Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch

by Sally Bedell Smith

  His outspokenness has periodically put him at odds with his family, especially his father. After Charles first condemned genetically modified crops in 1998 for jeopardizing the delicate balance of nature, Philip vehemently disagreed on the grounds that such crops are necessary to feed the world. In 2000, when Charles intensified his attack on bioengineered agriculture, both his father and Princess Anne publicly took issue with his position, which his sister witheringly called a “huge oversimplification.” Philip pointed out in an interview with The Times that “we have been genetically modifying animals and plants ever since people started selective breeding.”

  Tony Blair, whose government supported genetically modified farming, had already complained a year earlier to the Queen about Charles’s public pronouncements and had fumed to Alastair Campbell that the prince was using “the same argument that says if God intended us to fly, he would have given us wings.” The prime minister expressed his concern privately to Charles through cabinet minister Peter Mandelson that his remarks “were becoming unhelpful” because they were “anti-scientific and irresponsible in the light of food shortages in the developing world.”

  The Queen has typically remained above the fray and avoided confrontation with the heir apparent. “She has allowed Prince Charles to work at his interests, his aims and his ambitions,” said Malcolm Ross. At the same time, she has found many of his ideas baffling, and has expressed concern to her advisers when he has become embroiled in public controversies. “It is not a cozy relationship, and never has been,” said Margaret Rhodes. “They love each other, but the family is not set up to be cozy.” In recent years tensions between the Queen and her heir have eased, and they regularly meet for a private dinner.

  She has gradually called on Charles to share more of her duties, presiding over investitures, receiving dignitaries in audiences, and reading sensitive documents in his own dark green boxes. Palace courtiers anticipate that if Philip dies before the Queen, additional responsibility will shift to Charles, who will become more of a chief executive officer to his mother’s chairman of the board. “That will be a defining moment,” said one of her former advisers. “Prince Philip is such a part of her life and her role.”

  Advisers who work with mother and son see contrasts in their approach to the duties a sovereign is expected to carry out. The Queen has investitures down to a science, allocating forty seconds to each of the nearly one hundred encounters during the hour-long ceremony in the Buckingham Palace ballroom. After a quick prompt from her equerry, she leans forward to present the insignia, smoothing the sash or ribbon, as Cecil Beaton once said, like a “hospital nurse or nanny.” Keeping eye contact, she smiles brightly, steps back, asks a question, and listens intently until her inner alarm sounds and she extends her hand to say goodbye. When Charles does the honors, he tends to linger and chat more, which lengthens the proceedings by as much as fifteen minutes.

  Elizabeth II is more efficient, systematic, and disciplined than her son in other ways as well. She never falls behind on her official boxes, while he often does when he gets caught up in what one of his aides described as “furiously writing letters, rewriting speeches, and reading documents”—behavior the Queen would consider self-indulgent. (In 2009–10 he personally wrote 1,869 letters.) He avoids reading newspapers, a hangover from the Diana era, preferring to get daily reports from his aides and a digest of current events from The Week magazine, which the Queen worries will limit his knowledge, not to mention the perspective on the media she has developed through long experience.

  At various times Charles has ruminated to friends and colleagues about the possibility of his mother’s abdication, once drawing a sharp rebuke from her in November 1998 when his press secretary, Mark Bolland, leaked to the media that the Prince of Wales would be “privately delighted” if his mother were to step down from the throne. When confronted by the Queen, Charles apologized and said the story was untrue. The idea of abdicating is anathema to Elizabeth II, who takes seriously her oath and anointment with holy oil during her coronation. When George Carey went to her in 2003 to say he was ready to retire as Archbishop of Canterbury, she sighed and said, “Oh, that’s something I can’t do. I am going to carry on to the end.”

  The only caveat, as the Queen said to her cousin Margaret Rhodes, would be “unless I get Alzheimer’s or have a stroke.” “But even then she wouldn’t retire,” said Rhodes. If the Queen were incapacitated, Prince Charles would become Regent, acting on her behalf under the terms of the Regency Act of 1937.

  In the royal tradition, the Queen, her husband, and her eldest son have state funeral plans with scripts they have approved. The name of Philip’s “Forth Bridge” plan derives from the bridge over the Firth of Forth in Scotland, Charles’s “Menai Bridge” is named after the span that connects the mainland of Wales and the island of Anglesey, and the Queen’s “London Bridge” is self-explanatory. All three plans are overseen by the Lord Chamberlain’s office and have similar elements stretching over nine days from death to burial, with processions, lying in state, and services mapped out. “The principals don’t tweak the plans,” said Malcolm Ross, who was involved in the preparations. “We report back to reassure them. The last thing they want to do is crawl all over their own funerals. They are more involved with the basics.” At least once a year, senior Palace aides talk through the arrangements and do tabletop exercises.

  Although Edward VII, George V, and George VI had funerals at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, after lying in state at Westminster Hall, the Queen has planned her service for Westminster Abbey, where George II was the last monarch to have a funeral, in 1760. Both St. George’s Chapel and the Abbey are “Royal Peculiars,” which means they belong to the sovereign rather than a diocese. But according to a former senior Palace official, the Queen regards the Abbey “as the central church to her and to the Church of England.” Burial will be at Windsor, where her parents and her sister are interred at St. George’s Chapel.

