Everything is known about Carlos III (or his caricature), and at the same time almost nothing is known. Many contradictory things are known. He is a guy (said with all due respect) who feels more comfortable in the company of Bach, Handel, Mozart, Shakespeare and Raine Maria Rilke than his son Enrique (whom he was unable to embrace after Isabel’s death) and his daughter-in-law meghan. He talks to the plants and in fits of rage he throws furniture against the wall.
Whoever is safe from contradictions should cast the first stone, but his – say those who have dealt with him the most – are monumental. Humble and condescending at the same time, according to the moments. Pompous and accessible. Brilliant and insecure. Affectionate and irascible. Perfectionist. An aesthete – a decent watercolor painter – who told the world of his sexual fantasies about Camila, then her lover and now her (and all Britons) queen. Stubborn, short-tempered, somewhere between fury and self-pity, but determined to be relevant and improve the lives of his less fortunate subjects. Human and very capable of looking down on others, and treating his subordinates and interlocutors with disdain. He thinks he is intellectually superior and hates being criticized.
His mother never got involved in politics (except to advise Scots to think twice before voting for independence), but he – as far as constitutional order allows – wants to be an activist monarch, and in six months of reign he has already shown it, with gestures but not words. On the side of Ukraine and against Putin and authoritarian regimes (Russia, China, Iran…). He supports the Good Friday Agreements and zero enthusiasm for Brexit, and his government’s policy of sending asylum seekers to Rwanda. Europeanism (his first official trip abroad was to Germany rather than a Commonwealth country, and now he is set to visit France to strengthen ties with Macron and reaffirm Britain’s place on the continent).
One advantage of being king over being president or prime minister is that you’re not bound by election cycles, and you have all the time in the world (or what’s left at age 74) to make a difference, if that’s what you want. . Which in his case he is. He knows how to wait. He’s only been king since September, but he was Prince of Wales for fifty years, which is saying. He’ll be careful not to go off script, but he’s not about to abandon the causes he fervently believes in. The environment, a field in which he was a pioneer and installed containers for recycling bottles in his residences when nobody else did. Biodiversity, sustainable agriculture, organic gardens, the war on plastic and industrial production methods, green energy, deforestation in the Amazon.
If some criticize that Joe Biden is “too old†to stand for re-election, Charles III is the king who has acceded to the throne at the oldest age in the entire history of the United Kingdom, by far. Far away is his birth at Buckingham Palace in 1948, and also when, at just three years old, he already became first in line of succession. He was a different world and a different country.
He would like to be seen as a reformer and modernizer, an egalitarian, a champion of inclusion, the face of 21st century Britain. He has attitudes and opinions that disgust the left, and others that offend the right. But essentially he is an aristocrat to the core, extremely rich (his fortune is estimated at 1.3 billion euros, although it is difficult to distinguish what is his personally and that of the Crown), a fan of polo and sports cars (he bought his first Aston Martin in 1970), fearful of a Labor victory in the next election, who has had a privileged life in a glass cell. Of course, with some cards up his sleeve, such as a cameo in the television series Eastenders, and an official magician’s certificate that he obtained with a trick that left the examiners speechless.
If Great Britain is said to have lost an empire and has not found its place in the world, Charles himself has often complained of not knowing his place in life, while he waited, waited, and waited for Elizabeth II to give him gave way, and was dedicated in a somewhat quixotic way to chasing windmills. As a child he was cared for by nannies while his mother was dedicated to acting as queen, he had an authoritarian father, and at school he was the victim of bullying, factors that have contributed to his insecurity and his desire for approval. He to be, in addition to monarch, the people’s tribune.
Vulnerable, emotional, complex, dedicated to the search for harmony (social, political, spiritual), he is not, however, perceived as a romantic figure. His aspiration for modernity clashes with the importance he attaches to the formal aspects of his role, to cutting ribbons and presiding over banquets. With the feudal liturgy, rites a thousand years old, which he has used in his coronation. As much as Gaelic texts have been read and female clergymen have participated (as extras), he has vowed to defend the Protestant faith in an agnostic country where only 2% of people attend Anglican masses, less than half are Christian and a 40% is not a believer.
Carlos III has so far enjoyed something of a constitutional honeymoon as the country transitions from one era to another. From a silent queen to a monarch who insists on being heard, obsessed with not being perceived as an old, vain and self-destructive King Lear.
