Endgame, p.7
Endgame, page 7
But even in such a pleasant setting, with an audience present solely to commemorate the late Queen and honor their new sovereign, Charles couldn’t contain his frustration and legendary irascibility. While signing the castle’s visitor book, he suddenly lost his cool, throwing what can only be called a petulant temper tantrum. His target: a leaky fountain pen.
Caught on video, it was an amusing but revealing scene. Sitting at an antique wooden desk dressed up with a vase of lilies and a gold, royal accoutrement, Charles, already cranky from writing in the wrong date, now faced the calamity of a malfunctioning pen. Noticing the leaking ink, he blurted out, “Oh God, I hate this pen!” After he stood up and brusquely handed it to his Queen, who was equally irked (“Oh look, it’s going everywhere!”), the new King grumpily wiped his fingers. He was almost to the point of stamping his feet when he said through gritted teeth, “I can’t bear this bloody thing . . . every stinking time!” Shoving his inky handkerchief into his pocket, Charles left the room in a grumble while Camilla calmly sat down and signed the book. She did what most of us would have done in this situation—a simple solution, really: she used another pen.
Now, it’s hard to blame him for his crankiness—tradition and duty required a grieving seventy-four-year-old man to tour the United Kingdom and work through an extensive list of “sadmin” just days after his mother’s final hours and the traditional obsequies. And who among us hasn’t cursed something for not working exactly how we want it to, reverting to peevish, childlike behavior, regardless of our age? The difference, however, is that this particular son who couldn’t calmly handle a leaky pen also happens to be King Charles III, the new monarch of Great Britain, the next representative of a bloodline dynasty, and, for many, a symbol of British stability and fortitude. He is the head of state and the Commonwealth, commander-in-chief of the British Armed Forces, and the presiding supreme governor of the Church of England. Some composure is required and expected, especially so when your predecessor was celebrated as the living embodiment of grace under pressure.
A faulty pen is hardly a tragedy. With the world’s eyes on him and question marks about his moral character and fitness to serve littering his first days on the throne, it’s fair to say the new monarch should have known better. This little “episode” immediately went viral, and the next day nicknames like “Grumpy King” emerged, and news coverage naturally zeroed in on it. “I think in that moment everyone rushed to compare him to his calm mother,” said a former Charles aide, “but they forgot that he’s also Prince Philip’s son, too . . . And that moment was very Prince Philip.” Added a close source, “The King can be great fun to be around, but he’s also a terrible grouch at times. I don’t think he knows how to hide it.”
This crotchety flare-up might not have piqued and amused the media and public to such an extent had it not been for another sour display of impatience just a few days prior. A mere forty-eight hours after the Queen’s death, while signing the historic proclamation of his new position as King in Henry VIII’s St. James’s Palace, Charles furiously gestured to his private secretary Clive Alderton to remove a tray of pens (bloody stationery again!) and inkpot (an old gift from his sons), baring his teeth in a grimace as he nearly pushed the lot off the desk. And, naturally, with little concern for optics, he did this with the world watching and waiting to see the new King in action. Online clips and headlines quickly followed. Despite the occasion’s solemnity, there was the new monarch publicly making a fuss over a triviality, bungling his special moment by flashing his temper during the official proceedings for his own ascension while signing his very first document as King.
Hadn’t the man had decades of training for this exact situation? Are the cosseted prince-cum-king’s worst instincts undeterred even by the gravity of history? Is he actually up for the job? These are worthwhile questions, and because of his testy display, they floated to the surface for many even during the deluge of royal pomp that was Charles’s first official act as King. The customary royal grandstanding designed to captivate and distort couldn’t efface the lasting image of a noticeably prickly Charles. The visual takeaway from his proclamation was an irritable new king passively berating an aide for overcrowding his desk. So, by the time the leaky pen set him off a couple of days later, cantankerous King Charles and his quick temper were ripe for criticism, cued up for memes and punch lines. The Queen hadn’t been gone even a week, and already the fragile mystique was cracking.
