For loyal followers of Prince Charles's career, Mark Bolland's statement only confirmed something that became evident years ago, even before Jonathan Dimbleby's biography and television documentary introduced us to the suffering, misunderstood outsider who is our future king. As long ago as 1982, in one of my favourite Prince Charles speeches (in which he lectured the BMA on the benefits of healing), our embryonic dissident anticipated disapproval with a short digression about the role of the intellectual outcast, reminding the doctors of the persecution of the 16th-century physician, Paracelsus: "He is probably remembered more for his fight against orthodoxy than for his achievements in the medical field. As a result of his unorthodox approach to medicine in his time, he was equated with the damnable Dr Faustus."Such, the doctors gathered, was Charles's estimation of his own, heretical role. "Perhaps," he told them, "we just have to accept it is God's will that the unorthodox individual is doomed to years of frustration, ridicule and failure in order to act out his role in the scheme of things, until his day arrives and man-kind is ready to receive his message ..."Later, he appears to have extended this analysis to include the obstacles to popularity faced (though now, mercifully overcome) by his mistress; certainly he could be heard telling her in the Camillagate tape, "You suffer all these indignities and tortures and calumnies." By this time, it seems, the prince had come to feel that his sufferings so far surpassed the occasional comparison with Dr Faustus as to approach the trauma of contemporary political dissidents.Bolland's evidence, together with the extracts from the Chinese Takeaway diary, also suggest that, since styling himself a medico-mystical sort of seer, doomed to suffer the mockery of the ignorant for possessing insights whose truth would only be revealed long after his death (when they'd all be sorry), Prince Charles has developed into a roving, proactive campaigner for human rights, more along the lines of a one-man Amnesty International. And a campaigner, incidentally, who knows what it is to be spied on, followed, and publicly denounced in his struggle to win freedom of speech for the hereditary monarchy.This is the unafraid, outspoken dissident who refused to dine with President Jiang Zemin, out of solidarity for the Dalai Lama, and determined that this deliberate snub should be advertised in the press, where the Chinese delegation would read it - and either fume with frustrated social ambition, or renounce their claim to Tibet.And this is the outspoken dissident who is also a close ally and companion of the rulers of Saudi Arabia, where, as he is presumably aware, many of the liberties he craves for the oppressed Chinese are routinely denied to subjects of the Saud dynasty. Possibly, he prefers the Arab rulers' noble, hawk-carrying look to that of the yellow-tinged Chinese "waxworks" in their ill-fitting suits. Or it could be a question of artistic affinity. In 2001 Charles and Prince Khalid al-Faisal held a joint exhibition of their paintings; watercolour prince reaching out to oil-painting prince, across the human rights divide. Unless it is the very different feel of human rights violations, when they are imposed by a hereditary monarch who has been educated at an English public school. If so, this would explain Charles's trip to Bhutan, a few years ago, where the torture and ethnic cleansing of Nepalese speakers did not prevent him enjoying hours in the company of the absolute monarch, King Wangchuck.What manner of dissident, then, does Prince Charles aspire to be? He travels too much to have a lot in common with Aung San Suu Kyi, and while his zeal for writing letters betrays some affinity with the late Mary Whitehouse, the astonishing range of his known interventions (one senses the existence of many more, of which we remain unaware) - medicine, China, history teaching, architecture, GM foods, Shakespeare, the compensation culture, religion, farming, hunting, cancer care, nano-technology, mutton, political correctness gone mad - makes him more reminiscent, surely, of Gandhi, whose unorthodoxies also extended beyond revolutionary political thinking to embrace spirituality, morality, dietary restrictions, and dress.True, Gandhi is indelibly associated with non-violence and sexual restraint, while the Prince has been known to throw books and wrench washbasins off walls, but in their shared sense of destiny, their search for the truth, ambitions for their country, and strict rules about what to eat for breakfast, the two might be spiritual brothers, each filled with a profound sense of mission to do what is right. "You have to stand against the whole world although you may have to stand alone," Gandhi said. "You have to stare in the face the whole world although the world may look at you with blood-shot eyes. Do not fear. Trust the little voice residing within your heart." Or, as it might be, sitting on your throne.It could be, of course, that when he inherits, the Prince plans at once to abandon controversy, emulating instead his stoical mother, who this week received at the palace - with her habitual lack of complaint - a reception for expatriate Australians including Clive James, Germaine Greer, and her old tormentor, Rolf Harris. But given the prince's existing commitment to saying the unsayable on any subject from grey goo to the power of coffee enemas, the acquisition of a throne seems more likely to inspire still greater flights of unfettered self-expression. At liberty to snub or flatter any political leader he chooses, King Charles III will be free to invite the entire Saudi royal family to hunt in St James's Park, to commission Quinlan Terry to beautify both the interior and facade of Buckingham Palace with ornamental pineapples, and - once a week! - to introduce prime ministers as yet unborn to the mysteries of integrated medicine, before reading to them, for hours at a time, from Shakespeare's Henry V or the King James Bible. There will no mummy to glare at him, no daddy to mock him, and more importantly, no interfering little Bollands where there should be only pleasing and agreeable favourites. No one will dare implore him to avoid controversy and ludicrous contradictions (such as helicopter travel and lectures on global warming). Mankind, in short, will be ready to receive his message. He will be our first absolute dissident.