“King Carlos III’s Coronation: Navigating Family Drama in the Royal Household”

The imperial mantle (left) and the clothing that King Carlos III will wear at his coronation this Saturday / AFP

King Charles III lives in a palace, travels in a chauffeured Bentley and is one of the richest men in Britain, but he resembles many of his subjects in one very basic thing: his family life is complicated. Very complicated.

There’s a second wife, an awkward brother, and an annoying son and sister-in-law, all with allies who aren’t shy about sharing family secrets with friendly journalists.

The new king will hope to hide those tensions when his regally blended family gathers with more than 2,000 guests for King Charles’ coronation on Saturday May 6 at Westminster Abbey. All will attend with the exception of Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, wife of Harry, one of his children.

How Carlos handles the family drama in the coming weeks and years is crucial to his attempts to preserve and protect the millennium-old hereditary monarchy that he now embodies. Without the respect of the public, the House of Windsor risks ending up on the same page with pop stars, social media influencers and reality TV contestants that it feeds to the British tabloids, undermining the prestige that underpins its role in the public life.

Monarchy historian Hugo Vickers says people need to look past the sensational headlines and focus on what Charles achieves now that he is king.

The horror show was reintroduced to Charles last week when the king’s estranged youngest son, Prince Harry, dropped another round of allegations about the royal family on Tuesday as the coronation approached.

In written evidence of his privacy invasion complaint against a British newspaper, Harry claimed that a decade ago his father prevented him from suing. The prince indicated that Carlos did not want to expose explicit testimony about his extramarital affair with the then Camila Parker-Bowles when he was married to the late Princess Diana. Diana is Harry’s mother and his older brother and heir to the throne, William, Prince of Wales. Camilla, now the queen consort, married Carlos in 2005 and will be crowned with her husband in Westminster Abbey.

If the past is any indication, attention will now turn to body language, seating arrangements and even clothing choices during the coronation, as royal observers look for any signs of easing family tensions.

But Joe Little, editorial director of Majesty magazine, doubts that Harry will have much contact with the rest of his family.

For her part, Camila, initially denigrated by Diana’s followers, worked hard to rehabilitate her image. Her ex-husband and her children are expected to attend the coronation, and her grandchildren will be honorary pages.

While Harry and Meghan moved away from royalty three years ago and moved to California, from where they have been highly critical of the House of Windsor. In a 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey, they hinted at racism at the palace, saying an unnamed member of the royal family had inquired about the color of her son’s skin before he was born.

In a Netflix series from last year, Harry said the episode is an example of unconscious bias and that the royal family must “learn and grow” so they can be “part of the solution rather than part of the problem.”

And then there’s Prince Andrew, Charles’s brother, turned into a time bomb inside the royal family when the world found out about his friendship with financier Jeffrey Epstein, convicted of sexual assault (and who died in prison in 2008). ), and his longtime partner, Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving 20 years in prison in Florida, convicted of recruiting minors for Epstein.

Andrés resigned from his royal duties in 2019 after a disastrous interview with the BBC in which he tried to explain his link to Epstein and Maxwell. His honorary military titles and financial support were taken from him as he prepared to face a civil lawsuit filed by a woman who accused him of raping her as a teenager. Finally, this case was closed with an out-of-court agreement in which Carlos and the late queen paid about 7 million pounds (8.7 million dollars).