King Charles makes way for his son Prince William at event for world leaders

The Prince of Wales is heading to France, proof that something major is afoot in the royal family.

When King Charles boarded his RAF flight to fly to Germany in March 2023 he could have, should he fancied, have sent Queen Camilla out into the Clarence House garden with her trusty 24-karat lighter, a gleam in her eye and his dog-eared passport.

This was the first overseas trip as king and therefore the first of his 74 years for which he did not need a skerrick of official documentation. Hence, burn baby, burn.

This week, while the King smugly watches his wife search for her passport underneath all of her Dick Francis paperbacks, the remaining working members of the royal family are getting ready to travel ahead of this week’s 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings.

However, when 25 world leaders and half a dozen kings and queens gather on the famed Omaha Beach on Friday (AEST), the King will not be there.

Like it or not, Charles is about to give way to Prince William, thus demanding I use the most obvious pun possible – the son also rises.

King Charles III and Queen Camilla wave at the Epsom Derby Festival horse racing event in May. Picture: BENJAMIN CREMEL/AFP

In a turn of events that no one would have predicted before the big ‘C’ entered the royal field, it will be the Prince of Wales who attends the national commemorative event in Portsmouth before flying to France for events hosted by Canada and France in Normandy on June 6.

And it will be William who will stand alongside King Frederik of Denmark, Crown Prince Haakon of Norway, King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima of the Netherlands and King Philippe and Queen Mathilde of Belgium and 25 heads at Omaha Beach on 6 June.

Consider the images we will likely see out of Omaha Beach this week: Of the Prince of Wales taking his place alongside six Kings, Queens and future Kings and alongside dozens of world leaders including President Joe Biden, French President Emanuel Macron, Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky. Symbolically, visually, and practically, the message will be clear – King Charles has been sidelined, even if momentarily and not of his volition.

(Charles and Camilla will be in France too but at an event at the British Normandy Memorial in Ver-sur-Mer.)

Where the 75-year-old’s feelings might lie on this matter, who knows, but needs must with the King still undergoing treatment for an unspecified type of cancer. Charles might have returned to public duties in late April amid much fanfare and with his smile so wide and bright he could constitute an alternative power source but the facts remain.

His Majesty is still under doctor’s orders and words like ‘all clear’ and ‘out of the woods’ have not come up once in any reporting.

What this situation really brings to bear is the very tricky, iffy, and problematic relationship of the sovereign and the Prince of Wales.

It will be the Prince of Wales who attends the national commemorative event in Portsmouth. Picture: Chris Jackson/Getty Images

For centuries, ever since Edward ‘Longshanks’ I (yep, really) managed to get his greedy mitts on Wales, making his son, imaginatively also named Edward, the first English Prince of Wales in 1301, the dynamic between the monarch and their itchy-footed heir has been something of a fraught one. (Which I suppose makes Edward II history’s first nepo baby.)

800 years later, being the Prince of Wales still comes with the second loftiest title in the land and a multi-billion pound windfall – and absolutely no official role or guidelines.

Plenty of Princes of Wales and their regal parents have really made a hash of it.

Some Princes of Wales have bided their time by fully-embracing sybaritic living, no more so than the later Edward VII who was such a devoted goer of one Parisian brothel they had a sex chair made for him. (Yes, you did read that sentence right.)

Others, like Charles, spent their decades ahead of accession dedicatedly plodding and toiling away, getting up every day and really getting stuck into their good deed to-do list.

Or as one character in Armando Iannucui’s deliciously biting Veep calls Charles in one episode, “that 65-year-old f**kin’ intern.”

To be the Prince of Wales is to hold a position defined by what you are not – not the King, not yet, not quite.

Charles and Camilla will be in France too but at an event at the British Normandy Memorial. Picture: Jordan Pettitt/POOL/AFP

And for the sovereign whose son is twiddling his sausagey fingers and keeping busy trying to save a generation from post-Thatcherite hopelessness and keeping the voles out of his petunias, it’s no easy feat either. This son needs to be prepared for the throne and to learn the ropes but to also be kept on a well-managed tether lest they start to do any usurping or limelight stealing.

Think a lot of fine lines, delicate balances and tightrope walking for both the King or Queen’s office and that of the Prince of Wales.

This is the background to Charles, William and the events that will take place on the beaches of Normandy this week.

Whatever the dance that had been going on between the Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace offices of the two men was, with the King’s cancer diagnosis, up-ended; the timeline for William being brought to the fore suddenly a much more pressing question.

It was only in the final years of the late Queen’s reign that Her late Majesty started tapping Charles on the shoulder to act in her stead, for example at the 2022 State opening of parliament. Yet the King was barely 18-months into his turn when cancer reared its nasty head and forced the rejigging that we are seeing now.

The D-Day commemorations will also see numerous veterans from among the 150,000 people deployed to save the UK and Europe from the Nazi jackboot. Few reports have failed to mention the fact that this will likely be, for these brave men and women, the last time they will come together. I wonder though, ten years from now, when it comes time for the next milestone anniversary of the battle, which members of the royal family will be on the beach? There will be a King there, you’d have to guess but, which one?

Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.