Queen Elizabeth II’s long life is over.
Now, Britain’s new monarch, King Charles III, faces two immediate challenges: first, to comfort and reassure a grieving nation even as he mourns the loss of his own mother, and second, to show he can abandon his former penchant for political interventions.
This second point bears special note. After all, the first responsibility of a British monarch is to serve as chief officer of that nation’s unwritten constitution — and not, that is to say, as a privileged voice for particular politics or social preferences.
As the Prince of Wales, Charles was increasingly willing to offer his views on matters of political import publicly. This has been most obvious for environmental issues. Charles has made it well known that he supports far more aggressive government action to reduce carbon emissions and promote organic farming. Charles has also met recent criticism for his accepting of literal suitcases full of millions of pounds in charitable cash donations from people including a Qatari royal linked to an al Qaeda syndicate in Syria and Osama bin Laden’s brothers. There is no suggestion of financial impropriety here but rather questions of judgment and probity.
Still, Charles and the royal family’s exigent problem is that his comfort with political intervention is incompatible with his new responsibility to stand aside from politics. Charles must be able to perform the symbolic and formal duties of his new role without even the perception of bias or favor. To do otherwise would be to undercut the very constitution of the British royalty.
We now wait to see whether Charles follows in the footsteps of his foolish 17th-century namesake, Charles II, or the grand example of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II.
