The third anniversary of QEII’s death and King Charles’s accession went by in September with very little dedicated commentary. It’s because there was such a flurry of activity that particular week, with Prince Harry visiting the UK and all of the Windsors desperately trying to look busy. So… it’s curious timing for this piece to pop up right now. From the Telegraph, “How King Charles is reshaping the monarchy.” It was published a day after Prince William’s interview on The Reluctant Traveler dropped, wherein “Scooter King” William hemmed and hawed about all of the changes he’s going to make when he’s king. Is this Charles flexing and saying “not yet, Huevo?” Perhaps. Some highlights:

What Charles was doing as Scooter King’s episode came out: As sound bites of the interview went out, and headlines were drawn up, King Charles was finishing up a dinner at Dumfries House.Held in honour of his King’s Foundation, it celebrated the young people the Foundation teaches to find new and interesting ways of preserving traditional crafts and fashion. The contrast, in some senses, could not have been sharper: the current King delighting in the past, a future King deliberately looking forward. Except for one small detail. As he made his way around the room to congratulate the under-35s he was hosting, King Charles delightedly called them “changemakers”.

Charles’s evolving reign: [His reign is] a bridge between old and new, formality and informality, as head of state and a human being. It is, they hope, a new style of monarchy. The plan was to demonstrate that the King was “Sovereign, servant and son”. In other words, he was the King, ready to serve the nation, and “mourner-in-chief” for his mother, bringing stability when the national mood felt unsettled by the death of Elizabeth II. All three needed to happen as a “tripod”, one familiar with accession planning says now. “If one of three legs went wonky, the whole thing might become unstable.”

It’s like Doctor Who: “It’s a bit like Doctor Who,” a senior aide said recently. “The next one that comes along has to be completely different but a bit the same. The institution regenerates itself.” “That’s how it survives,” another palace insider told me. “Being both the same and different. The mistake some people made was to think that he [King Charles] could be, or would want to be, the same as his mother. It’s a bit like the Doctor Who regeneration. At the start, everyone says the new one isn’t like the old one so we don’t like it. And then when the next one comes around, it’s the same thing all over again. It’s essential that the Royal family continues to evolve and it will do so again into the next reign.”

Urgent family issues: The “question” of the Duke of York (and now his ex-wife) has emphatically moved to be the “problem” of the Yorks. The bubbling narrative about the return of the Duke of Sussex requires attention. Sally Bedell Smith, royal biographer and now writer of the Royal Extra Substack, argues that the King “needs to be decisive” about the “constant vexation” brought by his brother and his younger son, before it is left to a future King William. “I really think he has an obligation to step up in that way,” she says. “Particularly with Andrew, he needs to take some action: finding a mechanism to get him out of Royal Lodge, initiating a process of an Act of Parliament to remove his title, something.”

[From The Telegraph]

Again, this is the kind of piece that should have been published alongside Charles’s Accession Day anniversary. Did they hold it for a few weeks and then drop it conveniently alongside Scooter King’s sad interview on purpose? The thing is, while I think Charles is a terrible father and a pretty sh-tty person to his family, I cannot deny that he’s actually doing a pretty good job as king. As it turns out, he’s great at many aspects of the job. This nagging issue of “something must be done about Harry” highlights the greatest failing of Charles’s reign though: he’s been such a bad father to both of his sons, he will leave a huge mess behind when he passes away. William is unprepared intellectually and emotionally for the job, and Charles’s failure to prepare Peg and rein him in will do immense damage in the long run. Charles’s jealousy towards Harry and Meghan and his behavior towards them overall is a huge problem for his reign and beyond.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images.