It’s too late.īut the truth about Charles is that he is a traditionalist, really. A more sympathetic portrait came on the TV series The Crown, on which he was recently played by Dominic West, but even there, he was most memorably portrayed as an ambitious but ineffective royal conniver.Ĭharles won’t be allowed to express his opinions on things anymore, but in some ways that doesn’t matter. It depicted Charles meddling with freedom-of-the-press laws, sparring with Parliament, and ultimately having to abdicate in favor of Prince William. A critically acclaimed play called Charles III premiered in London in 2014 and went on to Broadway.

He’s been vocally in favor of overhauling the “honours system,” whereby titles such as “Commander of the British Empire” are handed out to the rich and powerful, a designation he has said is bestowed on “the wrong people” for “the wrong reasons.” He’s subsequently been accused of interfering in political matters to an undue degree. He’s also spent much of the past couple of decades getting involved in politics through what became known as his “black spider memos,” after his scrawling handwriting: letters he would write to government ministers on subjects like urban planning and education. He has his own organic farm in Gloucestershire, where he keeps up traditional farming techniques, and where he hosted the “National Hedgelaying Championships” in 2005.

He’s a keen agriculturalist, and believes that industrial farming is an environmental travesty.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in attendance. So how has Charles been passing the time? In the mid-’70s, when he was approaching 30, he began setting up charities, and he kept at it: He held a summit in 2009 with the intention of protecting the climate and reducing deforestation that saw Hillary Clinton and U.N.

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