His mother is the longest-reigning British monarch in history, but Prince Charles has
been playing the game of thrones for years. What's more, the future king can't completely
erase his past. This is the untold truth of Prince Charles.
Prince Charles and Princess Diana famously met just 13 times before they tied the knot
in 1981. According to The People's Princess, Charles almost blew his chance on their very
first meeting. During an interview with her public speaking coach in 1993, Diana suggested
that she wasn't very impressed with her future husband at the time, and only agreed to see
him after Lord Mountbatten, the Queen's cousin, was killed in an IRA bombing. According to
The Guardian, Diana revealed,
“He chatted me up. He was all over me like a bad rash. Later at a barbecue we were sitting
on this bale of hay together and we were chatting about his girlfriend and Mountbatten and I
said: ‘You must be so lonely.’”
According to Diana, this was when she knew that Prince Charles was interested in her,
and he wasted no time in making a move. As the princess revealed,
"Whereupon he leapt upon me! He was all over me for the rest of the evening. He followed
me like a puppy."
The future king reportedly became even more interested when Princess Diana rejected an
invitation to Buckingham Palace, telling him that she had better things to do than sit
around watching him work. Princess Diana teased,
"I was quite a challenge."
According to Princess Diana's biographer, Andrew Morton, Prince Charles desperately
wanted his second child to be a girl. Morton learned this during a 1991 interview with
the princess, who revealed that Prince Harry's birth in September 1984 changed everything.
She explained,
"Charles and I were very, very close to each other the six weeks before Harry was born,
the closest we've ever, ever been and ever will be...Then, suddenly, as Harry was born,
it just went bang, our marriage. The whole thing went down the drain."
In Morton's book, Diana: Her True Story, the princess revealed that the Prince of Wales
was reportedly disappointed to find out that their second child was a boy. The princess
explained,
"He wanted two children and he wanted a girl."
Despite knowing that she was carrying another boy, Diana kept the news secret, reportedly
concerned about what Prince Charles' reaction might be. According to Diana, when Prince
Harry was born, Charles allegedly said,
"Oh God, it's a boy...and he's even got red hair."
He would later claim that he had been joking, but according to Princess Diana, Prince Charles
reportedly expressed regret yet again about the child being a boy at Harry's christening.
According to Princess Diana, the reason she and Prince Charles became destined for divorce
was simple. She famously told BBC News in 1995,
"Well, there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded."
She was, of course, referring to Camilla Parker Bowles , a woman Charles had fallen for years
earlier. The Prince of Wales reportedly rekindled his relationship with Parker Bowles not long
after Diana gave birth to Prince Harry, and proof of their affair was laid bare for all
to see.
Dubbed "Camillagate" by the British press, an intimate phone call between Prince Charles
and his then-mistress was made public in 1989. To say the leak was an embarrassment for the
two would be a gross understatement. Both parties were still married at the time, and
that was just the tip of the iceberg. The real story here was the content of Prince
Charles' and Parker Bowles' bedtime chat, which wasn't exactly regal. The prince famously
said,
"Oh, God. I'll just live inside your trousers or something. It would be much easier!"
Understandably, the public sided with Diana, while Parker Bowles became known as the most
hated woman in Britain, and labeled as a homewrecker. However, Prince Charles stood by his mistress,
and they finally got married in 2005. Neither Queen Elizabeth II nor Prince Philip attended
the low-key ceremony, but it was still an historic occasion, as Charles was the first
future king to marry a divorced woman.
Prince Charles ignited fury in the United Kingdom and around the world when he shook
the hand of Zimbabwe's notorious president Robert Mugabe at the funeral of Pope John
Paul II in 2005. While Mugabe was a devout Catholic, nobody expected to see him at the
Pope's funeral, because the ceremony took place in Vatican City and Mugabe was banned
from entering the European Union. The president dodged the travel ban and attended the funeral
anyway, surprising a lot of people, including Prince Charles.
According to The Foreign Office, Prince Charles had no idea that he was going to be sitting
just one seat away from Mugabe until he was face-to-face with the controversial leader.
Of the incident, a palace spokesperson told the Independent,
"The Prince of Wales was caught by surprise and was not in a position to avoid shaking
Mister Mugabe's hand. The Prince finds the current Zimbabwean regime abhorrent."
There was a lot of support for Prince Charles from inside the royal household, with one
source telling the Independent,
"There was nothing the Prince could do. If somebody thrusts their hand into yours then
you have no choice. Not shaking would have created more of a scene."
But not everybody showed sympathy. Labour Party politician Richard Corbett openly criticized
Charles, saying,
"This was a golden opportunity to deliberately and very visibly refuse to shake hands with
this man. To fail to do so was, frankly, stupid."
Royals are supposed to maintain a neutral stance when it comes to politics, but Prince
Charles apparently broke that rule repeatedly. Between September 2004 and April 2005, he
wrote a total of 27 letters to various government ministers. These letters, which became known
as the Black Spider Memos because of the royal's distinctive handwriting, were the subject
of a legal battle that lasted a decade, according to the Independent.
While there were calls for the letters to be shown to the public once their existence
was discovered, attorney general Dominic Grieve ruled in 2012 that they should not be released.
