilla.” When NBC’s Williams queried Charles directly if Camilla would be queen, he replied, “We’ll see, won’t we? That could be.”
Unless he predeceases his mother, Charles will be the next head of state. The prospect of a King Charles III (or, if he were to choose one of his other names with happier associations, King George VII) raises several issues that could open the door to republican reformers. In the early years of the twenty-first century, both Labour and Conservative governments have raised the possibility of changing the 1701 Act of Settlement as well as the law of primogeniture, two vital underpinnings of the hereditary monarchy.
The eighteenth-century act was devised to guarantee a Protestant monarch by barring anyone in the line of succession from either being Roman Catholic or marrying a Roman Catholic. Advocates of altering the law contend that it is discriminatory, arguing that there is nothing to bar someone in the succession from marrying a Jew or Hindu or Muslim. As a practical matter, the act has worked smoothly for centuries and hasn’t prevented Catholics from marrying members of the royal family. In recent times, the Queen’s cousin, Prince Michael of Kent, removed
