Charles III is a 21st-century philosopher king
From architecture to faith, our new monarch is a learned man whose views will deeply impact all of us
Amodern King has virtually no political power, but great influence if he wants it. Little has changed in that regard since Walter Bagehot christened the trifecta of monarchic rights in The English
Constitution (1867): to be consulted, to encourage, and to warn. King Charles III, as the longest-serving heir-apparent in history, wields that influence keenly.
There is no modern-day hope for Plato’s philosopher king, but the King has already earned that title in the literal sense. He has long expounded a perennialist philosophy: the view that various religious traditions, despite their differences, partake in a shared metaphysical truth from which all wisdom proceeds. A patron of the pedagogical charity Tenemos Academy, he has publicly acknowledged “a need for those who can rise above the clamour, the din, and the sheer pace of our lives to help us to rediscover those truths that are immutable and eternal”. His Majesty’s critique of the frenetic and hedonic state of living in a globalised, consumerist culture is not limited to esoteric philosophising: as the “Black Spider” memos revealed, it has accompanied a long career of environmental activism and humanist advocacy.
The King’s famous foray into urban planning, Poundbury, is the subject of aesthetic contention. For some, its meticulous neoclassical style seems uncanny, an overcorrection of stark cityscapes. But its unification of environmentalist principles (carbon neutrality, pedestrianism and sustainable housing) with an aesthetic of longevity (Roman facades and traditional market-town layouts) is an undeniable feat. The town has enjoyed civic success, with impressive transport links to nearby Dorchester and relatively low car usage.
The King’s localist environmentalism by no means smacks of parochial politics. In 1994, he seemed to indicate his preference for the title “Defender of Faith”, departing from the epithet’s prior Anglican exceptionalism. This nod to religious pluralism, at the time divisive, was neither a glib political platitude nor a radical vision of a syncretistic state religion; it expressed the King’s refusal to see contradiction where convergence might be found.
It also reflected his sincere private interests in religious traditions spanning Prayer Book liturgy to Eastern Orthodoxy (the religion of his paternal grandmother) to Islam: he has frequently spoken on Quranic teaching at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies and held ecumenical meetings with Orthodox Patriarchs. A patron of World Jewish Relief and the Jewish Lads’ and Girls’ Brigade, his advocacy for religious minorities in the UK and across the world is notable. A minority group is, by definition, relative to the prevailing culture of a given nation: Christianity may be the state religion in this realm, but in the Middle East and North Africa, as the King has acknowledged more vocally than most UK politicians, Christians suffer persecution and genocide.
The Coronation solemnised the historicising aesthetics and interfaith relations which the King has long fostered. Sikh, Hindu, Muslim, and Jewish peers presented the Regalia and tributes were given by religious leaders including Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis and the Most Venerable Bogoda Seelawimala.
Music played a central role in honouring the King’s past: a performance by the Byzantine Chant Ensemble paid tribute to the King’s paternal family, while Sir Bryn Terfel’s Welsh language rendition of Kyrie Eleison recalled the King’s long service as the Prince of Wales, which saw him learn Welsh in his youth.
The King’s eclecticism might confirm Desmond Maccarthy’s quip that the English are defined by a “determination to have it both ways”. While the King has called for a “slimmed down” monarchy, with plans to limit the number of working royals, his Coronation reminded us of those symbolic aspects of the Crown which have endured in the face of widespread agnosticism regarding the sovereign’s claim to transcendent authority and growing hostility towards monarchy’s trappings.
The King, like the late Queen, was anointed out of the viewer’s sight by the Archbishop of Canterbury as God’s representative in this country, while a soaring accompaniment of Handel’s Zadok the Priest marked the ceremony’s roots in the story of King Solomon. The anointing screen paid homage to the commonwealth’s 56 member states and featured the same emblem that adorned Elizabeth II’S Coronation canopies: two mounted eagles, redolent of the emblem of the Byzantine Empire.
In the King’s 2003 eulogy for his spiritual director, the poet and Platonist Kathleen Raine, he quoted William Blake, who wished to “[reverse] the premises of materialism […] that we should understand that the cosmos is not a mechanism, but a living, sacred universe and that ‘Everything that lives is holy’”. In a time marked by disenchantment and doubt even in the social utility of monarchy, the King has shown commitment to that sanctifying philosophy and to the fact that “everything” leaves no exception.