![King Charles has been King for one year](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/royal-family/2023/09/07/TELEMMGLPICT000334963391_16941050402980_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bqmk34AT2067UfnJfqpPu5Pilcp0E1J2L7bE2mdlHcq-Y.jpeg?imwidth=680)
A year into the job he’s trained his whole life for, King Charles has proved his naysayers wrong
The speed with which he was accepted as head of state suggests he was always hiding in plain sight
![King Charles has been King for one year](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/royal-family/2023/09/07/TELEMMGLPICT000334963391_16941050402980_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bqmk34AT2067UfnJfqpPu5Pilcp0E1J2L7bE2mdlHcq-Y.jpeg?imwidth=680)
In the final years of Queen Elizabeth II’s reign, a prophecy took root among certain sections of the commentariat. Support for the monarchy would collapse when she died, King Charles would be unable to keep his nose out of politics and, in short, he would be a disaster. Nervousness had even spread to Buckingham Palace.
A year into the job, the King has emphatically proved those naysayers wrong. Not only has support for the Royal family increased, but Charles has tempered his public interventions on politics and cauterised the wounds caused by the behaviour of his son the Duke of Sussex and his brother the Duke of York.
“It seems like more than a year since the Queen died,” said one friend of the King, “and that is a sign of how smooth the transition has been. That is very much down to him.”
Having had 70 years to prepare for the job, the King would have had few excuses if anything had gone wrong, but that longest of apprenticeships also put immense pressure on him, the sort of pressure that his mother was spared when she ascended the throne of an adoring nation as a 25-year-old.
He has, in the words of one courtier, “embraced his destiny”, and he has done it with a three-phase approach to the first year of his reign.
Phase one was to lead the nation in mourning, getting the family, and the country, through a period when the world was watching, and delivering a pitch-perfect response.
“The first speech that he gave settled everyone and set the tone,” said a friend, “and also those first moments when he was with crowds and you saw the crowds respond to him.”
He spoke of the “deep sense of gratitude” for his mother’s reign; of his “loss beyond measure” and pledged to serve the nation “throughout the remaining time God grants me”.
Another source close to the King said: “When you become the head of a family [you] lead them and the nation in mourning and from the very first address to the moment when he had to say goodbye to his mother he carried himself with real poise. It’s hard to hold back your own emotions.”
Following the funeral of the Queen, phase two was to concentrate on continuity. In the first months of his reign, the King avoided major changes to the apparatus of monarchy, stuck with traditions such as Christmas at Sandringham, and ensured the new Prince and Princess of Wales – William and Kate – carried out high-profile engagements such as a tour of Wales to cement their new status in the minds of the public.
In March he also gave his youngest brother, Prince Edward, the title Duke of Edinburgh, ensuring the legacy of Prince Philip lives on.
Phase three was to get on the front foot as a monarch in his own right, demonstrating his diplomatic skills with a warmly-received visit to Germany in March and subtly modernising language and traditions, culminating in the Coronation in May, when that strangely moving sight of him stripped to his undershirt created a more lasting impression than diamonds and ermine could ever do.
By including representatives of different faiths and inviting community workers, fundraisers and Covid heroes to join celebrities and aristocrats in the congregation, the King ensured that it was a reflection of modern Britain while maintaining the ancient traditions that make the event so unique.
The Palace’s image-makers were particularly delighted with the King’s trip to Germany – his first state visit – given that recent history with Brexit and the longer shadow cast by two World Wars made it anything but an easy choice.
“The huge crowds we saw in Hamburg, and his ability to crack a joke and make the Germans laugh shows British diplomacy, like the British sense of humour, is among the best in the world,” enthuses one former courtier.
Crowds shouting “We Love Britain” and “We want the King” in a city that was incinerated by Allied bombers in 1943, showed the soft power that the monarchy is so good at exercising on the international stage. The King did not shy away from difficult subjects, laying a wreath at a church that was used as an aiming point by RAF aircrew, as well as visiting memorials associated with the Holocaust.
There is irritation behind Palace walls about the phrase “caretaker king” being applied to Charles III in some media reports, largely because he will be 75 in November. He is not simply keeping the throne warm for his son, Prince William, but is brimming with ideas, as ever.
“Much has been accomplished and there is much still to do,” said a royal source, “like the first state visit to a Commonwealth country in the not too distant future. Autumn is going to be big.”
In the next few weeks he will launch his first major project as King when he tackles the issue of food waste. Dame Martina Milburn, chief executive of the Prince’s Trust, has been asked to use the convening power of the King to find ways of reducing the 9.5 million tons of food thrown away in the UK each year – the highest amount in Europe. It equates to more than a ton of binned food per year for every one of the 8.4 million people in food poverty, and the King is determined to decrease both of those numbers.
“He is still able to champion the causes he has been passionate about, but he is doing it in a different way,” said one friend. “Food waste doesn’t really intrude into party politics because there is a universal desire to find solutions, and he is also finding his own way of championing environmental causes. He was advised by the Government to decline an invitation to the COP 27 climate summit in Egypt, so instead he held a reception at Buckingham Palace, using the pulling power of the monarchy to have a meeting of the key players.
“Even turning down the heating in the Buckingham Palace swimming pool is making a stand in a very public way. It’s very much in keeping with him embracing the seasonality of the UK and keeping costs down.”
There have been reports that the King has struggled to adapt to the sheer volume of work that comes with being monarch, in particular the daily red boxes that create “a phenomenal work burden”, according to one well-placed source.
It is true that there are occasional outbursts of temper, as there have always been, but only ever when he is exasperated by events, rather than people.
But allies are angered by the suggestion that he is struggling in any way with the workload.
“I don’t believe it for a moment,” said one. “He has always been at his desk at 8.30am and often there past midnight seven days a week. People very close to him say he looks and acts 10 years younger, and he has really got a sense of purpose about him.”
It certainly appears to be paying dividends. YouGov’s tracker poll of attitudes to the Royal family shows that 60 per cent of people think the King is doing a good job, compared with just 13 per cent who think he is doing a bad job. More importantly, 45 per cent now think there will still be a monarchy in 100 years time than thought so in May last year when only 39 per cent of people said yes. There has also been a slight increase in the percentage of people who think the monarchy is good for Britain in the first year of the King’s reign compared with the final year of the late Queen’s.
“A year on, the best thing that can be said is that it feels wonderfully normal,” said one former courtier, “and sometimes making things appear normal takes a huge amount of work and a huge amount of experience.
“If you are younger than 75 he has always been in your life but it’s only when he became king that you think, ‘Who is this man, what does he stand for?’ and suddenly you realise he is more in tune with the mainstream than perhaps his mother.
“Unless you have been a close follower of him you might not have seen all aspects of his work, but the speed with which people connected with him and took him on as the head of state – it’s because he was always hiding in plain sight, you just needed to look again with fresh eyes.”