Charles, he said, fought to carve out an identity as the Prince of Wales, a role that he held longer than anyone but that comes without a job description. He founded formidable charities like the Prince’s Trust, which has helped nearly a million disadvantaged young people, and championed causes like sustainable urban planning and environmental protection, long before they became fashionable.
In recent years, he has taken on several of the queen’s duties, from foreign trips to investitures, where people are granted knighthoods. On Remembrance Day, he placed a wreath at the monument to Britain’s fallen soldiers on her behalf. At the state opening of Parliament, he escorted her into the Palace of Westminster.
Charles has also not hesitated to wade into fraught political issues. He has spoken out regularly for religious tolerance and against Islamophobia, which some credit with helping mute a potential backlash against Muslims after a series of deadly terrorist attacks carried out by Islamic extremists in London in 2005.
“He could have spent his time in nightclubs or doing nothing at all, but he’s found a role,” said Professor Bogdanor.
At times, Charles’s strong opinions have gotten him into hot water. In 1984, he famously ridiculed a proposed extension to the National Gallery as a “monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend.” The plan was scrapped, but years later, prominent architects complained that his backdoor lobbying against designs that he did not favor was an abuse of his constitutional role.
In 2006, Charles raised hackles when a British tabloid, The Mail on Sunday, published extracts from a diary he kept while representing the queen at Britain’s formal handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997. He described the Chinese officials on hand as “appalling waxworks” and said that after a “propaganda speech” by the Chinese president, Jiang Zemin, “We had to watch the Chinese soldiers goose-step on to the stage and haul down the Union Jack and raise the ultimate flag.”
