Once mocked, Charles is a Prince of our times

Dominic Sandbrook
13 Nov 2008

When Prince Charles turns 60 tomorrow, one of the longest apprenticeships in British history will enter a new chapter.

While the heir apparent has been ridiculed for much of his life, he has always occupied an unenviable position. While he remains much less popular than his mother, or even than his own son Prince William, Charles has gradually earned our respect as a champion of the countryside - a role that will surely stand him in good stead when, one day, he takes his rightful place as our next king.

Still, the fact remains that Charles is now only five years away from claiming his pension. Grey-haired and balding, he looks an increasingly elderly figure. And since his mother seems in robust health - and her mother died at the grand old age of 101 - it seems perfectly plausible that, barring abdication, it might be another decade or two before he finally becomes king.

And this is now his greatest dilemma: what if he turned out to be not Edward VII, a king in waiting until middle age, but rather a prince who never made it to his coronation at all? Ten or 15 years ago, Charles's prospects of winning the nation's affections were miserable, to say the least. Even as a younger man he always struck a gloomy, awkward figure, eclipsed by his glamorous and camera-friendly wife, Diana. As their marriage unravelled in the glare of the media in the late Eighties, it was Charles whom many people blamed.

When the Camillagate tapes hit the papers, complete with embarrassing banter about being reincarnated as a tampon, how we winced. And when Diana confirmed the rumours about Camilla Parker-Bowles in her famous interview with Martin Bashir, Charles's reputation seemed in tatters.

In the aftermath of Diana's death in 1997, Charles often seemed lost in the public furore. A man not given to conspicuous public emotion, he was unfairly cast as the uncaring ex-husband, the villain who had hounded her to her demise. And, while Diana's admirers reviled him, the rest of us simply laughed at him. Satirists cruelly mocked his jug ears, his stooping walk, his halting, antediluvian accent.

When he called for a return to traditional architecture, or expressed enthusiasm for New Age religions and alternative medicine, or joked about talking to his plants, how we all laughed. He seemed as unlikely a monarch - and as remote a figure from Alfred the Great, Edward III or Henry V - as it was possible to imagine.

Yet, while it would be a stretch to say that we have grown to love our future king, we have certainly grown to respect him. With Diana gone, Charles's understated virtues have become steadily more apparent.

Harder-working than most royals, he is the president of at least 15 charitable groups. His organic brand, Duchy Originals, once much mocked as a vanity scheme, makes more than £6million a year, the profits going to charity. And the Prince's Trust spends almost £50million a year helping youngsters who are unemployed, have been in care or in prison, or who are struggling at school - surely one of the worthiest of causes.

So will he ever get the top job? Since the Queen reportedly abhors the idea of abdication, regarding it as a betrayal of her coronation oath, some critics think that Charles should voluntarily step aside, allowing the crown to pass directly to Prince William.

It is true that William would be a younger, more dashing, more photogenic and - let's be honest - more popular king. But this notion seems to me deeply absurd, not least because it entirely misses the point of a monarchical system. The whole point of the monarchy, love it or hate it, is that it is based on hereditary succession.

Although the line of succession has been altered in the past - for instance in the late 17th century, when anti-Catholic sentiment ruled out an entire branch of the royal line - succession to the throne is not a frivolous reality show to be decided by popularity contests or phone votes. If Charles were to step aside, then why not William? Why not jump a generation or a sibling further down the line, if the designated heir doesn't fancy it?

Once we are in that game, of course, the whole point of the monarchy - its respect for tradition, its sense of stability, its ethos of duty and service - is up in the air. Set aside these principles, and it becomes merely a rotating family presidency, stripped of its historic mystery. In any case, an elderly monarch is surely no bad thing, as our current Queen has proved. With age comes dignity, which is why Charles cuts a rather more impressive figure now, as a kind of de facto regent, than he did as a gangling youth.

And, given that Britain has a rapidly ageing population, perhaps it makes sense to have a monarch who is down with the pensioners.

Above all, though, Charles's own history shows the importance of being patient - even at 60. The things that looked ridiculous 20 years ago - the organic carrots, the Eastern religions, the sustainable communities - now look rather less funny and more impressive. Indeed, in many ways Charles is still the most progressive major member of the House of Windsor - and he seems a much more 21st-century figure than either of his sons, both of whom would be right at home in the pleasure gardens of the Georgians.

The funny thing about Prince Charles, in other words, is that the older he gets, the more he seems in tune with our times.

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