  When asked by NBC’s Brian Williams in a television interview in November 2010 what would happen when his mother died, Charles gave a tortured reply. “It is better not to have to think too much about it,” he said. “Except, you know, obviously, if it comes, then you have to deal with it. I think about it a bit, but it’s much better not. This is something that, you know, if it comes to it, and regrettably it comes as the result of the death of your parent which is, you know, not so nice, to say the least.”

  In the same conversation, the Prince of Wales addressed for the first time the tricky matter of his wife’s status on his accession. When he married Camilla Parker Bowles, in 2005, Palace advisers finessed the question of her eventually becoming queen by saying she wished only to be “Princess Consort”—a title devised to placate those who still sympathized with Diana. As Camilla has conscientiously carried out her duties by his side, formerly hostile public sentiment about her years as Charles’s mistress has softened. Privately, he has indicated that he wants her to be his Queen Consort, just as his grandmother was for George VI. Anything less would constitute an unacceptable “morganatic” marriage of two unequal partners. “The settled rule and strong custom says the wife shall take the style and precedence of the husband,” said royal historian Kenneth Rose. “In settled law there is nothing to prevent Queen Camilla.” When NBC’s Williams queried Charles directly if Camilla would be queen, he replied, “We’ll see, won’t we? That could be.”

  Unless he predeceases his mother, Charles will be the next head of state. The prospect of a King Charles III (or, if he were to choose one of his other names with happier associations, King George VII) raises several issues that could open the door to republican reformers. In the early years of the twenty-first century, both Labour and Conservative governments have raised the possibility of changing the 1701 Act of Settlement as well as the law of primogeniture, two vital underpinnings of the hereditary monarchy.

  The eighteenth-century act was devised to guarantee a Protestant monarch by barrin
g anyone in the line of succession from either being Roman Catholic or marrying a Roman Catholic. Advocates of altering the law contend that it is discriminatory, arguing that there is nothing to bar someone in the succession from marrying a Jew or Hindu or Muslim. As a practical matter, the act has worked smoothly for centuries and hasn’t prevented Catholics from marrying members of the royal family. In recent times, the Queen’s cousin, Prince Michael of Kent, removed himself from his distant position in the succession to marry a Catholic, while Peter Phillips’s wife converted to the Anglican faith so he could keep his eleventh place.

  Overturning the Act of Settlement outright could challenge the legitimacy of the Queen and all other descendants of the House of Hanover, whose right to the throne was created by the law. (Several Stuart descendants live in Germany and could conceivably lay claim to the throne.) Even altering the Catholic exclusion would call into question the requirement that the sovereign be Anglican, since a central tenet of Catholicism is a pledge to raise children as Roman Catholics. A further complication is the prerequisite under the 1931 Statute of Westminster that any change in the act must have the consent not only of the British Parliament but of the other fifteen realms for which the Queen is head of state.

  Primogeniture, which is based on common law dating to the Middle Ages, requires the firstborn son to inherit a family’s hereditary title and estate. In the monarchy, it means that males take precedence over females in the succession regardless of their position in the birth order. Among the Queen’s children, Charles became heir to the throne, followed by Andrew and Edward, with second-born Anne in fourth position. All three siblings were superseded by Charles’s two sons.

  The marriage of Prince William gave new impetus to proposals that the crown go to the eldest child of the sovereign, whether a boy or a girl. Despite concerns that pulling out one strand from the laws of the monarchy could provoke additional constitutional questions, in October 2011 at the biennial conference of Commonwealth leaders in Perth, Australia, David Cameron secured the agreement of the Queen’s fifteen other realms to join Britain and introduce legislation to change the law of primogeniture to one of “gender equality.” Cameron also proposed amending the Act of Settlement to permit members of the royal family to marry Roman Catholics.

  The Queen subtly signaled her approval in her speech opening the Commonwealth summit, urging the fifty-four nations to “find ways to allow girls and women to play their full part.” However, she has taken no official position on changing the laws, largely because the hurdles are high and the constitutional questions complex. “This is a matter for the government,” said a senior Palace official. “The monarchy is an institution which is great and solid and long-lasting. The framework has endured for centuries. It is not personal to her. She is a female monarch ironically as have been other great monarchs.”

  Charles has said little publicly about his vision of kingship in the twenty-first century, but he has dropped some tantalizing hints. In 1994 he declared that rather than being the Defender of the Faith, he wished to be the “defender of faith,” in itself a difficult notion for a king pledged to uphold the Church of England as the legally established religion. Sixteen years later, he went further and said he was “absolutely determined to be the defender of nature.… That’s what the rest of my life is going to be concerned with.”

  He has avoided discussing what if anything he would do to change the trappings of the monarchy, although he has indicated he would like to see the number of working members of the royal family decreased. There have been suggestions as well that he could keep Clarence House as his residence and use Buckingham Palace as his office, setting a more low-key tone. Courtiers have said he could cut back some of the ceremonial parts of the coronation while keeping its historical and religious elements intact, and that he might have a second service that would embrace other cultures and faiths. As for his closely tended charities, “obviously it would be nice if some things were taken on by my sons,” he said in 2008, “but I don’t know. It all depends on their interests.”

