After a difficult start to his reign, King Charles is hoping 2025 will be his comeback year.
At first, just saying "King Charles III" felt odd. Newsreaders stumbled over the title for weeks, professional commentators sounded uneasy: rabbits caught in the headlights of history.
It wasn't just the new title that felt awkward. How do you follow a reign of 70 years and 214 days and step into the shoes of Queen Elizabeth II?
Many questioned whether the activist Prince of Wales with his bucketful of strongly held opinions on the environment, architecture, the arts and more could pivot to become an impartial head of state. Charles, heir to the throne since the age of three, never had any doubt.
"I'm not that stupid … Clearly I won't be able to do the same things I've done as heir… of course, you operate within the constitutional parameters," he quipped in a neatly packaged 70th birthday TV documentary.
Two years since Queen Elizabeth II's death and a fancy coronation later, King Charles has seamlessly morphed into Britain's sovereign and even though some Australians — most vocally Senator Lidia Thorpe — question his relevance over here, for the moment he remains Australia's constitutional monarch.
King Charles, now 76, and Queen Camilla came out of the blocks firing on all cylinders with the new Prince and Princess of Wales — William and Catherine — the youthful support act.
No one could have predicted what followed.
Prince William described 2024, the year double cancer battles struck the King and Catherine, as "brutal".
Camilla stepped into the breach, her steely public-facing dedication was notable.
The King's cancer, announced one year ago in February, has certainly presented a significant bump in the road. But according to Julian Payne, the King's former communications secretary, the sovereign tackled the issue with the same pragmatism that shaped his work as Prince of Wales and many I spoke to see as his secret weapon.
"You have to understand the psyche of the man," Payne says. "He looks at everything through the lens of 'how can I turn this into something useful'. I know that sounds like a line, but it genuinely isn't."
The King led from the front, Payne says, allowing himself to be photographed travelling to and from Buckingham Palace for treatment. A 51 per cent spike in searches for cancer advice from the National Health Service followed.
Stoicism in the face of a personal crisis, made the king real and vital and his vulnerability laid bare a warmth usually witnessed only by those who know him well or meet him in person.
It also marked a change from previous monarchs who kept even the gravest illness hidden. The Queen notably kept all information about her health private even as the impact of illness at the end of her life was undeniable.
Born to serve
Charles was three when his grandfather George VI, the last British King, died in his bed in 1952 after a battle with lung cancer and his mother became Queen Elizabeth II, aged just 25.
Charles and sister Anne, then just one year old, were actually present at Sandringham House, staying with their grandparents, on the night it happened, Robert Hardman points out in his biography Charles III.
Their parents had recently left on a Commonwealth tour that would have included Australia. They heard the news while on safari in Kenya and immediately flew home.
Charles was told of his grandfather's death by his grandmother, the Queen Mother, who became a powerful maternal figure throughout his childhood.
Of course it was a memory that stayed with him: The day he became heir to the throne.
In the end it proved a very long apprenticeship and as the oldest heir to ascend the throne King Charles's reign will be necessarily short. But those who have dismissed it as a seat-warming role, bridging the reigns of his mother and his son Prince William, underestimate Charles's passion, believes Dame Martina Milburn, the former CEO of the Prince's Trust [now the King's Trust], a global network of charities that supports young people and communities.
"He retains a lot of fire in his belly…a need to leave the world a better place than he found it," she says.
Dame Martina says she sat beside the King as he works for the charity in prisons, with the homeless and children from challenging backgrounds. Many are cynical before meeting him.
"Then they have the most extraordinary conversation with him," she says. "It is an incredible gift that he has. He listens and then what he does, and he still does it, is to look for the gaps where he can use his convening power to help."
The prism of marriage
For four decades the overriding narrative has been to see King Charles III through the prism of his two marriages. The first, to Lady Diana Spencer, characterised as broken and tragic. The second to Camilla Parker-Bowles, a battle-weary tale of true love.
The plot, with varying levels of accuracy, is trotted out so regularly in media commentaries, TV documentaries and dramas including Netflix's fictional series The Crown, that it's hard to believe it was 20 years ago on February 5, 2005, that then-Prince of Wales became engaged to his longtime companion Mrs Parker Bowles.
Charles was 56, Camilla 57, both divorced. They had been living together for some years and had known each other for more than 30.
For Charles the prospect of fulfilling his destiny without the woman he loved by his side was "non-negotiable", according to royal commentator Richard Fitzwilliams.
