This Side of the Pond

Since I wrote my column about the architectural prowess of King Charles, a few people have told me that he isn’t quite the person they always thought he was. This didn’t surprise me – on this side of the pond, he’s mainly known as the man who broke Princess Diana’s heart.

But while the tale of Diana is a sad one, it’s not what defines him. To be clear, I was a huge fan of the princess – I almost even met her, when she flew to my home town by helicopter and spent a great deal of time speaking with every section of the gathered crowd except the corner we’d chosen to stand in.

History loves a villain, and that’s the role our new king played in the aftermath of her tragic death. What happened to Diana was terrible, but it’s not entirely fair to blame her husband.

We’ll never know exactly what went on behind closed doors, but here’s the part of the tale that seldom got told: Charles suffered as much as his wife in a marriage that I believe should never have happened.

Charles was already in love with someone else – the same someone who now stands by his side as Queen Consort. He met Camilla all the way back in 1972 and, by all accounts, was instantly smitten.

Unfortunately, she wasn’t considered royal material. If you’re among those who feel the monarchy is outdated today, just imagine how old-fashioned it was half a century ago.

Camilla was considered “experienced”, which is code for “has had some boyfriends and is therefore not pure”. She was also thought to be “earthy” (whatever that means) and not sufficiently aristocratic.

We’ll never know whether Charles would have pushed for the palace to recognize his blossoming relationship anyway because, soon after, he was deployed to the Bahamas with the Royal Navy.

He returned to find that Camilla was engaged to somebody else. Rumor has it that her father planted a fake engagement notice in a national newspaper to force her fiancé’s hand.

Charles was devastated, writing in a letter to his mentor, Lord Mountbatten, that, “I suppose this feeling of emptiness will pass eventually.” We know it never did, because his love for Camilla never faded –it was no surprise to find out they had been having an affair.

Princess Diana was apparently well aware that her marriage was not necessarily a good idea, telling her sisters that she couldn’t go through with it on the morning of her wedding. On that day, she’d only met her husband-to-be in person 13 times.

Things did not improve over time. She famously told a BBC interviewer not long before her death that, “There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.”

What a terrible situation it was, for both of them. A starry-eyed woman who won hearts across the world, but never that of her husband, and a prince who’d known he would one day take the throne since he was three years old, but was not permitted to follow his heart at all.

Diana will forever be the fairytale princess the world adores, and I’m certainly not absolving Charles of blame. But as you can see, things were not quite so cut and dried as they may have been portrayed.

Not to mention that there’s more to this man than one tragedy. I grew up with constant royal news coverage; it seems obvious in hindsight, but it did not occur to me until recently that the comings and goings of the Prince of Wales were not covered so thoroughly over here.

You probably don’t know, for example, that he is one of the UK’s most successful living artists. His watercolors, primarily of outdoor scenes, have been displayed in multiple exhibitions and charity shows.

Despite humbly describing himself as an “enthusiastic amateur”, he raised around £2 million from sales of his art between 1997 and 2016, donating all of it to The Prince of Wales’s Charitable Fund. This forms part of an organization that includes 19 nonprofits of which he is patron or president, all but one of which he founded personally.

The Fund supports community-based projects on a number of themes, from heritage and conservation to education. It awards an average of £3.7 million per year to worthy causes, such as a befriending service for older people who are isolated or vulnerable, and a group that collates the life experiences of people living in the Shetland Islands.

But perhaps the aspect of Charles’ personality that will resonate with you the most is his genuine love of the land. He is, believe it or not, a farmer, overseeing his own organic farm in Gloucestershire until 2020, when he began preparing for greater royal responsibilities, and even now farming at the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk.

Despite his reputation, Charles has spent his whole life ahead of his time. He’s been campaigning about preserving the environment since the 1980s and first tried his hand at organic farming in the 1980s as a potential solution for more sustainable agriculture.

Many see his views on farming as unorthodox (especially because he has a habit of talking to his trees), but none can argue his heart is in the right place. In 2021, he heard that the UK had lost more than 100,000 farms, and that the pandemic and Brexit had quickened the crisis.

Charles reacted by sharing his deep respect for the role farmers play in rural communities and calling for their contribution to be recognized and supported through deep change. He had many ideas on how to turn things around, such as through cooperatives and by building supply chains.

“To me, it is essential the contribution of the small-scale family farmer is properly recognized,” he wrote in The Guardian. “They must be a key part in any fair, inclusive, equitable and just transition to a sustainable future.”

The first heir to the throne to earn a university degree; an accomplished musician on the cello, piano and trumpet; author of a children’s book called “The Old Man of Lochnagar”; founder of the UK’s largest organic food and drink brand, Duchy Originals; the first British royal to receive Royal Air Force Wings and a Royal Navy veteran of active service; a skilled diver; and, of course, the architect behind an entire town in my home county.

Our king has hidden depths, and I believe is worthy of much more than his worn-out reputation as a heartbreaker. As a surprisingly modern thinker, who knows what he might be able to achieve from his new throne – whatever it is, I promise it’ll be worth the watch.