This was the inauguration of a new sovereign who spent decades waiting for the top job, but it immediately appeared as if Charles was ill-prepared for—and uncomfortable in—his new role as King and that the Palace failed to properly onboard their new CEO. It was a deflating, inauspicious start—insignificant on the surface and at the time, but consequential for the Firm’s long-term branding and optics campaign for the monarchy’s next iteration. And it was telling. It demonstrated that Charles and the institution still hadn’t grasped the power of social media and the internet, a fact that, frankly, seems blindly incompetent at best. Think of it this way: Imagine if Apple had decades to roll out a revolutionary new successor to the iPhone, one they’d spent a great deal of time and money hyping up as an emblem of the next generation of communication, and then clumsily unveiled, with great fanfare, a throwback, temperamental flip phone riddled with software bugs. And doing so while somehow unaware that they were under a microscope and at the mercy of trends, unceasing opinion, and the new world order’s outrage machine.
Royalist press brushed off the pen blunders as nothing but harmless gaffes, à la those of President Joe Biden, with one journalist at The Times calling them just “a bit of grouchiness,” but it was more than that. “Those two moments made me realize we might have our work cut out for us,” a Buckingham Palace staffer told me. “People were willing to overlook it because he was a son in mourning, but afterward there were conversations about how those situations can be best avoided in the future.” Added another source, “It irritates him when he hears from those on his staff making comments like ‘Well, the Queen wouldn’t have done it that way’ or ‘The Queen would have done it like this . . .’” It didn’t help that so early in his reign sources close to the King claimed he was already a little frustrated by the burden of daily red box paper shuffling and rubber-stamping—the executive work that Queen Elizabeth II relished and considered an anchoring component of her position. Right out of the gate, Charles was a little overwhelmed by it all, easily irked, and perhaps even a bit wistful for his former job as heir apparent and the freedom it provided. Although he had official duties as Prince of Wales, he was less restricted to express frustration or passion, and in some cases, he was free to crusade for issues like sustainability in the private sector and alternate medicines. As the new role transforms him, the job requiring quiet forbearance instead of vigorous debate (and resistance, in the case of the 2003 invasion of Iraq), the opinionated, activist prince must retreat behind the stately remove of the king’s throne. Adopt, adapt, and abide, just like his mother did.
This is the expectation of those in the establishment and the institution. But Charles’s shaky start proves that it is much easier to mold and coach a newly minted, young Queen than to administer and transfigure the longest-serving intern in the monarchy’s history. Just a month after the media had their fun with “Pengate” (eye roll), King Charles’s premiere hit another snag in late October, one that presaged a difficult autumn ahead. Before resigning, Prime Minister Liz Truss formally requested that Charles refrain from attending COP27, an annual international climate meeting that the United Nations has organized since 1994 and one he had enthusiastically attended several times in the past. Two years earlier he had delivered the summit’s opening address in Paris. The 2022 conference was held in the Egyptian coastal city of Sharm el-Sheikh during the first two weeks of November. Despite his lifelong campaign for a greener earth and his position as an outspoken, stalwart advocate for climate awareness—a cause and a passion that is now almost synonymous with Charles—the new King wasn’t allowed to go anywhere near it. And the new prime minister who followed, Rishi Sunak, quickly reminded Charles not to pack any bags for Egypt. He “left [Truss’s] request in place,” a No. 10 Downing Street spokesperson declared, adding that the climate summit was “not the right occasion” for the King to attend. Buckingham Palace aides told reporters at the time that he “unanimously agreed” with this request, but those close to Charles said that, behind closed doors, the King was frustrated. Because of his reluctance to completely steer clear of the conference, there was a tussle between Charles and the government, resulting in a compromise: government officials gave him the green light to host a November 4 pre-conference reception for many of the attendees at Buckingham Palace. The eco warrior was benched for the big game; the last-minute palace soiree was a chance for the King to hit the field for the warm-up—a way to signal his support from a safe and regal distance.
