The eldest son of the 73 -year -old Queen must be crowned in the coming weeks. Thursday, he described the death of his “beloved mother” as “a moment of very great sadness”.
Le Monde
He will no longer be designated as Prince Charles. The eldest son of Queen Elizabeth II succeeds his mother, died Thursday, September 8 at the age of 96, and takes the name of Charles III.
“The death of my beloved mother, His Majesty the Queen, is a moment of great sadness for me and all the members of my family,” said the new king, 73, in his first press release as Sovereign.
“We deeply cry the disappearance of a darling sovereign and a beloved mother. I know that her loss will be deeply felt throughout the country, the kingdoms and the Commonwealth, as well as by countless people in the whole world. “
The accession to the throne of Charles III was immediate on the death of the Queen, under an old Latin maxim “rex nunquam moritur” (the king never dies).
a Queen’s support role
His crowning should intervene as well as possible in a few weeks, once the trauma of Elizabeth II’s death exceeded. She herself had been crowned in June 1953, sixteen months after being proclaimed Queen.
His second wife Camilla will become Reine Consort, a wish expressed by the Queen last February. The subject is sensitive among the British: after his remarriage with Prince Charles in 2005, Camilla had chosen not to take the title of Princess of Wales, too associated with Princess Diana, who died in 1997 and of which Charles had divorced in 1996.
Born on November 14, 1948, Charles had become, as eldest son, the heir to the crown at 3 years and 3 months, in February 1952, when Princess Elizabeth, 25, had become queen at death of his father, George VI.
Since his first official commitments in the 1970s, the role of the Prince of Wales was to “support His Majesty the Queen, as a focal point of national pride”.
He therefore welcomed the dignitaries in the United Kingdom on behalf, participated in state dinners, traveled to around a hundred countries, handed over thousands of decorations, ran the inaugurations, honored heroes, written or recorded Innumerable messages of encouragement or congratulations.
He replaced his mother more and more with declining health. In May, Charles had delivered in his place for the first time the discourse of the throne in Parliament, one of the constitutional functions of the most important sovereign.
very long wait
Man of passions, Charles occupied the very long wait before accessing the throne – seventy years, a record in the history of the British monarchy. Defender before environmental time, he is also a lover of alternative medicine, passionate about lasting town planning and inspired gardener who speaks to his trees. Since 2007, he has published his “ecological imprint” (Total 3,133 tonnes of co 2 in 2020 against 5,070 in 2019).
He is president or benefactor of more than 420 charitable organizations, the main one, the Prince’s Trust, helped since its creation in 1976 more than a million young people in difficulty.
But he is much less popular than his mother, who was entirely devoted to her role for seventy years and of absolute neutrality. The sinking of her marriage to Princess Diana and her remarriage with Camilla also did a considerable wrong in the 1990s.
Since the death of his father, Prince Philip, in the spring of 2021, and while the queen was less present, Charles tightened the royal circle around him, Camilla, her eldest son William, her youngest brother Edward .