The pandemic has been the making of our future king
The Prince of Wales’s bank holiday message to the nation was that grandparents should take children upwards of seven to the ballet and opera, a sentiment inspired by a trip to the Royal Opera House with the Queen Mother that gave him a lifelong love of the performing arts.
It’s a dedication I witnessed first-hand when he and the Duchess of Cornwall occupied the Opera House’s royal box to watch David Mcvicar’s Aida – less Verdi’s story of boy meets girl plus elephant, more an orgiastic riot of muscular youths being eviscerated by topless priestesses.
The Prince’s eyes remained fixed on the stage, the audience’s on him.
In challenging circumstances, the Prince didn’t put a foot wrong – something he has stuck to since this crisis began, this weekend’s boost for the arts being the latest evidence of his septuagenarian turn as man of the moment, finally en route to becoming man of the people. For, as his grandfather, George VI, had a “good war” so Prince Charles is having a “good pandemic”. For a start, he’s had the thing, quietly getting over it with seven days of self-isolation; a display of solidarity that served as a leveller.
Moreover, unlike Boris “I shook hands with everybody” Johnson – there wasn’t any suggestion that the Prince hadn’t been taking all necessary precautions. Indeed, in early March, he was caught on camera proffering the hand he has been extending on our behalf for a lifetime, before snatching it back. More importantly, the timing of his diagnosis – announced on March 25, pre-boris, to national and international shock – will have saved lives by encouraging millions to take isolation seriously.
Re-emerging, the Prince did exactly what one would have wanted of him: expressing sympathy for those worse off, praising carers and (oft-forgotten) supermarket employees, and raising concern about the elderly; presciently given that the care-home scandal had yet to break. “None of us can say when this will end, but end it will,” he assured us, sounding every inch his mother’s
He is the man of the moment, finally en route to becoming man of the people
son. A week later, he read part of William Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey on Radio 4, prompting listeners to joke that he was rather better at this voice-over thing than a certain actress in the family.
To mark their anniversary, he and Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall released a photograph of themselves with their dogs, correctly reading the nation’s mood that our hounds were getting us through. Days later he was rightly reminding us we should never take our 80,000 farmers for granted and praising the morale-booster that is viral videos. Finally, movingly, to mark the start of Ramadan, Prince Charles spoke of being “utterly heartbroken” at the death of 13-yearold Ismail Mohamed Abdulwahab alone in hospital, his family forced to keep their distance.
He also drew attention to the number of Muslim carers who had lost their lives at a time when more than 16 per cent of those who had died testing positive for the virus were from black, Asian and minority ethnic communities.
Later, for the VE Day celebrations, he read aloud his grandfather’s diary entry for the occasion; history, legacy, very clearly on his mind.
This global horror will provide another generation-defining moment. The question: “What did you do during the pandemic?” will be asked and the Prince has his answer.
Like his beloved grandmother, who could claim to be able to “look the East End in the eye” after Buckingham Palace was bombed, the Prince has held his own during the coronavirus crisis, having “quietly participated in the life of all the nation”, as his biographer David Dimbleby once put it.
These quiet, decorous, sincere efforts have been all the more noticeable because the world of celebrity has acquitted itself so lamentably, driven to crazed attentionseeking by lack of an audience. The Hollywood branch of his own family could also learn a lesson or two, as could dramamongers Johnson and Cummings.
Things that once seemed whacko about the heir to the throne are now mainstream: his eco-obsession, his multi-faith thing, the sensitivity that earned him the nickname “Prince of Wails”. Sure, there’s stuff to satirise, but better an eccentric grandparent than an ageing playboy prince, as his younger brother has taught us. The Queen was always going to be a tough act to follow; her son may not inspire the Pacific cult devoted to his father. However, if the nation is now able to like Prince Charles, it can learn to love him as
King.