This flag up the pole from the gated palace was a far cry from Charles’s usual (and expected) ardent participation at these gatherings. Standing down on issues near to his heart runs against the grain of his personality and counters his hard-earned legacy as a prince who freely wielded his (leak-free) pen and spoke his mind. As his long-standing biographer, Catherine Mayer, says, “One of the ironies with Charles is, when he was young, he felt that the Palace was blocking him from doing what he wanted to do at every turn, and that everything that he’s done, he feels he achieved in spite of the Palace, not because of it.” But now, finally in the king’s throne, he must assume the Palace position, embrace the established, government-approved point of view, don the requisite mask. The unbending royal system ever at work.
It’s only fair to point out that this was also just a bit of bad luck for the new King, a chance turn of events that served as an early reality check. Mayer put it this way: “The very first thing that happens to [Charles as King] is that the whole ordeal around his attendance at COP27 becomes a political hot potato.” Possibly stretching the metaphor too thin, it was a hot potato that gave him a proper burn. It was at this point, a source added to me, that Charles begrudgingly accepted that “he can no longer campaign, only highlight.” Added another, “The glass-half-full take on that is he still has, and wants to utilize, the power to convene those who can campaign.”
Later in November, just weeks after the COP reception at the palace, another pointed tête-à-tête with Prime Minister Sunak tested this disgruntled acceptance. During closed-door conversations, Sunak and his team pressured the Palace to rethink Charles’s vision for a toned-down, cost-saving coronation, sternly advising them to go big and put on the full show. In keeping with Charles’s overhyped conception of a slimmed-down monarchy—a drum that Charles thundered on for years in preparation for his reign—and “keenly aware” of Britain’s distressing economic woes, the initial messaging out of the Palace in September 2022 was that Charles wanted a smaller, less grandiose coronation. Like his mother, who was also crowned during a time of great austerity and economic difficulties in 1953 (she even saved up her ration coupons to buy enough material for her wedding dress), Charles supposedly wanted to pay attention to the concerns of the nation. His wish, added the Telegraph, was a service that represented “good value.” Sources explained that while he certainly wanted the nation to experience the grandeur and tradition of it all, he wanted a celebration that was within reason and in proportion to the intractable realities that plagued the country. “The King and Queen Consort and their advisers are keenly following the debate to ensure they are striking the right balance between this moment of celebration and something that can be done against a very challenging economic backdrop,” added a source to the Daily Mail.
The country had emerged from the Covid crisis in a bit of a state. After public opinion and “the herd” in the Tory party pushed out Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his successor, Truss, barely had time to unpack her things at Downing Street before the same muttering flock forced her resignation, the government was floundering and in disarray. Twin crises strafed the economy: the Russian war on Ukraine, pandemic aftereffects, and a global supply chain crisis led to a full-on cost-of-living emergency, while a backlog of millions of unbuilt homes, among other issues, precipitated what some argued was a long-gestating housing problem. Workers in various sectors went on strike, including teachers and National Health Service (NHS) employees. And the rippling effects of Brexit continued to rankle a large section of the population. Britain had shunted off the tracks, which further diminished the nation’s standing in the world, and internal unrest fueled the country’s instability.
Initially, Charles and officials on the Coronation Committee, comprised of privy counsellors, astutely recognized that a scaled-back coronation during these dire times would signal to the public that the monarchical institution wasn’t completely out of touch and that the new King was also deeply concerned for the state of the nation. And let’s be frank, the King and his team also recognized that a cut-rate coronation was a timely branding and messaging opportunity for the Firm—the new sovereign will do things his way; this is the dawn of a new regal era. It was a chance to demonstrate that he would be a more modern, compassionate monarch whose words about slimming down weren’t just hot air. Leveraging crisis, in whatever way possible, and maximizing royal benchmarks is all in a day’s work for the Palace.
