coronation
Royal Drama: King’s fractious family on stage at coronation
King Charles III lives in a palace, travels in a chauffeur-driven Bentley and is one of Britain’s richest men, but he's similar to many of his subjects in one very basic way: His family life is complicated — very complicated.
There’s a second wife, an embarrassing brother, and an angry son and daughter-in-law, all with allies who aren’t shy about whispering family secrets in the ears of friendly reporters.
The new king will hope to keep a lid on those tensions when his royally blended family joins as many as 2,800 guests for Charles' coronation on May 6 at Westminster Abbey. All except Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, are attending.
How Charles manages his family drama over the coming weeks and years is crucial to the king’s efforts to preserve and protect the 1,000-year-old hereditary monarchy he now embodies. Without the respect of the public, the House of Windsor risks being lumped together with pop stars, social media influencers and reality TV contestants as fodder for the British tabloids, undermining the cachet that underpins its role in public life.
Royal historian Hugo Vickers says people should look past the sensational headlines and focus on what Charles accomplishes now that he is king.
Also read: King’s coronation draws apathy, criticism in former colonies
“In a sense, he sort of becomes a new man when he becomes king,” said Vickers, author of “Coronation: The Crowning of Elizabeth II.”
“Look at him as he is now, look at him the way he is approaching everything, look at his positivity and look at how right he’s been on so many issues,” he added. “Unfortunately, he had those difficult times with his marriages and some of the other issues, but we live in a very tricky era.”
The horror show came back to haunt Charles last week, when the king’s estranged younger son, Prince Harry, dropped a new round of allegations Tuesday about the royal family into the middle of the coronation buildup.
In written evidence for his invasion of privacy claim against a British newspaper, Harry claimed his father prevented him from filing the lawsuit a decade ago. The prince said Charles didn’t want to dredge up graphic testimony about his extramarital affair with the former Camilla Parker-Bowles when he was married to the late Princess Diana.
Diana was the mother of Harry and his elder brother and heir to the throne, William, the Prince of Wales. Camilla, now the queen consort, went on to marry Charles in 2005 and will be crowned alongside her husband at Westminster Abbey.
If the past is any indication, attention will now shift to body language, seating plans and even wardrobe choices during the coronation, as royal watchers look for any signs of a thaw in the family tensions.
But Joe Little, managing editor of Majesty magazine, doesn’t expect Harry to have a lot of contact with the rest of his family. In any case, Harry won’t be in the U.K. for long, so there’s not much time for fence mending.
"The stuff that we discovered (Tuesday) is really not going to help his cause,” Little said. “But, you know, will there be time to go over all that with the king and the Prince of Wales? Unlikely.”
The royal soap opera didn’t begin with the current generation of royals. After all, Edward VIII sparked a constitutional crisis in 1936 when he abdicated the throne to marry the twice-divorced American Wallis Simpson.
Charles’ grandfather, George VI, is credited with saving the monarchy with a life of low-key public service after he replaced his flamboyant elder brother. The late Queen Elizabeth II burnished the family’s reputation during a 70-year reign, in which she became a symbol of stability who cheered the nation’s victories and comforted it during darker times.
But Charles grew up in a different era, under the glare of media attention as deference to the monarchy faded.
He has been a controversial figure ever since the very public breakdown of his marriage to Diana, who was revered by many people for her looks and her compassion.
Diana alleged that there had been “three people” in the marriage, pointing the finger at Charles’ longtime love Camilla Parker-Bowles.
Camilla, initially reviled by Diana’s fans, has worked hard to rehabilitate her image. Her ex-husband and their children are expected to attend the coronation, with her grandsons serving as pages of honor.
She supports a raft of causes, ranging from adult literacy to protecting the victims of sexual assault and domestic violence. But even that effort has sparked tensions.
Harry claimed in his memoir “Spare” that the senior royals leaked unflattering stories about him to the news media in return for more favorable coverage, particularly to improve Camilla's image.
At the time of their marriage in 2018, Harry and Meghan were celebrated as the new face of the monarchy. Meghan, a biracial American actress, brought a touch of Hollywood glamour to the royal family and many observers hoped she would help the Windsors connect with younger people in an increasingly multicultural nation.
