King Charles a demanding taskmaster

THE honeymoon period for the new King is over as former palace employees have spoken out against the “demanding” British monarch just weeks after he took the throne.

One former member of the household staff described how King Charles has a “fierce temper and a ferocious work ethic” who could go from “zero to 60 in a flash and then back down again”.

“Things would frustrate him, especially the media,” the palace insider told reporter Valentine Low in his new book, Courtiers: The Hidden Power Behind the Crown.

While the King “rarely directs” his anger at individuals, former staffers said he was “very demanding of himself”, worked “seven days a week”, and expected similar of those who worked for him.

“At any moment he may want to call you about something. Working on his boxes, on his ideas, on his papers. The pace is pretty intense,” the former staffer said.

The intimate insight into King Charles’s “enormous stamina” comes as Buckingham Palace revealed The King’s new cypher. The first items of mail were franked with His Majesty The King’s modern heraldry, CR – a monogram which stands for Charles R, short for the Latin Rex, meaning “King, Ruler”.

His Majesty wore his cypher on a tie pin, displaying the letters CR with a crown atop, at his proclamation two weeks earlier.

All correspondence leaving Buckingham Palace, averaging 200,000 items a year, are franked with the Monarch’s cypher.

The erstwhile Queen signed all official documents including invitations to events and responses to letters and cards from the public with the official monogram, previously her initial’s ER, also written as E II R. The R stood for Regina, the Latin for “queen”. The new cypher will be displayed on British coins, stamps, passports, banknotes and police uniforms, and will replace Queen’s royal cypher that has been in place for more than 70 years.