It will be the last thing I do before I go.”īoth men’s personal lives contain parallels, too. He commented, ‘loudly with a laugh’, when he was informed that the BBC was not under government influence, “I’ll change that. Something should be done to get them at work again.” At other times, it verged on the dictatorial. Sometimes, this was noble, as in his appalled statement upon seeing out-of-work miners in late 1936 that “These works brought all these people here. Although he was self-absorbed to an almost sociopathic extent, he was also unafraid to interfere in the workings of society in a way that no modern monarch before (or after) him would have dreamt of doing. Her uncle Edward, however, was a different figure altogether. When Elizabeth had declared on her 21st birthday that “I declare before you all that my whole life whether it be long or short shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong,” she established a compact with her nation that she never wavered from until her death.
His grandfather George VI and mother Elizabeth II had always prized duty above personal happiness, and had led their lives on such a basis. Not only did Charles start dressing in imitation-conscious or otherwise-of his famously sartorially-minded great-uncle, but he also began to consider the idea of kingship in a different fashion. Yet the encounter left its impression on the future monarch.
CHARLES PRINCE OF WALES IQ FULL
The full revelation of his Nazi sympathies, which had simmered during his time as Prince of Wales and monarch, proved them correct. Most politicians and courtiers -and even Cosmo Lang, the Archbishop of Canterbury -believed that his abdication in December 1936 was a blessing, saving the country from a feckless, even dangerous king. His great-uncle, meanwhile, was a man of near-unfathomable selfishness, whose primary interests were his mistress-turned-wife Wallis Simpson, acquiring money to spend on Wallis and complaining bitterly to his family about his perceived wrongs. Charles is a man who is committed to philanthropy (not least through his Prince’s Trust initiative), ecological research, and social outreach: not for nothing did his 2022’s King’s Speech concentrate on deprivation and the need for community. There are few obvious similarities between King Charles III and Edward VIII.
Yet when Charles proceeds into the ceremony, with all the inevitable pomp and circumstance that it requires, his thoughts may lie with the member of the dozen who, although he reigned as king for slightly less than a year, never had a coronation ceremony: Edward VIII, the subsequent Duke of Windsor. Since the creation of the United Kingdom in 1707, there have only been twelve monarchs before him who have done the same. As King Charles III prepares for his coronation on 6 May, he will inevitably be thinking of his forbears: from his mother Elizabeth II to the other men and women who have sat in Westminster Abbey and been crowned king or queen.
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