Step to King Charles

• CARLOS FRESNEDA

  Correspondent

  @cfresneda1

  London

Updated Thursday, September 8, 2022-19:38

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Will he be a radical king or will he abide by the weight of the Crown?

Will he betray his own mother or hold his tongue?

Will he continue to stick his finger in the political wound or will he give up his infuriating activism?

Will he be an austere monarch or a petulant prince?

I pass King Charles,

, seven decades preparing for the inevitable and as many cultivating his deep contradictions.

What profile he will assume is up in the air.

the reluctant king

The impatience to inherit the Crown was giving way to a

.

Upon turning 90, the queen herself gradually delegated the more prosaic tasks of the monarchy to Carlos, such as the countless acts of official representation and the increasingly frequent visits to the countries of the Commonwealth.

Little by little, Carlos began to feel the rope, and to regret the lack of time to dedicate himself to his charitable organizations, his passions and his causes.

Catherine Mayer -author of

King- detected a deep dissatisfaction with what was coming her way and caused a stir by attributing to the Prince of Wales an unspeakable thought out loud: "Being a king is the closest thing to a prison."

"Carlos is in no hurry to be a monarch and he fears being trapped in the sad obligations of the Crown," Mayer said.

'Time' magazine delved into this dimension of the reluctant king with a cover, "The Forgotten Prince", an unusual profile of the heir twisted with interviews with 50 friends and acquaintances.

That article provoked the withering response from

to dispel doubts: "The prince has fulfilled his entire life with his duties in support of the queen and his official obligations have always run in parallel with his work in non-governmental organizations ".

In recent years, and especially since the death of his father Felipe de Edinburgh in April 2021, it would be said that Carlos was gaining poise in the role of "king in waiting".

The Queen's health problems that same year forced him to assume more and more responsibilities and turn her arrival on the throne as an extension of his functions in the shade.

the radical king

Silence and strict neutrality

were the two main features that defined the long reign of Elizabeth II.

To know what the monarch really thought of the burning issues of recent decades, you have to distill her brief speeches to the fullest and read especially between the lines.

Charles never held his tongue as a prince, and his mother's ultimate fear was that he would transfer that same momentum to the Crown and betray his own legacy.

According to

, Elizabeth II's greatest concern was that her son would impose "a new style of radical monarchy for which the British are not prepared".

His own father, Philip of Edinburgh, with whom he always had a tense relationship, reprimanded him more than once for his propensity to put his "cerebral passions" ahead of his "royal duties."

Felipe also questioned for years the preparation of his son to inherit the throne with the dignity that always distinguished his mother.

Carlos has not hidden, however, his desire to remain true to himself, and so he confided to Catherine Mayer: "I have always had an extraordinary feeling, for years and more years, of wanting to help. And I think it is my duty care about the people of this country and their lives, and find ways to make things better within my means.

the intrusive king

Carlos has always had a compulsive tendency to write letters and address them to any government department, even if they call him "intrusive."

Between 2004 and 2005, he wrote 27 missives to Tony Blair's executive that were released to the public after 10 years and dubbed the

(after the elongated handwriting of the illustrious author).

In one of them he recommended to Blair himself that he give carte blanche to "badger slaughter" to combat tuberculosis in cattle.

In another, and despite his passion for nature, he defended fox hunting as "a romantic practice."

The Prince of Wales even dared to interfere in the Iraq war and criticize the "deficiencies of the Lynx helicopters": "It is one more example of how our Armed Forces are asked to do an extremely demanding job without the necessary resources".

From the environment to war strategy, from urban planning to rural affairs, from homeopathy to organic foods, Carlos has maintained a peculiar epistolary relationship with successive governments for more than 30 years.

The then attorney general,

, protected the content of the letters, claiming that they were part of his preparation as monarch and that their dissemination could compromise his reign.

But 'The Guardian' raised a legal battle, protected by the Freedom of Information Act, and the British were able to get an idea of ​​the wide repertoire of Carlos, whose epistolary fury does not seem to have diminished even in the age of email.

"Every time we go on a trip, it doesn't take five minutes to start writing letters," acknowledged his counselor Patrick Holden.

"Sometimes at night we have found him asleep on his desk."

In

, the foreboding play written by

, the new king makes his debut introducing a new habit: that of regularly conferring not only with the prime minister, but also with the leader of the opposition.

A few weeks after its release, the fictional king wages his first confrontation with the Government on account of the Press Law which, in his opinion, introduces an admissible covert censorship in the British media.

The intrusion of the king ends in a political struggle that ends up forcing the abdication of Prince William.

This license of fiction actually corresponds to the express wish of the British, who always preferred their eldest son as successor to the Queen.

the activist king

"If he hadn't been born into the royal family, Carlos would probably be a farmer," says

, co-author of the book

, architect of that little 364-hectare paradise that surrounds his Highgrove mansion, with his own farm and with his prestigious organic food firm Duchy Originals (230 products already sold in 30 countries).

Nowhere is Charles more at home than in this corner of the

to which he devoted three decades of his life (and where Diana experienced unfathomable loneliness).

The orchard was one of the first to achieve Soil Association certification.

He himself helped design the arboretum, and the food garden, or the wild meadow where up to 32 endangered species grow, from the oxeye daisy to the cockscomb.

Despite constant criticism, Prince Charles has taken the defense of nature very personally.

And far from moderating his speech, his proclamations have increased since he served as godfather of the Paris Agreement.

At Cop26 in Glasgow, he called for "a war mobilization" in the face of the climate crisis.

At an event held at Buckingham Palace, he defined climate skeptics as "a brigade of headless chickens" and pointed an accusing finger at the fossil fuel lobby "for creating a dying planet."

His reign could go down in history as

.

the smug king

The other side of Carlos, described by

in

, is that of the "smug, flamboyant, nosy" man;

three traits of his character that will surely be strengthened under the Crown.

Bower assures that Carlos has lived his entire life in a bubble and that "he is deeply disconnected from ordinary people."

Despite the

image that he strives to project, his life has been full of luxuries and extravagances, such as once chartering a moving truck - including his orthopedic bed, his toilet bowl and his toilet paper rolls. Kleenex- to the house of some friends who invited him to spend a few days.

Another of Carlos' pet peeves is bringing not only his own food, but even his own premixed Martini to parties, usually served by one of his escorts, in the unusual capacity of his royal mixologist.

Carlos has a sprawling private court of over a hundred employees, including four whose job it is to help him change his clothes up to five times a day.

His wife Camilla, despite her aristocratic extraction, has helped him put his feet on the ground.

He introduced the habit of reusing food scraps and

.

She has infected him with the desire to reuse absolutely everything, to the point of sewing some cushions using the old bathroom curtains.

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