According to Grieve, via The Guardian,
“[The Black Spider Memos contain Prince Charles'] most deeply held personal views
and beliefs.”
However, the Supreme Court overruled the decision, and decided that there was no good reason
to keep the memos hidden. So the secret letters were released, and they raised multiple questions
about Prince Charles' alleged conduct. The correspondence confirmed that the future king
had regularly interfered in political decision-making, as The Guardian explained,
"The letters revealed not only that ministers often responded actively to his suggestions
but they appeared to hold his interventions in high regard."
The Black Spider memos showed that Prince Charles had contacted then-Prime Minister
Tony Blair and his staff regarding everything from fishing to military supplies. Critics
pointed out that the prince appeared to pressure the health secretary on the redevelopment
of a hospital, in which his own architecture charity was involved.
"It is rather worrying."
Another big talking point that came about following the publication of the Black Spider
Memos was Prince Charles' passion for alternative medicine. The Prince of Wales complained about
a European Union law that limited the use of herbal medicines in the UK in a letter
to Tony Blair, urging the then-prime minister to do something about it.
It wasn't the first time that Charles' views on medical care made headlines, either. In
2014, he began speaking out in support of Gerson Therapy, a radical alternative for
chemotherapy, in which patients would rely on fruit juice, coffee enemas, and vitamin
injections. According to The Guardian, Prince Charles claimed at a packed healthcare conference,
"I know of one patient who turned to Gerson Therapy having been told she was suffering
from terminal cancer and would not survive another course of chemotherapy. Happily, seven
years later, she is alive and well. So it is vital that, rather than dismissing such
experiences, we should further investigate the beneficial nature of these treatments."
The prince isn't alone in his support of Gerson Therapy, but he's certainly in the minority.
This seemingly natural technique can actually be very harmful, as, according to the American
Cancer Society's website,
"Coffee enemas have been associated with serious infections, dehydration, constipation...and
even death."
Despite heavy criticism, Prince Charles' belief in alternative treatments remains as strong
as ever, and he was named patron of The Faculty of Homeopathy in 2019.
In 2017, a German newspaper got hold of information that lifted the lid on the scale of offshore
banking among the world's elite. Per The Guardian, this outlet was sent a whopping 13.4 million
documents, which would become known as the Paradise Papers, due to the locations of these
accounts, many of which were in the Bahamas, Barbados, Bermuda, and the Cayman Islands.
The papers were all dated between the years 1950 to 2016, and reportedly covered everything
from big companies to individual celebrities. Prince Charles was named in the papers, and
while he technically hadn't done anything illegal, big questions were raised when one
shady-looking investment was discovered.
The leak revealed that the Duchy of Cornwall, Prince Charles' private estate, had purchased
shares in a Bermuda-based company worth around $113,500. There's nothing wrong with that,
of course, but what got people talking was the fact that this company would benefit hugely
from an alteration to climate change rules, a change for which Charles himself had reportedly
been lobbying. The former chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life told
BBC News,
"There's a conflict of interest between his own investments of the Duchy of Cornwall and
what he's trying to achieve publicly. And I think it's unfortunate that somebody of
his importance, of his influence, becomes involved in such a serious conflict."
The palace managed to brush off the story, pointing to the fact that Charles has been
an advocate for climate change action for decades.
"Was it really 40 years ago? It only seems like yesterday."
Letters written by the late Queen Mother to her daughter, Queen Elizabeth II, confirmed
that she wanted Prince Charles to be educated at Eton. According to The Telegraph, the Queen
Mother wrote in 1961,
“I suppose he will be taking his entrance exam for Eton soon. I do hope he passes because
it might be the ideal school for one of his character and temperament."
However, Prince Philip wanted his son to attend the same institution he did, the notoriously
tough Scottish boarding school, Gordonstoun. The Queen Mother wasn't a fan of the boarding
school and wrote,
“However good Gordonstoun is, it is miles and miles away and he might be as well at
school abroad.”
According to fellow students, Charles was relentlessly targeted at Gordonstoun. School
rules were tightened ahead of his arrival, and his classmates reportedly took their frustrations
out on the prince. Daily Mail correspondent Ross Benson claimed,
"He was bullied...He was crushingly lonely for most of his time there. The wonder is
that he survived with his sanity intact."
Meanwhile, author and screenwriter William Boyd, who attended Gordonstoun when Charles
was there, alleged,
"I happen to know, from his own lips, that Prince Charles utterly detested it."
However, Charles appeared to set the record straight about his school days during a speech
in 1975, when he launched his charity, The Prince's Trust. According to The Telegraph,
Charles revealed,
"I am always astonished by the amount of rot talked about Gordonstoun and the careless
use of ancient cliches used to describe it. It was only tough in the sense that it demanded
more of you as an individual than most other schools did, mentally or physically. I am
lucky in that I believe it taught me a great deal about myself and my own abilities and
disabilities. It taught me to accept challenges and take the initiative."
Charles also told The Observer,
"I didn't enjoy school as much as I might have, but that was only because I'm happier
at home than anywhere else."
It's also worth noting that both of Charles' sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, attended
Eton and not Gordonstoun, suggesting that the future king didn't want a repeat of his
own childhood.
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