Charles III, King of the United Kingdom

## King Charles III

Official Portrait of King Charles III at his Coronation

**Charles III** (Charles Philip Arthur George; born 14 November 1948) is King of the United Kingdom and the 14 other Commonwealth realms.

Charles was born in Buckingham Palace during the reign of his maternal grandfather, King George VI, and became heir apparent when his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, acceded to the throne in 1952. He was created Prince of Wales in 1958 and his investiture was held in 1969.

He was educated at Cheam School and Gordonstoun, and later spent six months at the Timbertop campus of Geelong Grammar School in Victoria, Australia. After earning a history degree from the University of Cambridge, Charles served in the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy from 1971 to 1976.

In 1981, he married Lady Diana Spencer; William, Prince of Wales, and Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, are their children. Charles and Diana divorced in 1996, after they had each engaged in well-publicised extramarital affairs. Diana died as a result of injuries sustained in a car crash the following year. In 2005, Charles married his long-term partner, Camilla Parker Bowles.

## Early Life

Charles was born at 21:14 (GMT) on 14 November 1948, during the reign of his maternal grandfather, King George VI. He was the first child of Princess Elizabeth, Duchess of Edinburgh (later Queen Elizabeth II), and Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. His parents had three more children, Anne (born 1950), Andrew (born 1960) and Edward (born 1964). On 15 December 1948, at four weeks old, he was christened Charles Philip Arthur George in the Music Room of Buckingham Palace by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher.

George VI died on 6 February 1952 and Charles's mother acceded to the throne as Elizabeth II; Charles immediately became the heir apparent. Under a charter of Edward III in 1337, and as the monarch's eldest son, he automatically assumed the traditional titles of Duke of Cornwall and, in the Scottish peerage, the titles Duke of Rothesay, Earl of Carrick, Baron of Renfrew, Lord of the Isles, and Prince and Great Steward of Scotland.

### Education

When Charles turned five, a governess, Catherine Peebles, was appointed to oversee his education at Buckingham Palace. Charles then commenced classes at Hill House School in west London on 7 November 1956. He was the first heir apparent to attend school, rather than be educated by a private tutor. He did not receive preferential treatment from the school's founder and headmaster, Stuart Townend, who advised the Queen to have Charles train in football, because the boys were never deferential to anyone on the football field. Charles subsequently attended two of his father's former schools: Cheam School in Hampshire, in 1958, followed by Gordonstoun, in the north-east of Scotland, beginning classes there in April 1962.

In 1966, Charles spent two terms at the Timbertop campus of Geelong Grammar School in Victoria, Australia. Upon his return to Gordonstoun, Charles emulated his father in becoming head boy and left in 1967, with six GCE O-levels and two A-levels in history and French, at grades B and C respectively.

Charles broke royal tradition when he proceeded straight to university after his A-levels, rather than joining the British Armed Forces. In October 1967, he was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied archaeology and anthropology for the first part of the Tripos and then switched to history for the second part. During his second year, Charles attended the University College of Wales in Aberystwyth, studying Welsh history and the Welsh language for one term. Charles became the first British heir apparent to earn a university degree, graduating on 23 June 1970 from the University of Cambridge with a 2:2 Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree.

## Marriage and Family

### Lady Diana Spencer

Charles first met Lady Diana Spencer in 1977, while he was visiting her home, Althorp. He was then the companion of her elder sister Sarah and did not consider Diana romantically until mid-1980. While Charles and Diana were sitting together on a bale of hay at a friend's barbecue in July, she mentioned that he had looked forlorn and in need of care at the funeral of his great-uncle Lord Mountbatten. Soon, according to Dimbleby, "without any apparent surge in feeling, he began to think seriously of her as a potential bride" and she accompanied Charles on visits to Balmoral Castle and Sandringham House.

Charles proposed to Diana in February 1981, with their engagement becoming official on 24 February; the wedding took place in St Paul's Cathedral on 29 July. Upon his marriage, Charles reduced his voluntary tax contribution from the profits of the Duchy of Cornwall from 50 per cent to 25 per cent. The couple lived at Kensington Palace and Highgrove House, near Tetbury, and had two children: William, in 1982, and Harry, in 1984.

#### Affairs and Divorce

Within five years, the marriage was in trouble due to the couple's incompatibility and near 13-year age difference. By November 1986, Charles had fully resumed his affair with Camilla Parker Bowles, his ex-girlfriend who was rejected by the Royal Family. Diana later commenced a relationship with Major James Hewitt, the family's former riding instructor.

Charles and Diana's evident discomfort in each other's company led to them being dubbed "The Glums" by the press. Audio tapes of her own extramarital flirtations also surfaced, as did persistent suggestions that Hewitt is Prince Harry's father, based on a physical similarity between Hewitt and Harry. However, Harry had already been born by the time Diana's affair with Hewitt began.

In December 1992, John Major announced the couple's legal separation in the House of Commons. In an interview, Charles confirmed his own extramarital affair with Parker Bowles, saying that he had rekindled their association in 1986, only after his marriage to Diana had "irretrievably broken down".

This was followed by Diana's own admission of marital troubles in an interview on the BBC current affairs show Panorama, broadcast on 20 November 1995. Referring to Charles's relationship with Parker Bowles, she said, "well, there were three of us in this marriage. So, it was a bit crowded." She also expressed doubt about her husband's suitability for kingship. Charles and Diana divorced on 28 August 1996, after being advised by the Queen in December 1995 to end the marriage. The couple shared custody of their children.