He was determined his fate would be different from his great uncle King Edward VIII, who was forced to choose between the crown and Mrs Wallis Simpson. He infamously chose the latter and the domino effect from his abdication takes us to the coronation of King Charles III on May 6, 2023 with Queen Camilla crowned by his side.
Back in 2005 newspaper responses to the Charles and Camilla engagement were mixed. "What would Diana say?" splashed Britain's Daily Express in a predictable piece of tabloid click bait.
The issue of what form the wedding would take — a civil ceremony — and Camilla's title when Charles became King — Princess Consort, was the compromise at the time — consumed the media in the build-up to the big day. That the future head of the Church of England was to be man on his second marriage caused a ripple of dismay. But in 2002 the Anglican church had repealed its ban on divorced people remarrying.
Representing contemporary thinking within an archaic institution has always been part of Charles's story. He has — he believes necessarily — kept a foot in both camps by retaining tradition while embracing the new. A more comprehensive reset may have to wait for the next Windsor — Prince William.
The wedding was originally set for April 8 and then postponed for 24 hours to allow the prince to represent his mother the Queen at the funeral of Pope John Paul II who had died the week before. Duty claimed precedence even at the final hurdle.
The modest wedding at Windsor Guildhall, followed by a service of prayer and dedication at St George's Chapel and a reception hosted by the Queen, couldn't have been more different from the froth and fantasy of Charles and Di's 1981 nuptials at St Paul's Cathedral watched by 750 million around the world. Yet it was surely a turning point.
Charles's sons attended, though Harry later wrote in his memoir Spare that while he and William endorsed their father's relationship with Camilla, it wasn't the result they wanted. According to Harry, the brothers had pleaded with their father not to marry Camilla. They believed it would "incite the press" and stir up more stories about their mother.
But Charles didn't falter and when the Queen gave her blessing, Camilla was at last a bona fide member of the royal family. In deference to Diana, she didn't take the Princess of Wales title and instead was given the more diplomatic HRH The Duchess of Cornwall. It was Elizabeth who later announced her "sincere wish" that Camilla be known as Queen Consort when Charles became king.
Unlocking the gilded cage
In many ways Charles's life has been all about compromise, but while he has had moments of railing against the gilded royal cage, his skill has been pursuing what he believes in without upturning the apple cart.
Julian Payne is now global chairman of crisis and reputation at Edelman public relations agency and was communications secretary to the then Prince of Wales and Duchess Cornwall from 2016 to 2021. Part of his work was to help improve Camilla's image. By the time he joined the royal household though he says the mood was already turning.
"We live in a world now where people understand that humans are fallible," he says."I think people are much more understanding of how she came to be in this role."
In October 2024 Queen Camilla's approval rating in a British YouGov poll sat at 49 per cent. An improvement on the 1997 BBC poll conducted in the aftermath of the car crash that killed Diana, Princess of Wales,which found two-thirds of Brits did not support Charles becoming king if he chose to marry Camilla.
The Sun newspaper's veteran royal photographer Arthur Edwards says the Camilla effect on Charles was obvious from the get-go: "When Charles married Camilla, from that day on he lightened up, no longer stressed about things."
Payne agrees: "I think she's given him the assurance that it's okay to allow a degree of informality into the edges of what you do. You can have a joke. You can dance with me at an Elvis tea dance. It won't make a mockery of the royal institution."
Another key advisor is Sir Clive Alderton, the King's principal private secretary, now considered the most powerful strategist in the royal household.
"The Queen is the greatest consigliere that the King has but Sir Clive is also a very wise head that the King can talk to," explains Payne of the former diplomat who has worked for Charles and Camilla since 2006 and is also a member of the Privy Council.
"He knows how the King thinks and he is a facilitator in the King's vision. He is ... the person who has the job of not just keeping the operations running."
He also has the unenviable task of delivering bad news when things don't go to plan.
His famous temper
When two minor meltdowns over leaky fountain pens in the aftermath of his mother's death were caught on camera, the King's seeming petulance went viral.
It not the first occasion when the royal has let his emotions show.
In his five decades photographing royals, Arthur Edwards says he's faced the King's ire only a couple of times.
One occasion was in the early 80s just after the King had purchased Highgrove, a private hideaway in the Gloucestershire countryside. In true tabloid style Edwards was dispatched by his editor to catch a shot of the heir off-duty.
"I discovered there was a public footpath running across the bottom of his land and I'm walking along this footpath, camera over my shoulder when Prince Charles comes up on his horse.
"What are you doing on my land?" the prince said.