Those hopes quickly crumbled amid allegations that palace officials were insensitive to Meghan’s mental health struggles as she adjusted to royal life.
Harry and Meghan walked away from frontline royal duties three years ago and moved to California, from which they have lobbed repeated critiques at the House of Windsor.
In a 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey they hinted at racism in the palace, alleging that one unidentified member of the royal family had inquired about the color of their unborn son’s skin before his birth.
Harry, i n a Netflix series broadcast last year, said the episode was an example of unconscious bias and that the royal family needed to “learn and grow” so it could be “part of the solution rather than part of the problem.”
The repeated attacks led to months of speculation about whether the couple would be invited to the coronation. The palace finally answered that question two weeks ago when it announced that Harry would attend but Meghan would remain in California with their two children.
And then there is Charles' brother Prince Andrew, who became a toxic time bomb inside the royal family when the world learned about his friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and the financier's long-time girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell.
Epstein, who was convicted of sex crimes in 2008, died in a New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on a second set of charges. Maxwell was convicted last year of helping procure young girls for Epstein and is serving a 20-year sentence at a federal prison in Florida.
Andrew gave up his royal duties in 2019 after a disastrous interview with the BBC in which he tried to explain away his links to Epstein and Maxwell. He was stripped of his honorary military titles and patronages as he prepared to defend a civil lawsuit filed by a woman who said she was forced to have sex with the prince when she was a teenager.
Andrew denied the allegations but settled the suit last year before it came to trial. While terms of the agreement weren’t released, The Sun newspaper reported that Charles and the late queen paid the bulk of the estimated 7 million pound ($8.7 million) settlement.
“I think it was inevitable that when Charles became king, a lot of the personal stuff would come back to haunt him,″ Little said. “I think as far as the king is concerned, he just has to shrug his shoulders and get on with the job in hand.”
King’s coronation draws apathy, criticism in former colonies
When King Charles III is crowned on Saturday, soldiers carrying flags from the Bahamas, South Africa, Tuvalu and beyond will march alongside British troops in a spectacular military procession in honor of the monarch.
For some, the scene will affirm the ties that bind Britain and its former colonies. But for many others in the Commonwealth, a group of nations mostly made up of places once claimed by the British Empire, Charles’ coronation is seen with apathy at best.
In those countries, the first crowning of a British monarch in 70 years is an occasion to reflect on oppression and colonialism’s bloody past. The displays of pageantry in London will jar especially with growing calls in the Caribbean to sever all ties with the monarchy.
“Interest in British royalty has waned since more Jamaicans are waking to the reality that the survivors of colonialism and the holocaust of slavery are yet to receive reparatory justice,” the Rev. Sean Major-Campbell, an Anglican priest in the Jamaican capital, Kingston, said.
Also Read: PM Hasina arrives in London to attend coronation of UK’s King Charles III
The coronation is “only relevant in so far as it kicks us in the face with the reality that our head of state is simply so by virtue of biology,” Major-Campbell added.
As British sovereign, Charles is also head of state of 14 other countries, though the role is largely ceremonial. These realms, which include Australia, Canada, Jamaica, Papua New Guinea and New Zealand, represent a minority of the Commonwealth nations: most of the 56 members are republics, even if some still sport the Union Jack on their flags.
Barbados was the most recent Commonwealth country to remove the British monarch as its head of state, replacing Charles’ mother, Queen Elizabeth II, with an elected president in 2021. The decision spurred similar republican movements in neighboring Jamaica, the Bahamas and Belize.
Last year, when Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness welcomed Prince William and his wife, Kate, during a royal tour of the Caribbean, he announced that his country intends to become fully independent. It made for an awkward photo with the royal couple, who were also confronted with protests calling for Britain to pay slavery reparations.
Also Read: UK’s diverse communities ambivalent about king’s coronation
William, the heir to the throne, observed later in the same trip that the relationship between the monarchy and the Caribbean has evolved. The royal family will “support with pride and respect your decisions about your future,” he told a reception in the Bahamas.