Prime Minister Sunak and the government approached the coronation from the opposite position. While Charles wanted to downsize, Sunak and Whitehall (the government) envisioned a full-fat celebratory weekend—the full monty of carriages, a big concert, and national celebration. The Firm saw the coronation as a chance to exude importance through prudence and sensitivity, but the government wanted to distract and redirect by way of extravagance and ballyhoo. It was a two-for-one deal: a good, old-fashioned royal performance would divert public attention from the crises at home—the pre-coronation media hype would dominate the news cycle for months—and stimulate an image-repair process for Britain on the global stage. A source said it was the Queen’s funeral that reminded Sunak and other ministers that a “proper” royal occasion draws an international audience like no other and puts a momentary gloss on reality. The government stance was to harness this moment—the country could use a bit of “Brand Britain” and the public some entertaining diversion. With the Wales children many years away from marriage and jubilees starting only at the twenty-five-year mark, they were also shrewdly aware that Charles’s coronation would be the last true royal spectacular for years. This, of course, the Palace agreed with.
Downing Street prevailed, and Charles ceded his vision for a leaner affair. In a later meeting, Sunak’s cabinet publicly confirmed that the country would proceed with a full-scale coronation. A cabinet spokesperson said, “Obviously, there will be a great deal of attention on the United Kingdom at that time. It will be a moment for us to show the best of Britain in many different aspects.” Immediately following that statement, Palace sources close to Charles backtracked on their earlier words and started to claim that the King rejected the idea of a cut-price coronation weekend. A spokesperson later told reporters in a briefing over Microsoft Teams that the coronation would be a “once in a lifetime” spectacle of glorious pomp and pageantry.
It was a humbling autumn for the new King as he discovered that, in some respects, his promotion occasionally felt like a demotion. He may wear the crown, but the system quickly disabused him of the notion that he could always have his way—the King could no longer act like a prince. The fall season was then capped off by an exceedingly cold and trying end to 2022. Charles’s long December was a direct result of the Harry & Meghan documentary series, a media juggernaut that commandeered international attention and dominated the news cycle for weeks. Netflix dropped a teaser for the first three episodes on December 1, and, sure enough, hyperbole and screeching immediately followed. The Daily Mail reported that “allies” of William and Kate referred to the trailer as a “declaration of war.” The Times claimed royal sources believed the Duke and Duchess of Sussex “deliberately torpedoed” the Waleses’ U.S. visit during that time, while the front page of the Daily Express dramatically asked, “Harry, Do You Really Hate Your Family So Much?” Charles was aware that some in other royal quarters were briefing their thoughts and feelings on the series, but within his own court, he requested a wall of silence. “The King was genuinely sad about the entire situation,” a family source said three months later. “He was angry but didn’t want people to speak ill of his son in front of him, either. It was a brief moment where he paused and realized how bad things had become.”
The King’s sympathy soon disappeared, however, when it became clear the Harry and Meghan hubbub would overshadow his work, including his participation in a worthwhile cause that received little coverage. Charles personally donated “substantial” funds to the Felix Project, a charity that redirects surplus food from farms, manufacturers, and supermarkets to food banks. A large chunk of their £1 million starting funding came from the monarch, a noble deed, but the Sussexes and Netflix were all the press could talk about.
While the papers and the circus of royal commentators were still condemning and salivating over the teaser clip, Netflix went ahead with a full-length trailer on December 5 before dropping the first trio of episodes three days later. Once again, the attention was diverted away from Charles, who was traveling to northeast Wales for an engagement his team thought would land him every front page. Set in the beautiful Welsh countryside, Wrexham had recently grabbed the world’s attention after actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney acquired the local football team, Wrexham AFC—the oldest football club in Wales and the third-oldest professional football club in the world. The motivation for buying the team didn’t exactly come from an undying love of the game. After purchasing the Red Dragons for $2.5 million, the two friends created a docuseries about the team, the town, and their first foray into club ownership. Welcome to Wrexham was a huge success, and as a result, the largely unknown town of Wrexham and its fifth-tier football team entered the zeitgeist.
