Charles III celebrates his first birthday on the throne: 74 years of the king who has grown old hoping to rejuvenate his mother’s crown

No.In April 2000, Queen Elizabeth II turned 74. With almost half a century of reign behind her, that year the monarch had already begun preparing for her Golden Jubilee (celebrated in 2002) and had already left behind the great achievements of her kingdom, a very different situation from the one his successor is facing now that he has reached the same age.

If Elizabeth II ascended the throne with her whole life ahead, Charles III celebrates his first birthday as a king (November 14, 2022), at an age that is almost a decade beyond that of retirement and to which most of his predecessors she was already dead, becoming that way the oldest monarch ever crowned in Westminster Abbey.

The first episode of the new season of The Crown he only underlines the irony of his fate: Prince Charles is seen delighting in a poll published in 1990 which showed that the majority of British people wanted Queen Elizabeth II to abdicate the throne in her favor because she was considered too old. The then monarch was 64 years old, ten younger than the man who at the time was thought to be able to rejuvenate the Crown once he ascended the throne.

Time will tell if Charles III’s long experience as a crown prince (he had seven decades to prepare), in exchange for his very advanced age, will be an advantage or not in dealing with the problems of the British monarchy and the United Kingdom. After the resignation of the last three British Prime Ministers and the serious economic and political crisis that the country has been going through for months, the United Kingdom has shed its reputation as a phlegmatic state. King Charles III is tasked with ensuring that the institution he directs continues, at the very least, to appear solid.

The issue affects not only the United Kingdom but also other Commonwealth countries, some of which have expressed a desire to abandon the figure of the monarch as head of state to become republics, a process that Barbados completed a year ago.

The king’s difficulties in ensuring that the royal house is respected and loved as during the reign of his mother are not few. Charles III set out to adapt the monarchy to the 21st century and, in full inflation, plans to “streamline” the weight of the institution, reducing the number of members of the royal house as other European royal families have done and saving the public coffers some expenses, but in a body where the staff gets confused with the institutional, not all problems can be solved on an Excel sheet.

Prince Harry’s memoir, Spare, which will be released early next year, already promises to give the monarch some headaches, while Princess Diana remains a source of concern for her ex-husband, despite being dead for 25 years. The new season of the popular series The Crown focuses on the last (and worst) years of the Princess of Wales’ marriage and portrays the new monarch Camilla in a very unkind light, which according to the Times and other British media worries the Windsors more and more.

Charles III never recovered from the popularity problems caused by the confrontation with his first wifenor did she manage to connect with the British people on such a profound level as she or Queen Elizabeth II did.

Although he has taken the initiative to engage, as Prince of Wales, in causes that are important to today’s younger generation such as the fight against climate change and sustainability, King Charles III has a reputation for being a maniacal and overbearing manand, and in popularity polls she continues to be distant from other members of her family, such as Prince William, who is perceived as a more approachable man by the British. It was already seen in the early days as a monarch: the image of Charles III asking an aide to remove an inkwell from his desk went viral and served as a reminder of other public manifestations of his temper in the past.

Now it is a question of whether the king, a man the world has known for 74 years, will be able to change the perception that people have of him.