Rosalea Hamilton, an advocate for changing Jamaica’s Constitution to get rid of the royals, said she was organizing a coronation day forum to engage more Jamaicans in the process of political reform.
The timing of the event is meant to “signal to the head of state that the priority is to move away from his leadership, rather than focus on his coronation,” Hamilton said.
Two days ahead of Charles’ crowning, campaigners from 12 Commonwealth countries wrote to the monarch urging him to apologize for the legacies of British colonialism.
Among the signatories was Lidia Thorpe, an Australian senator, who said Thursday that Charles should “begin a process of repairing the damage of colonization, including returning the stolen wealth that has been taken from our people.”
Buckingham Palace said last month that Charles supported research into the historical links between Britain’s monarchy and the transatlantic slave trade. The king takes the issue “profoundly seriously,” and academics will be given access to the royal collection and archives, the palace said.
In India, once the jewel of the British Empire, there’s scant media attention and very little interest in the coronation. Some people living in the country’s vast rural hinterlands may not have even heard of King Charles III.
Also Read: With coronation approaching, Charles and Buckingham Palace working at top speed to show new king at work
“India has moved on,” and most Indians “have no emotional ties with the royal family,” Pavan K. Varma, a writer and former diplomat, said. Instead, the royals are seen more like amusing celebrities, he said.
And while the country still values its economic and cultural ties with the European country, Varma pointed out that India’s economy has overtaken the U.K.’s.
“Britain has shrunk globally into a medium-sized power,” he said. “This notion needs to be removed, that here is a former colony riveted to the television watching the coronation of Prince Charles. I don’t think this is happening in India.”
Since gaining independence in 1947, India has moved to shed the vestiges of British imperialism. The statue of King George V that used to stand near the India Gate monument in New Delhi was moved in the 1960s to Coronation Park. Once the scene of celebrations honoring Queen Victoria, King Edward VII and George V, the park is now a repository for representations of former monarchs and officials of the British Raj in India.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has led a renewed push to reclaim India’s past and erase “symbols of slavery” from the country’s time under the British crown. His government has scrubbed away colonial-era street names, some laws and even flag symbols.
“I don’t think we should care much about (the royals),” Milind Akhade, a photographer in New Delhi, said. “They enslaved us for so many years.”
In Nairobi, Kenya, motorcycle taxi driver Grahmat Luvisia was similarly dismissive of the idea of following the coronation on TV.
“I will not be interested in watching the news or whatever is happening over there because we have been mistreated back then by those colonizers,” he said.
Herman Manyora, a political analyst and journalism professor at the University of Nairobi, said memories of Britain’s harsh response to the Mau Mau rebellion in the 1950s are still raw.
Many Kenyans will not watch the coronation “because of the torture during colonialism, because of the oppression, because of detentions, because of killings, because of the alienation of our land,” Manyora said.
Not everyone is as critical. In Uganda, political analyst Asuman Bisiika says British culture continues to have a strong influence on young people in the East African country, especially those who follow English soccer. There is also a lot of goodwill for Queen Elizabeth II, who died in September after 70 years on the throne.
“It’s not about caring for the British monarchy,” Bisiika said. “It’s about relating.”
In the South African city of Durban, expat British communities have planned a live screening of the coronation ceremony, complete with trumpeters to announce the moment the Archbishop of Canterbury crowns Charles. On Sunday, there will be a special church service followed by a picnic or a “braai,” a traditional South African barbecue.
“I think people want to be part of an important moment in history,” Illa Thompson, one of the organizers of the festivities, said.
Experts say that despite its flaws, historical baggage and fraying edges, the Commonwealth still holds appeal, especially for poorer nations. Gabon and Togo, which are former French colonies with no colonial links to Britain, became the association’s newest members last year. Most observers believe countries like Jamaica that want an elected head of state are likely to retain their memberships.
“Countries, whether they benefit or not, feel like they need to have this closeness to Britain as an economic entity,” said Kehinde Andrews, a professor of Black Studies at Birmingham City University. “As much as there will be still be some dissent — (Charles) is not as popular as his mother — it’s all about the economics.”