"The moment of maximum opportunity for repulicanism opens," warns Catherine Mayer, author of "The Heart of a King", the book that triggered a great controversy by revealing the fears of Elizabeth II before the possibility that her son Charles broke with the proverbial neutrality of the monarchy and became a "militant king".

Born in 1961 in the United States and naturalized British, with her "republican" heart but close for more than three decades to the monarchy, Mayer recognizes her personal appreciation for King Charles and emphasizes how he has been able to be in a short time "more popular than many thought."

Even so, his coming to power comes according to Mayer in the midst of a "perfect storm" for the Republican cause, with the Prince Andrew sex scandal still kicking, the resounding failure of the "Meghan project" and the growing disdain for the monarchy among young Britons (almost 40% are in favor of its abolition).

According to his biographer, Charles is also waging "his personal pulse against the ghost of his mother, caught up in Hilary Mantel's 'In the Wolf's Court's in-style internal battles and forced to modernize the monarchy and break the secular veil of secrecy and lack of transparency."

Everything that has happened in recent months, from the lack of a response to Prince Harry's allegations in his autobiography "In the shadow" to the official silence in the face of The Guardian's revelations about the King's personal wealth (which could exceed 2,000 million euros), has gone in his opinion to the detriment of the perception of the royal family by the British in the midst of the cost-of-living crisis.

The Megxit, the beginning of the end of the monarchy?

"William and Kate have decided to maintain a 'dignified silence' in the face of Enrique's revelations, which have also affected Camila's 'rehabilitation' very fully," warns Mayer. "His story has served to bring to light something that I already told in my biography in 2015, and that is the competition that exists within the royal family and how the people who work for them are able to manipulate the press and stab themselves in the back."

Mayer says that "Megxit" can be "the beginning of the end of a monarchy that can rely on being popular." The biographer lived the breakup of royal marriages in the nineties and the drama of Diana's death. Isabel II took almost two decades to return the lost luster to "the firm", but the succession of unresolved scandals in her last years has been the worst "inheritance" that her son has been able to collect.

"The Royal Family has not yet known how to respond to the accusations of institutional racism that have surfaced in the wake of the fiasco of Harry and Meghan, which was the bet on which it had relied to modernize the monarchy," Mayer stresses. "What happened has had a serious impact on ethnic minorities and on the perception of the monarchy in the 'kingdoms' where Charles is still head of state."

Mayer comes to the step of the topic of the "reluctant king", which also surfaced as a result of his book, and recalls that it was Diana who came to say at the time that Charles did not want to be king. What the biographer perceived, in her direct access to the then Prince of Wales, was a personal tension for "his great involvement in his charitable organizations and in issues such as the environment" and the obligation of having to renounce all that when the time came to pick up the baton of the Crown.

The biographer says that finances, starting with the ease with which she accepted donations for her foundation, may be the Achilles heel of her reign, and what most contributes to encouraging pro-republican sentiment, which rarely exceeded the 25% mark during the reign of Elizabeth II.

"The monarchy has for decades been the institution most revered by Britons next to the NHS," Mayer warns. "The reputation of the NHS has fallen through the air in just a couple of years. Political instability, lack of trust in institutions, the rise of populism... All these are factors that can generate changes in a convulsive way in the United Kingdom. Let's see if the monarchy is able to overcome the turbulence."


  • United Kingdom
  • King Charles III of England

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