Charles III
Charles III is King of the United Kingdom and 14 other Commonwealth realms since 8 September 2022.
Charles was born during the reign of his maternal grandfather, King George VI, and became heir apparent when his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, acceded to the throne in 1952. He was created Prince of Wales in 1958 and his investiture was held in 1969. Charles was educated at Cheam School and Gordonstoun, and later spent six months at the Timbertop campus of Geelong Grammar School in Victoria, Australia. After completing a history degree from the University of Cambridge, he served in the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy from 1971 to 1976. He married Lady Diana Spencer in 1981 and they had two sons, William and Harry. Charles and Diana divorced in 1996 after years of estrangement and well-publicised extramarital affairs. Diana died the following year from injuries sustained in a car crash. In 2005, Charles married his long-time partner, Camilla Parker Bowles.
As heir apparent, Charles undertook official duties and engagements on behalf of his mother and represented the United Kingdom on visits abroad. He founded the Prince's Trust in 1976, sponsored the Prince's Charities and became patron or president of more than 800 other charities and organisations. He advocated for the conservation of historic buildings and the importance of traditional architecture in society. In that vein, he generated the experimental new town of Poundbury. An environmentalist, Charles supported organic farming and action to prevent climate change during his time as the manager of the Duchy of Cornwall estates, earning him awards and recognition as well as criticism. He is also a prominent critic of the adoption of genetically modified food, while his support for alternative medicine has been criticised. He has authored or co-authored 17 books.
Charles became king upon his mother's death in 2022. At the age of 73 he was the oldest person to accede to the British throne, after having been the longest-serving heir apparent and Prince of Wales in British history. Significant events in his reign have included his coronation in 2023 and his cancer diagnosis the following year, which temporarily suspended planned public engagements.
Early life, family, and education
Charles was born at 9:14pm on 14 November 1948 by caesarean section at Buckingham Palace, during the reign of his maternal grandfather, King George VI. He was the first child of Princess Elizabeth, Duchess of Edinburgh, and Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. He was christened Charles Philip Arthur George on 15 December in the Music Room at Buckingham Palace by the archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher.George VI died on 6 February 1952, and Charles's mother acceded to the throne as Elizabeth II; Charles immediately became heir apparent. Under a charter issued by Edward III in 1337, and as the monarch's eldest son, he automatically assumed the traditional titles of Duke of Cornwall and, in the Scottish peerage, Duke of Rothesay, Earl of Carrick, Baron of Renfrew, Lord of the Isles, and Prince and Great Steward of Scotland. On 2 June 1953, he attended his mother's coronation at Westminster Abbey.
When Charles turned five, Catherine Peebles was appointed as his governess to oversee his education at Buckingham Palace. He began attending Hill House School in West London in November 1956, becoming the first heir apparent to be educated at a school rather than by private tutors. He did not receive preferential treatment from the school's founder and headmaster, Stuart Townend, who encouraged the Queen to have Charles train in football, noting that boys on the pitch were never deferential to anyone. Charles later attended two of his father's former schools: Cheam School in Hampshire from 1958, followed by Gordonstoun in Moray, where he began classes in April 1962. He became patron of Gordonstoun in May 2024.
In Jonathan Dimbleby's authorised 1994 biography, Charles's parents were described as physically and emotionally distant, with Philip criticised for disregarding his son's sensitive nature, including insisting that he attend Gordonstoun, where he was bullied. Although Charles reportedly referred to the school, known for its rigorous curriculum, as "Colditz in kilts", he later praised it for teaching him "a great deal about myself and my own abilities and disabilities". In a 1975 interview he said he was "glad" to have attended Gordonstoun and that the school's "toughness" had been "much exaggerated".
In 1966 Charles spent two terms at the Timbertop campus of Geelong Grammar School in Victoria, Australia, during which he visited Papua New Guinea on a school trip with his history tutor, Michael Collins Persse. Her later described his time at Timbertop as the most enjoyable part of his education. On returning to Gordonstoun, he emulated his father by becoming head boy, and left in 1967 with six GCE O-levels and two A-levels in history and French, at grades B and C respectively. Reflecting on his schooling, Charles later remarked, "I didn't enjoy school as much as I might have; but, that was only because I'm happier at home than anywhere else".
