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Reasons to be cheerful for a 60-year-old monarch in waiting
THE Prince of Wales may have reached an age when most people are thinking of retiring but the heir to the throne shows no signs of slowing down.
He has been groomed to be King since the day he was born, but arguably it is only in the last few years that all elements of his life – family, relationships and work – have left him with a sense of satisfaction.
The long shadow cast by the death of his first wife Diana, Princess of Wales was banished earlier this year when the much anticipated inquest into her death was finally held.
His personal life must now give him a strong sense of happiness after he married the love of his life Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall three years ago.
With his trusted confidante by his side, those around him have noted he has become more content as he carries out his official duties.
Charles's sons, Princes William and Harry, are young men who are forging their own careers in the armed forces and this must give him a strong sense of pride.
The Prince has seen many projects close to his heart bear fruit and today he presides over his Prince's Charities, a group of 20 not-for-profit organisations, 18 of them founded by the Prince. They embrace a range of issues from health to thearts, and include the flagship youth charity the Prince's Trust, which he set up in 1976 with his severance play from the Royal Navy. Today it turns over more than 50m and
has about 8,000 staff and volunteers.
Charles Philip Arthur George was born on November 14, 1948, and grew up in a time of quiet revolution inside Buckingham Palace. He became heir apparent on the death of his grandfather King George VI in 1952, when he was three years old.
The Prince's education marked the first real step in a breaking with tradition. He was the first Prince of Wales to be educated publicly instead of by private tutors. As a child he was hypersensitive, lonely, excessively shy and, according to his Scottish governess Miss Peebles, given to quiet pursuits such as reading and painting.
Many years later he would tell his biographer Jonathan Dimbleby that his days at Gordonstoun, the public school in the Scottish Highlands, were "a prison sentence" but instilled self-discipline and a sense of responsibility.
It was his father Prince Phillip who chose the Navy as a career for Charles, in the centuries-old tradition of the Sailor Kings of England. At the age of 28, the Prince returned to civilian life and began assuming an increasingly heavy burden of Royal duties.
Within a few years, there was speculation about who Charles, the world's most eligible bachelor, would marry. In the early 1970s, Charles met Camilla Shand on a Windsor polo field, and is said to have lost his heart to her almost at once. They embarked on a relationship.
But when the Prince joined the Navy the couple spent long periodsapart. Charles missed his chance, and was heartbroken when Camilla married cavalry office Andrew Parker Bowles. Girlfriends came and went until eventually on February 24, 1981, Buckingham Palace ended months of speculation when it announced that Charles was engaged to 19-year-old Lady Diana Spencer.
He wed his shy bride on July 29 that year at Paul's Cathedral, and the couple had two sons – William, born in June 1982, and Harry two years later. But within a few years rumours of unhappiness within the marriage were rife.
Charles had renewed his affair with Camilla and Diana had turned to cavalry officer James Hewitt.
In 1992, the year the Queen described as her "annus horribilis" – the Waleses split, as did the Duke and Duchess of York, and Windsor Castle went up in flames.
In 1994, the Prince admitted adultery on national television, while Diana subsequently gave an interview to Panorama in which she said "there were three people in our marriage".
Charles and Diana divorced in August 1996, but a year later Diana died in a car crash with her lover Dodi al Fayed in a crash in a Paris underpass.
Over subsequent years Camilla's eventual emergence as Charles's long-term partner was carefully stage-managed. Their first public appearance together was outside the Ritz Hotel in London in 1999, and
the culmination of the romance was the marriage between the long-time lovers in a civil ceremony at Windsor Guildhall on April 9, 2005, followed by a blessing.
Prince Charles clearly looks upon his role as a full-time job, with a commitment to many charities and a great deal of time spent studying issues of the day that are of special interest to him, such as farming, the environment and the arts.
Some might not welcome his pronouncements on GM crops, climate change or modern architecture, but his detractors never criticise the Prince for being ill-informed.
He takes advice from the highest authorities in their field, and appears to feel it is part of his conscientious duty to make apolitical comment and stimulate debate. Royal etiquette would probably mean that most of his comments could not be made were he already the monarch.
At 60, there is still no clear sign that Prince Charles will ever become king, but he appears to make the most of the relative freedom of his current situation and, while being deeply traditional in most respects, he can also be said to have been the modernist Prince of Wales.
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Saturday 11 February 2012
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