Already having shown more public petulance in a few days than his late mother showed in a lifetime, King Charles III started his reign—as shown in several viral videos—by being irascible and unpleasant. Many are now commenting, as they have never commented before, how like his father he is. Clearly this is not an easy time for him having lost his mother and, thereby, having his life transformed completely but you would have thought that inheriting £500 million might have softened the blow somewhat. That is cash in hand, by the way, he also oversees estates worth £42 billion. It also makes it hard to accept, if Norman Baker is to be believed in his book And What Do You Do?, the extent to which he tries to scrounge free holidays in luxurious locations with private jets thrown in, a habit which his son and heir apparent has also picked up and which is unlikely to be attenuated by his newly acquired income of £23 million per annum and an estate worth £1 billion. Poor lad can barely get by.
However, he has started what he promised to do which was to trim The Firm back a bit. But did a few dukes and earls living in grace and favour apartments and contributing nothing to the public good get their marching orders or did he tell Prince Pervert to go get a job? Not exactly. He paid off up to 100 staff from his service and found time to do this during what must have been one of the busiest ten days of his life. I may have been mistaken, but when the funeral procession went up The Mall and close to where Clarence House is located, I am sure that I saw some people at the back of the crowd waving redundancy notices. It must certainly have done something to take the edge of their sorrow at the death of the Queen.
Other major matters of state to which our new king was able to attend was the tricky decision about whether his errant brother and his whingeing son could wear their uniforms. Remarkably, he let them for the short time they stood vigil at the Queen’s coffin in Westminster Hall. The army disowned Prince Andrew, veterans called on the Queen to strip him of military roles and the Queen duly stripped him of all military roles and that included wearing uniform. This move was partly punishment but also a signal to the military world that she had heard them and, for however short a time, it was wrong of King Charles to grant this favour. Frankly, for a man who could so easily have been behind bars in the United States, his very prominent role in all things funereal in the past two weeks is surprising. Some must feel that their commoners’ noses have been rubbed in the royal dirt.
There was less objection to Ginger Nut wearing his uniform but, by all accounts, something was missing from the uniform (the letters ‘ER’) and he was not pleased. The sovereign’s moniker is only worn by Aides de Camp to the Queen, something he clearly no longer is. But the whingeing brat, doubtless encouraged by attention magnet Meghan Markle, seemingly is never pleased. At least this short phase of dressing up extended no further but it is ironic that the only two princes to have been in harm’s way are so disgraced as not to be allowed to wear military uniforms.
While Charles had to agree to be Defender of The Faith at his accession, he had long expressed his wish to be, instead, Defender of Faith. In other words, not merely the Anglican Christian faith but all faiths. Towards that end he met 30 religious leaders last week to assure them that all would be well for them in his new kingdom. I guess this is what they must be celebrating on the streets of Leicester this week.
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