Breaking royal tradition, Charles proceeded directly to university after his A-levels rather than joining the British Armed Forces. In October 1967 he was admitted to the University of Cambridge to study archaeology and anthropology for the first part of the Tripos as a student of Trinity College, Cambridge. He later switched to history for the second part. During his second year he spent one term at the University College of Wales in Aberystwyth, studying Welsh history and the Welsh language. Charles became the first British heir apparent to earn a university degree, graduating in June 1970 from the University of Cambridge with a 2:2 Bachelor of Arts. Following standard practice, his BA was promoted to a Master of Arts in August 1975.
Prince of Wales
Charles was created Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester on 26 July 1958, although his investiture did not take place until 1 July 1969, when he was crowned by his mother in a televised ceremony at Caernarfon Castle. The event was controversial in Wales amid rising Welsh nationalist sentiment. He took his seat in the House of Lords the following year, delivering his maiden speech on 13 June 1974, the first royal to speak from the floor since the future Edward VII in 1884. He addressed the House again in 1975.Charles increasingly undertook public duties, founding the Prince's Trust in 1976 and travelling to the United States in 1981. In the mid-1970s he expressed interest in serving as Governor-General of Australia, following a suggestion by the Australian prime minister, Malcolm Fraser. The proposal was ultimately abandoned owing to a lack of public enthusiasm. Charles later remarked, "so, what are you supposed to think when you are prepared to do something to help and you are just told you're not wanted?"
Military training and career
Charles served in the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy during the 1970s. His military training began in 1969, in his second year at Cambridge, when he joined the Cambridge University Air Squadron and learned to fly the Chipmunk. He was presented with his RAF wings in August 1971.After the passing-out parade that September, Charles embarked on a naval career and undertook a six-week course at the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth. He subsequently served from 1971 to 1972 on the guided-missile destroyer, and on the frigates from 1972 to 1973 and in 1974. That same year he qualified as a helicopter pilot at RNAS Yeovilton, and during his helicopter training completed commando instruction at the Commando Training Centre Royal Marines at Lympstone. Charles then joined 845 Naval Air Squadron, a Royal Marines air support unit of the Fleet Air Arm, serving as a pilot aboard and flying the Royal Marines commando variant of the Westland Wessex helicopter.
Charles spent his final ten months of active naval service commanding the coastal minehunter, beginning on 9 February 1976. He retired from active service later that year with the rank of Commander. Two years later he undertook the parachute training course at RAF Brize Norton, having been appointed colonel-in-chief of the Parachute Regiment in 1977, and was a member of Parachute Course 841a. Charles gave up flying after crash-landing a BAe 146 in Islay in 1994, when, as a passenger invited to fly the aircraft, he was at the controls; a board of inquiry found the crew negligent.
Relationships and marriages
Bachelorhood
In his youth, Charles was romantically linked to several women. His girlfriends included Georgiana Russell, the daughter of Sir John Russell, who was the British ambassador to Spain; Lady Jane Wellesley; Davina Sheffield; Lady Sarah Spencer; and Camilla Shand, who later became his second wife.Charles's great-uncle Lord Mountbatten advised him to "sow his wild oats and have as many affairs as he can before settling down", but, for a wife, he "should choose a suitable, attractive, and sweet-charactered girl before she has met anyone else she might fall for ... It is disturbing for women to have experiences if they have to remain on a pedestal after marriage". Early in 1974, Mountbatten began corresponding with 25-year-old Charles about a potential marriage to his granddaughter, Amanda Knatchbull. Charles wrote to Amanda's mother, Lady Brabourne, who was also his godmother, expressing interest in her daughter. Lady Brabourne replied approvingly, but suggested that a courtship with a 16-year-old was premature.
Four years later, Mountbatten arranged for Amanda and himself to accompany Charles on his 1980 visit to India. Both fathers, however, objected: Prince Philip feared that his famous uncle would eclipse Charles, while Lord Brabourne warned that a joint visit would concentrate media attention on the cousins before they could decide whether to become a couple.
In August 1979, before Charles was due to depart alone for India, Mountbatten was assassinated by the Provisional Irish Republican Army. When Charles returned, he proposed to Amanda. But in addition to her grandfather, she had lost her paternal grandmother and younger brother in the bomb attack, and was now reluctant to join the royal family.