"It's not your land, I'm on a public footpath," Edwards replied cheekily.
The prince was not happy. "It's for walking on, not for taking pictures," he said and galloped off at speed.
But things didn't end there.
The following week at another royal engagement a member of royal security approached Edwards.
"He said 'What happened there? We were sitting in the kitchen drinking coffee when the prince came in, banged on the table, the cups went flying and he said, 'you're supposed to be guarding me!'"
Now 84, Edwards is still working. Over time he and the King have developed a personal bond.
"I started off thinking I didn't care what happened it was all about getting the shot. I wouldn't dream of doing that now,. I respect him too much" says Edwards. "Not only have I changed in my attitude to him, I've changed the attitude of the paper to him."
A royal lobbyist
Mark Leishman worked with Charles as a private secretary for 14 years, from 2003. He believes that as Prince of Wales, Charles created a new type of heir.
"There had been 21 Princes of Wales, and he was the first who really created a role for the heir to the throne," Leishman believes. "He is incredibly switched on, a sharp intellect but with a very strong eye on the practical."
He could have gone back to one of his first loves, farming, notes Leishman, but as heir realised he could make an impact in other ways.
Leishman cites the King's Dumfries House project that "wasn't just to save a beautiful Georgian House and its unprecedented collection of Chippendale furniture but to make a tangible impact on the local community." Dumfries House is now part of the King's Foundation and used to train young people in traditional skills and crafts, hospitality and the natural environment.
It's also open to the public and a source of pride in what had been a very depressed part of Scotland.
Charles launched his second Australian charity, King's Foundation Australia during his October 2024 visit, with its first project inspired by the Dumfries success.
But not everyone has praised Charles's projects. He has been regularly rebuked for using his position to "meddle" in political arenas.
The 2004 and 2005 "black spider memos" — so called because of the King's spidery handwriting — were the most high-profile example.
Their contents showed Charles had regularly petitioned British government ministers, and even the prime minister, on matters including the Iraq war, complementary medicine, the treatment of farmers by supermarkets, genetically modified crops, architecture, climate change and even the illegal fishing of the Patagonian tooth-fish.
An unelected royal attempting to influence the work of government and implement his own views caused a furore.
It feels less shocking in retrospect, especially when considering the raft of speeches in which he shared his views including his opening address as King calling for climate change action at COP28.
British environmentalist Dr Tony Juniper first met King Charles in 1990. Back then Prince Charles was developing his interest in environmental issues, eager to play a part.
"He has a legitimate voice, in my opinion, on subjects that affect the whole world," Juniper says. "It's not been a self-serving voice. He doesn't seek political office. What he's trying to do is to bring some perspectives that he believes will help [the globe].
Times have changed. We can't ignore the things this man stands for and that's not necessarily a bad thing.
"I never quite understood all the hysteria around it," says Dame Martina Millburn, chief executive of The Prince's Trust UK from 2004 to 2017 and group executive until 2022. She believes the causes the King selects — the environment, young people, unemployment, farming, interfaith harmony, business in the community — are worthy and critics are quickly silenced.
"I always thought, well, when he gets to be King he's still going to be the same person. They are all things that do need addressing in any thriving, decent society. I think people have calmed down about it," she says.
Juniper says that what you see is what you get with the King.
"The version of him that people see in public and the version of him that I met in private, they're pretty similar in that sense of passion and engagement with issues that are really big and really complicated," he says. "He's one of the most knowledgeable people on these things that I've ever come across."
Much of the King's manifesto was laid out in a 2010 book he wrote with Juniper and Ian Skelly. It makes the case that "if we continue to destroy nature, we destroy ourselves in the end," says Juniper. "He continues to plug away on this, even in his new role as King. He's 76 now and he's as committed to all of this as he was when he was 46."
Eccentric but funny
Ask those who work for him, what the King is like in person and two characteristics come up again and again — "he's kind and he's very funny," says former communications secretary Julian Payne. "He's always quick to bring a bit of levity to the situation."
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Over the years tales about eccentric behaviours have been attributed to the King from ironing his shoelaces, to travelling with two Scottish landscape paintings and even with his own toilet seat — none have been proven nor commented on by the palace. One thing that's not in contention is that the King, who is very healthy eater, doesn't have lunch … well until recently it seems.
A newspaper reported that under doctors' orders, the King was told he must eat more while undergoing cancer treatment and consequently has conceded to sitting down to a plate of half an avocado or some fruit for lunch.
