King Charles spent decades preparing for the throne. His reign promises to be unlike his mother’s

LONDON — In the millennium-long past of the British royal family, nary heir has prepared for the crown longer than King Charles III.

He ascended to the throne Thursday after the decease of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, fulfilling a destiny placed upon him astatine property 3, erstwhile she became the monarch successful 1952. Charles' wife, Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, present has the rubric of queen consort.

Whereas Elizabeth was crowned astatine 27, Charles is 73, older astatine ascension than immoderate different monarch successful British history.

Charles is besides present caput of the Commonwealth, a postcolonial radical of 54 autarkic countries comprising 2.4 cardinal people. He is caput of authorities successful 15 of those nations — including Canada and Australia — though the queen's decease is apt to stoke an already simmering statement successful the Caribbean and elsewhere astir ditching their erstwhile assemblage overseers for good.

Extreme privilege, controversies and household play person punctuated the caller king's seven-decade wait. And determination has agelong been a statement astir the benignant of sovereign helium volition beryllium aft the queen's quiet, wide fashionable reign.

The caller king is simply a multimillionaire by birthright. His defenders accidental helium has been the hardest-working royal, a tireless campaigner for charitable causes who fought for conservation long earlier specified issues became fashionable, earning ridicule successful a satellite that had not yet awakened to the looming situation of planetary warming.

But whereas the queen was the astir fashionable royal, liked by 75% of people, according to a moving tracker by the pollster YouGov, Charles is liked by 42% and disliked by 24% of the British public.

Many pundits property that to his mutually unfaithful matrimony to Princess Diana and the royals' perceived unsympathetic attraction of her decease successful 1997. Others accidental it is due to the fact that of the openly governmental positions helium has taken — a no-no for the supposedly apolitical royals and a melodramatic departure from his stoically impartial mother.

The contention swirling astir immoderate of his stances is not a concealed to the caller monarch. 

"As you whitethorn perchance person noticed from clip to time, I person tended to marque a wont of sticking my caput supra the parapet and mostly getting it changeable disconnected for pointing retired what has ever been blindingly evident to me," helium said in a speech in January 2014. 

What makes his opinions perchance tricky is the information that Britain has a law monarchy, which is precise antithetic from the benignant of implicit monarchies that wield total, undemocratic governmental powerfulness successful Saudi Arabia and different Gulf states.

So monarchs are Britain's caput of authorities but clasp nary existent nonstop governmental power. They name governments, reopen Parliament aft recess and o.k. caller laws. But those are each rubber-stamping ceremonial tasks; truthful far, determination has been nary question that the crown mightiness effort to intervene. If it did, there would beryllium a governmental crisis.

The king oregon queen does person play meetings with the premier minister. As the seminal 19th period essayist Walter Bagehot wrote successful 1867, the British sovereign has "three rights — the close to beryllium consulted, the close to encourage, the close to warn."

The caller king has said helium volition instrumentality a antithetic attack arsenic monarch from his opinionated clip arsenic prince, telling the BBC successful 2018 it was "complete nonsense" to suggest helium would beryllium openly political, due to the fact that "I'm not that stupid."

"You lone person to look astatine Shakespeare plays, 'Henry V' oregon 'Henry IV' portion I and 2, to spot the alteration that tin instrumentality place. Because if you go the sovereign, past you play the relation successful the mode that it is expected," helium said. "So, of course, you run wrong the law parameters."

Even so, immoderate critics judge his on-the-record views could origin a law situation if the authorities adopts a presumption helium has antecedently backed — from supporting farmers to approving arguable architecture — adjacent if determination is nary grounds helium has really intervened.

He was calved successful Buckingham Palace connected the evening of Nov. 14, 1948, portion his father, Prince Philip, played squash. Outside, Britain was recovering from the ravages of World War II. The streets of London were still rubble-strewn from the Blitz, and its radical faced dire economical hardship that would pb to the instauration of the country's modern payment system. Inside the palace, Prince Charles had entered into a parallel satellite of immense privilege, but besides preordained duty.

The "newborn heir was brought to the immense gilded ballroom by the royal midwife" and placed successful a cot "for viewing by the royal courtiers," Sally Bedell Smith wrote successful her unauthorized biography, "Prince Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life." No sooner had Charles been calved than helium "officially became nationalist property," Smith said.

Less than 4 years later, helium became heir to the throne aft the decease of his grandfather George V. It was not an casual childhood, Smith and different biographers and royal historians agree. His parent and disciplinarian begetter were often absent, touring the Commonwealth for months astatine a clip and missing Charles' archetypal 2 Christmases and his 3rd birthday.

Charles was a "very delicate and affectional young man," truthful his "alpha male" begetter tried to toughen him up by sending him to Gordonstoun, a rough, spartan boarding schoolhouse successful Scotland, according to royal biographer Tina Brown, speaking with NBC News' Keir Simmons for his podcast "Born to Rule" this year. This is "absolutely the communicative of his life" — Charles' household "constantly trying to shove him into this mold, due to the fact that helium was the aboriginal king, that helium conscionable didn't fit," Brown said.

He graduated with middling grades, aboriginal describing the acquisition arsenic "a situation sentence."

At property 21, Charles told a BBC vigor programme that realizing helium would beryllium king was "something that dawns connected you with the astir ghastly, inexorable sense."