  When Charles turned sixty in 2008, his biographer Jonathan Dimbleby wrote that he wanted to be an “active” king, ready “to speak out on matters of national and international importance in ways that at the moment would be unthinkable.” It would be a “waste of his experience and accumulated wisdom,” Dimbleby added, “for it to be straitjacketed within the confines of an annual Christmas message or his weekly audience with the prime minister.” When commentators in the press raised alarms, Clarence House officials hastened to say that Charles “fully accepts that as king, his power to discuss issues close to his heart would be severely curtailed.”

  Yet Charles has signaled that he intends to do things “in a different way than my predecessors … because the situation has changed.” He has said he would use his “convening power”—the allure of a royal invitation to gather important people to discuss big issues and mobilize to solve problems. In an interview with Vanity Fair’s Bob Colacello in the autumn of 2010, he cited his education at Gordonstoun and Cambridge, saying, “Of course they really shouldn’t—should they—have sent me to a school which was precepted on taking the initiative. Or to a university where you inevitably look into a lot of issues. So it’s their bad luck, but that’s the way I intend to continue.”

  Charles is difficult to pigeonhole politically. Tony Blair wrote that he considered him a “curious mixture of the traditional and the radical (at one level he was quite New Labour, at another definitely not) and of the princely and insecure.” He is certainly conservative in his old-fashioned dress and manners, his advocacy of traditional education in the arts and humanities, his reverence for classical architecture and the seventeenth-century Book of Common Prayer. But his forays into mysticism and his jeremiads against scientific progress, industrial development, and globalization give him an eccentric air.

  “One of the main purposes of the monarchy is to unite the country and not divide it,” said Kenneth Rose. When the Queen took the throne at age twenty-five, she was a blank slate, which gave her a great advantage in maintaining the neutrality necessary to preserve that unity. It was a gentler time, and she could develop her leadership style quietly. But it has also taken vigilance and discipline for her to keep her views private over so many decades.

  Charles has the disadvantage of a substantial public record of strong and sometimes contentious opinions, not to mention the private correspondence with government ministers protected by exemptions in the Freedom of Information Act that could come back to haunt him if any of it is made public. One letter that did leak was written in 1997 to a group of friends after a visit to Hong Kong and described the country’s leaders as “appalling old waxworks.”

  Even if as sovereign he continues to advocate his views in what he considers a less provocative way, he still runs the risk of alienating some portion of the population. If that number approaches half or more, he could chip away at the consent necessary for the survival of the monarchy. He could come into conflict with government policy as well, politicizing his position and creating a constitutional crisis.

  Many of his supporters hope that by the time he takes the throne—likely in his seventies if not late sixties, which would make him the oldest new monarch, superseding King William IV, who was sixty-four when he succeeded his older brother George IV in 1830—he will have had his fill of controversies and made his points, and will be ready to embrace his constitutional obligations. “With a bit of luck, he will be old enough not to be tempted down less wise paths,” said Robert Salisbury.

  Veteran courtiers expect that the very act of becoming king will be transformative for Charles, instilling the solemn recognition that he can no longer act as an individual but as an institution representing the nation. “Life changes overnight when you inherit the throne,” said David Airlie. A diplomat who once worked with Charles on a government speech found that he was “not spoiled or stubborn” when it came to taking official advice. “When you tell
him what he can’t do, he doesn’t like it but he will listen,” said the diplomat. “If you take out sections saying you can’t say this, it is not government policy, he gets cross but he goes along with it.” As Prince of Wales he has had the luxury of declining to shake the hand of a Chinese leader because of his poor human rights record, as he did when he refused to attend the banquet President Jiang Zemin had for the Queen during his state visit in October 1999. But as king “he will have to shake the bloody hand of murderous leaders if it is in Britain’s national interest,” said historian Andrew Roberts.

  That task would include some heads of Commonwealth governments. Charles will not automatically inherit the job of head of the Commonwealth when the Queen dies. He must be voted in by the fifty-four-nation membership, which is by no means certain. A survey published in March 2010 by the Royal Commonwealth Society reported that fewer than 20 percent of those polled thought Charles should be the next head, and that many favored rotating the position among member states. “Whilst the vast majority of people greatly admire the role Queen Elizabeth II has played in uniting and guiding the Commonwealth,” wrote the authors of the study, “there is a significant debate about whether this role should be passed on to the next British monarch when the time comes. Many people are vehemently opposed to the idea.”

  Charles considers heading the Commonwealth an important part of the monarch’s job, and he has cultivated his own relationships with member countries, visiting thirty-three of them since he became Prince of Wales. But he has attended the biennial heads of government meeting only twice, most recently in 2007 in Uganda when he joined his mother at the opening session. The Commonwealth’s director of political affairs, Amitav Banerji, indicated in a memo leaked in November 2010 that Charles did not “command the same respect” as his mother, but that the organization was “trying quietly to get him more involved.”