One rather fancies being Instagram king

Stuck in Scotland since his brush with the coronavirus, time-rich Prince Charles just can’t keep off social media — giving us new hints about the kind of monarch he will be

Prince Charles has taken to social media with a vengeance, promoting themes that matter to him. Picture: AP

Prince Charles’s brush with the coronavirus may have left the 71-year-old feeling under the weather, but it has done wonders for the health of his social media following.

On April 1, in a video on Instagram — his first appearance since fighting off the virus — he declared himself lucky to have experienced “relatively mild symptoms”.

Yet he described lockdown conditions as a “strange, frustrating and often distressing experience”. Charles went on to speak of “an unprecedented and anxious time in all our lives” and added, as patron of the Age UK charity, that “our hearts go out to all those older people now experiencing great difficulty”.

Up to that point, most of the prince’s posts on the Clarence House Instagram account attracted around 20,000 “likes”, with occasional jumps to 100,000. His first coronavirus post attracted almost 850,000 likes.

Since then Charles has taken to social media with a vengeance, appearing regularly before his well-stocked bookshelves to promote the themes that matter to him — nature, the environment, family, diversity, tradition. It is as if his illness has recharged his batteries and fired up his missionary zeal.

“There are so many people who don’t really get Charles, who don’t know what he does,” noted Penny Junor, the prince’s biographer.

“But during the coronavirus, maybe because of the lockdown, more people have seen him and listened to him than perhaps they would during normal times.

“The pandemic has given him a platform and he has been masterful in the way he’s responded and used that platform.”

America has its first Twitter President. Is Charles on his way to becoming the first Instagram king? Is he posting all the clues we need to work out what sort of ruler he intends to be when his time finally comes?

His Instagram and Twitter feeds are certainly diverse. Last month, in a message to British cheesemakers, he shared “one of my favourite recipes” — for “cheesy baked eggs”.

He marked VE Day on May 8 by reading a passage from the diary kept by his grandfather George VI, prompting one visitor to his Instagram account to comment: “I think Prince Charles has a future in audiobooks. I could listen to his voice all day.”

In more serious mode, in April he marked Earth Day 2020 with a message stating: “It is increasingly clear that when we care for our planet we fundamentally care for ourselves.”

Charles’s enthusiasms have not always been applauded. His trenchant hostility to much modern architecture was variously condemned as “elitist” and “an abuse of power”. His support for alternative medicine has stirred controversy. He has been accused of trying to subvert democratic planning processes with “behind-the-scenes lobbying”.

He is known to fire off “spidery” handwritten memos to ministers and business leaders, sticking his oar in where some felt it was neither welcome nor appropriate. He has been portrayed in the past as an incorrigible meddler in danger of becoming an activist king, at risk of dividing his subjects instead of uniting them.

The prince often laughed off concerns about his passions — he once said he wrote letters to people “who pay no attention at all”. He seized the opportunity in a television documentary marking his 70th birthday to stress that he regarded the roles of prince and king as different. “You can’t be the same as the sovereign if you’re the Prince of Wales,” he told the film’s director, John Bridcut. “The idea, somehow, that I’m going to go on in exactly the same way, if I have to succeed (to the throne), is complete nonsense.”

A source close to the prince said: “The Queen, the prince and the Duke of Cambridge are all moving as one and thinking about when the right time is to resume duties with the public, but the Queen’s hand remains very much on the tiller.”

Yet the man who recorded a fiery speech for a virtual meeting of the World Economic Forum last week, then talked to Britain’s Sky News to promote what he called “a great reset”, did not sound like a crown prince toning things down en route to the throne.

Charles admitted his own experience of the coronavirus had left him “even more determined to push and shout and prod”. He has been calling “captains of industry”, scientists and others from Birkhall, in Scotland, where he is at his desk by 9am seven days a week.

He talked last week of a “golden opportunity” for mankind to correct the errors of its ways and “learn lessons and reset ourselves on a more sustainable path”.

In his address to the WEF he summed up: “Unless we take the action necessary and build again in a greener, more sustainable, more inclusive way, then we will end up having more and more pandemics and disasters from ever-accelerating global warming and climate change.”

In some ways the prince’s recent posts add up to a manifesto for a thoroughly modern monarch attuned to the challenges of the worst health crisis of our lives. But the downside to Charles’s more aggressive activism is already clear in the comments on a number of his internet posts.

When he urged people via Instagram to help farmers pick fruit and vegetables last month, many of the 1000 responses to his post diverted into Brexit-related fury.

One of the most popular comments was: “Why don’t you and your family get off your backsides and do what you are preaching?”

Another visitor sneered: “It is absolutely vital for rich people that poor people do back-breaking work for them.”

Others were much more supportive, and Junor is among those who believe that Charles’s long record of environmental activism is a plus for Britain, not a minus.

“That he caught the virus is one of the best things that could have happened,” Junor said. “It echoes the Queen Mother and King George VI being able to stand shoulder to shoulder with the public during the Second World War after Buckingham Palace was bombed.

“Charles is able to understand people going through terrible times now, and show leadership. He’s not jumping on a bandwagon like many a politician will.”

Will Charles turn into an Instagram activist king? Junor isn’t worried. The prince’s social media posts have “reached a far wider audience and people finally understand a bit more about who he is and what he does.

“He is a king in waiting, that’s what he has shown himself to be. He’s ready, he has got everything his mother has”.

The Sunday Times