"I don't know about the avocado, but it's true he's never eaten lunch," says Payne. "It's one of the first things you learn when you work there — put a nut bar in your bag because you will not stop."
"So there is this fairly set piece: breakfast, no lunch, tea, two bottles of water straight down as soon as you're finished for the day, a slice of cake, and on you go," Payne says.
Uncomfortable scrutiny
As Prince of Wales, Charles regularly faced criticism. As King, scrutiny hasn't subsided.
In November a media investigation unpicked the two property estates owned by the King and Prince William — the duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall.
In a deep dive, the journalists revealed the duchies make millions of pounds each year as commercial landlords with customers including the British Army, British Navy, National Health Service, charities and state schools.
While the information wasn't new, the sums involved were. The concept of a royal fiefdom owning and profiting from large tracts of British land highlighted the tension at the heart of the institution.
As Brits face a cost-of-living crisis, increasingly the most pertinent question asked is whether the monarchy is not only value for money but makes sense in modern Britain and the Commonwealth.
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, a journalist, author and columnist for UK's i newspaper, believes support for the monarchy is in decline in Britain and facing crisis in the Commonwealth. Important investigations like this one, she says strengthen a movement towards a potential republic not just in the realms — including Australia — but in the UK.
"I think this system and all it stands for in the post-colonial world is simply not acceptable," Alibhai-Brown argues.
"That was the shock and people are angry."
The thorny matter of what to do with his brother Prince Andrew, the most unpopular member of the Royal family according to the YouGov poll, and how to heal the rift with his son Harry continue to impinge on the things the King would prefer the media discussed.
Shaping a legacy
King Charles learned from his mother that an effective monarch must be seen to be believed and in 2025 the royal to-do list is long: a full schedule of engagements, continued cancer treatment and overseas tours.
Since becoming king the numbers of people who turn out to meet and greet him has increased and was echoed in Australia when thousands flocked to Sydney Opera House to see Charles and Camilla.
But not everyone supports King Charles's monarchy.
A YouGov survey published in August last year showed 43 per cent of 18-to-24 year-old Brits favour a democratically elected head of state with just 35 per cent supporting the monarchy.
Journalist Yasmin Alibhai Brown says Generation Z "understands that you cannot be a democracy if by definition you have a family sitting on top of your pyramid where there is inherited power and privilege just by birth".
Nevertheless, she concedes established support for the monarchy means change is unlikely to happen in hers or the King's lifetime.
Prince William has already flagged he will do things differently when the time comes. "I'm trying to do it for my generation…I'm doing it with maybe a smaller r in the royal," he said last year.
The issue for King Charles isn't just domestic. The Commonwealth, a voluntary association of 56 nations with King Charles now its head, is seen as the late Queen's legacy. But it is political a hot potato.
Charles is sovereign of 14 Commonwealth countries, including Australia, with the transition to a republic an ongoing debate for some as is reparations for past colonial atrocities.
Closer to home is the matter of Scottish devolution. The royal family has always loved Scotland and there was a poignancy when the Queen ended her days at Balmoral, the place she felt most free.
Can King Charles become a unifying figure as he retains his own deep connection to Scotland?
"The Scots are famous for being direct," says Charles's former private secretary and Scotsman Mark Leishman. "Much more often than not they understand that he's genuine," he says. "That goes a long way."
It feels too early to talk about the King's legacy, but will history be on the side of King Charles III?
"History will probably be kinder to him than his own generation has been," believes Dame Milburn, the former CEO of the Prince's Trust, now King's Trust.
"His legacy will be all the work he's done, how he has championed the environment and supported more than a million young people through things like the King's Trust."
Julian Payne feels that "we will look back and say, there are different types of impact that the monarch can make. In the case of the late Queen it was 70 years of duty in service."
Charles's legacy will be slightly different, "as somebody who played back to the world some of the early warning alarms around what was happening to our planet long before people recognised it".
Charles was nine when he became Prince of Wales and 20 when he was invested in an elaborate ceremony at Caernarvon Castle. "For me, by far the most moving and meaningful moment came when I put my hands between Mummy's and swore to be her liege man of life and limb …such magnificent medieval, appropriate words," he said in an interview afterwards.
So much has changed in the world since his mother came to the throne and although in many ways King Charles is a very modern monarch, that anchoring in history is the security blanket many associate with monarchy. The challenge ahead will be to bring together the past and the future and make the institution of monarchy relevant to the next generation.
Credits
Words: Juliet Rieden
Editing and production: Catherine Taylor
Photographs: Getty Images, Reuters, AP
