King Charles shows funny side in new behind-the-scenes documentary
Known as the regent that throws tantrums over pens, a new documentary exposes a side of King Charles most of us will find surprising.
In a historic year full of historic moments and the historic wearing of ermine-trimmed capes and posing for historic photos on thrones which were then slapped on historic commemorative biscuit tins, I have some history-making news.
King Charles III has a sense of humour. A good one. Truly. The reign of Charles the Chuckler is here! (His namesakes didn’t fare as well, what with Charles ‘executed for treason’ I and Charles ‘shag-a-lot, possibly-in-pay-of-the-French’ II.)
I come bearing proof in the form of newly released footage from the King’s first major TV foray since officially becoming le grand fromage.
First, the BBC revealed that they had been filming behind-the-scenes at the Palace for months for a show called The Only Way Is Windsor – whoops, I actually mean Charles III: The Coronation Year.
Come Boxing Day, viewers will be treated to an unprecedented behind-the-scenes inside look at how the monarchical sausage is made, covering the lead up to the coronation and then Their Majesties’ getting on with the job.
Then, over the weekend, the Beeb released the first look at the Coronation Year showing Charles to be a man who appreciates a good giggle as much as a decent claret or a carrier bag stuffed with Qatari charity cash.
For example, take the moment when, as he and Queen Camilla prepare to depart for Westminster Abbey on coronation day, he flaps his cape and jokes, “I can fly”.
Or when at another point, during an Abbey rehearsal, we see the Archbishop of Canterbury flub his lines only for Charles to burst out laughing. It’s human, it’s real, it’s touching and it’s an effort that would have been unthinkable during Her late Majesty’s reign.
While we will have to wait until next week for the 90-minute program to be aired, the view that even these few titbits offer into The Firm is unparalleled and incredibly personal. Strip away the trappings and the gold coaches, the frippery and the costumes and you are left with … a family.
Take the sweet moment we see between Charles and Kate, the Princess of Wales when they all arrive back at the Palace after crowning and the princess sweetly kisses her father-in-law’s cheeks and bobs a curtsy.
Or take the footage showing her and future crown-holder Prince William, the Prince of Wales returning to energetic clapping and cheering from a crowd of intimates including his stepbrother and stepsister, Tom Parker Bowles and Laura Lopes.
Then there is the brief appearance of Prince Edward, a man so overlooked I don’t think he appeared once in The Crown, who is seen encouraging his brother the King with “I know you’ve got it”.
This is Charles and the royal family as we rarely, if ever, see them: unguarded, in private, and genuinely warm and loving towards one another.
None of this chimes with the view offered by Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, Palace pariah and the only HRH pondering joining LinkedIn.
Both his and Meghan’s Netflix series and his memoir Spare paint the inner workings of The Firm as about as appealing as a cold sausage roll; the frontline working members of Crown Inc. as a group who would put the Medicis to shame in terms of finagling and manoeuvring, all of them locked in a never-ending game of PR brinkmanship.
Those Windsors? They are jealous, self-interested and often petty – or so the Sussex spiel goes.
That’s why you should think of Coronation Year as an antivenene to all that; this TV special a cheery, touching bit of palace propaganda if ever we have seen it.
One of the interesting details to note is what Coronation Year shows us of His Majesty and William, revealed via a still from the production showing them laughing during a coronation rehearsal.
A sweet bit of father-son bonding? A shared moment of levity? Again, this all runs interference with the version of Charles that Harry has put forth as a cold and distant father who, at times, hung him out to dry.
Maybe, Charles is now doing a much better job as a dad today than he ever did when his boys were grief-stricken and lost teenagers in desperate need of more than a character-building long march in the drizzle in Scotland and an occasional stiff pat on the shoulder.
To be fair, one does not necessarily cancel the other out here: The King might have been a rubbish parent who failed his children, wholly neglecting to provide the emotional and psychological support they needed after the death of their mother but have come good later in life.
Both Harry’s depiction of His Majesty and the one offered by Year can equally be true.
But still, it looks like that Year, whether intentionally or not, will counteract the image of Charles as a remote and unfeeling dad.
Fundamentally, what this prime time feature-length offering seems to be attempting is to make the King not only a likeable but a knowable figure. This new-found willingness to be open signals a massive shift from the late Queen’s example, which viewed inscrutability as a virtue and a handy way to ramp up the mystique.
But mystique doesn’t sell these days; authenticity and vulnerability do.
His Majesty’s willingness to offer such an intimate view of himself as an actual person, nervous, excited, giggling, rather than an inscrutable signet-ring twiddling cipher, speaks to how big of a fight he has on his hands.
Look no further than two numbers to understand what he’s up against. In 2011, days before William and Kate’s wedding, 59 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds were in favour of the monarchy. Now, only 37 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds do, a near halving of support.
The kids are not all right with the idea of a hereditary, unelected ruling family.
With the big shiny event of the coronation receding in the rear-view mirror, converting younger British to the cause of Charles and Camilla must surely be a primary focus. They reign via the passive consent of the people after all and don’t they seem to know it.
A cynical view of all this is that the King’s job is to sell, sell, sell the entirely anachronistic, fundamentally bizarre concept that one family gets to enjoy unthinkable wealth and privilege in return for dedicating their lives to an unending roster of good works and opening the occasional new recycling centre. (What do you think they do with Princess Anne most days? On a number of occasions in recent years she has officially visited or cut ribbons at bin lorry depots and sewage treatment plants. Seriously.)
To that end, Coronation Year is a big, bold bit of marketing, a sovereign’s version of a splashy Super Bowl ad, seemingly geared to reframe his image.
So will this rousing bit of pro-Palace promotion, after suffering the slings and arrows of the Sussexes and the disgrace of Prince Andrew, work? (The Duke of Yuck is the only one of Charles’ siblings who doesn’t turn up in the trailer.) Will The Firm finally be able to engineer a sort of collective public amnesia about all the palaver and pain of recent years? And will anyone under the age of 25 actually look up from TikTok long enough to form an opinion on all of this?
All will be revealed if Netflix picks up the series I imagine Camilla has been quietly pitching, Selling the Sovereign.
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s media titles.
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