King Charles faces turmoil in 2023, and it hasn't even started yet. Photo / AP
King Charles faces turmoil in 2023, and it hasn't even started yet. Photo / AP
OPINION:
Who in their right mind would want to be King or Queen? Ruling can be a hurly burly, if not downright bloody business, as various Edwards, Henrys and Georges have learned over the centuries; a job that involves much more than occasionally popping across the Channel to take a pop at the French.
And it’s a lesson that 2022′s Hottest* Newest Sovereign, King Charles III is currently learning.
On December 17, His Majesty passed the 100-day mark of his reign, a milestone most of the world failed to notice because our eyes were glued to TV screens and the permanently disaffected evangelising of Harry and Meghan, Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
However, if this year has proven a rocky start to the third Carolean age, then 2023 is shaping up to be positively Matterhorn-esque.
The obvious place to start here is Montecito and the Sussexes. At a time of year when courtiers, I would like to imagine, are slyly knocking back Brandy Alexanders at their desks and working out what to get their Jack Russell for Christmas, the royal family has been busy surviving the latest softly lit barrage from California.
Over the space of six painfully long episodes, the Sussexes were back this month to remind the world just how rotten, to their mind, things are in the state of the SW1 postcode, painting not only the institution of the monarchy but also Harry’s family as ultimately quite ruthless.
The couple’s Netflix ‘documentary’ might have largely been a second helping of their clutch of Oprah complaints, the end result being a one-sided, hagiographic outing that bore about as much of a resemblance to cinema verité as an episode of Farmer Wants a Wife (maybe they should have called it Prince Wanted A Wife?) but it was still a fresh blow.
Harry is reportedly far from done with his truth-telling slash score-settling, depending on your perspective. The Sunday Times has reported that Harry’s forthcoming memoir Spare “includes claims about the monarchy that are more incendiary than those made in the Netflix series”. The Palace better not put away their flak jackets just yet.
In one episode Harry says, “In order for us to be able to move to the next chapter, you’ve got to finish the first chapter” but will they ever truly be able to move on?
If you have stomached watching the entirety of Harry & Meghan, the anger that he feels is palpable. Will that indignation, that seemingly deep-rooted sense of injustice, magically resolve itself once Spare has hit shelves? Exactly.
There is also the fact that the Sussexes’ money-making ventures have largely hinged, thus far, on their willingness to liberally dish the royal dirt, and it’s hard to see this changing.
All of this essentially translates to Charles taking even more fire from his son and daughter-in-law in the future, and yet he is largely hamstrung as to how to respond. If he publicly pushes back, it just gives oxygen to the PR fire, but if he says nothing, he neither challenges their accusations nor seems to care.
Added to which, there is Harry’s ongoing legal moves against London’s Metropolitan Police after they pulled the Sussexes’ security in 2020. In July the duke was granted the right to mount a High Court challenge against the Home Office over the decision made by Ravec (Executive Committee for the Protection of Royalty and Public Figures) to remove the family’s 24/7 bodyguards after they quit official duties and moved to North America.
(If you think Harry’s legal manoeuvrings end there, in October, Harry joined Sir Elton John and Elizabeth Hurley among other high-profile names in legal action against the Daily Mail’s parent company, alleging their privacy had been invaded and phones tapped.)
To wit, Charles should consider buying up Panadol in bulk given the possible headaches ahead on this front alone.
In December, the Palace let it be known that the couple would be invited to his coronation on Saturday, May 6. As with the late Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations in June, if the Duke and Duchess of Sussex do attend, their presence threatens to gobble up public and press focus and interest. After all, watching a septuagenarian get daubed with some oil and reciting an oath is hardly as juicy as watching the soap opera that would be Harry and Meghan back in the royal bosom post-Netflix.
Harry is seen showing Meghan the text from William. Photo / Netflix
But don’t think that the King’s problems are limited to the Sussexes.
Prince Andrew is going nowhere and that is clearly a lingering, festering problem for the royal family. In November it emerged that only days before Queen Elizabeth’s death in September, Charles had met with his younger brother in Scotland to, once and for all it would seem, get through to him that any chance of making a comeback was about as realistic as a Wham! reunion. (The Daily Mail reported that Andrew was left “bereft” and “tearful”, a testament to the Duke of York’s blockheadedness and ego.)
Still, does anyone really think that Andrew (a man who is 78 per cent hubris, 14 per cent Davidoff Cool Water aftershave and 8 per cent greasy black pudding sandwiches eaten forlornly on his own at midnight) is ever going to make peace with his sacking and finally accept his fate?
Next, never has the question of race and the royal house been more urgent than in 2022.
In March William and Kate, now the Prince and Princess of Wales, embarked on a Caribbean tour that was meant to be all waving schoolchildren and the curious pleasure of seeing photos of the couple in sunglasses. What did not seem to occur to anyone inside Kensington Palace was that this was the couple’s first tour post Black Lives Matter.
Instead of the predictable pro-Commonwealth PR campaign, the couple collided with simmering republican sentiment and demands for reparations for slavery. The images of Kate shaking hands with people of colour through a wire fence and the duo doing what looked like some colonial cosplay, surveying troops from the back of a Land Rover in Kingston, won’t be forgotten any time soon.
By the time they flew back to London, the damage was done. The royal duo came away looking woefully out-of-touch and disconnected and the royal family looked totally at sea when faced with the ghosts of colonialism and their own historical connections to the slave trade.
In late November, the Telegraph reported that Barbados, which became a republic last year, will pursue damages from Lloyds of London, Oxford University and the Royal Bank of Scotland over their historic ties to slavery, raising the stakes that the royal family may also face a reparations claim.
The Palace’s inept handling of the Caribbean fiasco only bolstered the Sussexes’ allegations of institutional racism, as did the storm that broke when charity chief executive Ngozi Fulani revealed that Lady Susan Hussey, one of Queen Elizabeth’s longtime ladies-in-waiting, had made racist comments to her at a Palace function. (In December, the two women met and Lady Susan apologised in person.)
King Charles and Lady Susan Hussey. Photo / Getty Images
During the Wales’ tour, Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness told the couple point blank that the nation intended to “fulfil our true ambitions and destiny” to become a republic and to detach itself from the British monarchy. Charles should probably prepare himself to have at least one less country to rule over in the near future.
It remains to see how many of the 14 countries that still have Charles as their head of state might yet succumb to the urge for independence.
These are all fires that could blow out of control at any moment, and Charles appears unable to put them out.
More broadly, he is yet to prove himself as King, as a unifying figure in an increasingly struggling Britain. Twice in his first months, protesters have thrown eggs at him out in public; a less-than-auspicious start.
When His Majesty makes his way down the aisle of Westminster Abbey in May he will be wearing the St Edward’s Crown, which was made for Charles II in 1662, with a jewel-encrusted topping that weighs in at 2.2kg. Poor Charles. By the time he is there, trying to stop it falling off while the world watches, chances are he will have figured out what a heavy, unwieldy business being King can be.
(*OK, he was the only new sovereign in 2022.)
Daniela Elser is a writer and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