Diana was killed in a car crash in Paris on 31 August 1997. Charles flew to Paris with Diana's sisters to accompany her body back to Britain. In 2003, Diana's butler Paul Burrell published a note that he claimed had been written by Diana in 1995, in which there were allegations that Charles was "planning 'an accident' in [Diana's] car, brake failure and serious head injury", so that he could marry again.

### Camilla Parker-Bowles

The engagement of the Prince of Wales and Camilla Parker Bowles was announced on 10 February 2005. Charles was the only member of the royal family to have a civil, rather than a church, wedding in England. British government documents from the 1950s and 1960s, published by the BBC, stated that such a marriage was illegal; these claims were dismissed by Charles's spokesman and explained by the sitting government to have been repealed by the Registration Service Act 1953.

Charles's parents did not attend the marriage ceremony; the Queen's reluctance to attend possibly arose from her position as Supreme Governor of the Church of England. The Queen and Duke of Edinburgh did attend the service of blessing and held a reception for the newlyweds at Windsor Castle. The blessing by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams was televised.

## As Prince of Wales

In 1965, Charles undertook his first public engagement by attending a student garden party at the Palace of Holyroodhouse. During his time as Prince of Wales, Charles undertook official duties on behalf of the Queen, completing 10,934 engagements between 2002 and 2022. He officiated at investitures and attended the funerals of foreign dignitaries. Charles made regular tours of Wales, fulfilling a week of engagements each summer, and attending important national occasions, such as opening the Senedd. Charles also represented his mother at the independence celebrations in Fiji in 1970, the Bahamas in 1973, Papua New Guinea in 1975, Zimbabwe in 1980, and Brunei in 1984.

While Charles was visiting Australia on Australia Day in January 1994, David Kang fired two shots at him from a starting pistol in protest of the treatment of several hundred Cambodian asylum seekers held in detention camps. In 1995, Charles became the first member of the royal family to visit the Republic of Ireland in an official capacity. In 1997, Charles represented the Queen at the Hong Kong handover ceremony.

Charles represented the Queen at the opening ceremony of the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, India. In November 2010, he and Camilla were indirectly involved in student protests when their car was attacked by protesters. From 15 to 17 November 2013, he represented the Queen for the first time at a Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Charles and Camilla made their first joint trip to the Republic of Ireland in May 2015.

Commonwealth heads of government decided at their 2018 meeting that Charles would be the next Head of the Commonwealth after the Queen. The head is chosen and therefore not hereditary.

Charles contracted COVID-19 during the pandemic in March 2020. Several newspapers were critical that Charles and Camilla were tested promptly at a time when many NHS doctors, nurses and patients had been unable to be tested expeditiously. He tested positive for COVID-19 for a second time in February 2022. He and Camilla, who also tested positive, had received doses of a COVID-19 vaccine in February 2021.

In May of 2022, Charles attended the State Opening of the British Parliament, delivering the Queen's Speech on behalf of his mother, as a counsellor of state.

## Reign

Charles acceded to the British throne on his mother's death on 8 September 2022. He was the longest-serving British heir apparent, having surpassed Edward VII's record of 59 years on 20 April 2011. When he became monarch at the age of 73, Charles was the oldest person to do so, the previous record holder being William IV, who was 64 when he became king in 1830.

Charles gave his first speech to the nation on 9 September, at 18:00 BST, in which he paid tribute to his mother and announced the appointment of his elder son, William, as Prince of Wales. The following day, the Accession Council publicly proclaimed Charles as king, the ceremony being televised for the first time. Attendees included the new queen consort, Camilla; William, Prince of Wales; and Prime Minister Liz Truss and her six living prime ministerial predecessors. The proclamation was also read out by local authorities around the United Kingdom. Other realms signed and read their own proclamations, as did Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, British Overseas Territories, Crown Dependencies, Canadian provinces, and Australian states.

Charles and Camilla's coronation took place at Westminster Abbey on 6 May 2023. Plans had been made for many years, under the code name Operation Golden Orb. Reports before his accession suggested that Charles's coronation would be simpler than his mother's in 1953, with the ceremony expected to be "shorter, smaller, less expensive, and more representative of different faiths and community groups – falling in line with the King's wish to reflect the ethnic diversity of modern Britain". Nonetheless, the coronation was a Church of England rite, including the coronation oath, the anointment, delivery of the orb, and enthronement.

Charles and Camilla have engaged in two state visits and received one in return. On 22 November 2022, they hosted South African president Cyril Ramaphosa during the first official state visit to the United Kingdom during Charles's reign.

In March 2023, the King and Queen embarked on a state visit to Germany, during which Charles became the first British monarch to address the Bundestag.

## Titles

* **14 November 1948 - 6 February 1952:** Prince Charles of Edinburgh
* **6 February 1952 - 26 July 1958:** *His Royal Highness* Duke of Cornwall, Duke of Rothesay, Earl of Carrick, Baron of Renfrew, Lord of the Isles, Prince and Great Steward of Scotland.
* **26 July 1958 - 8 September 2022:** *His Royal Highness* The Prince of Wales
* **8 September 2022 - Present:** *His Majesty* The King of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms, Defender of the Faith, the Duke of Normandy, the Duke of Lancaster.