Charles the unsupported prince: how the Crown, Meghan and Harry totally collapsed their popularity
They have been rough months for Prince Charles. Not only was he infected with covid-19, but the new season of The Crown revived old wounds in the public and aroused the fury in new generations for his history with Princess Diana.
As if all this were not enough, his son Harry and his daughter-in-law Meghan gave an explosive interview to Oprah Winfrey, where the figure of the Prince of Wales was very badly off.
According to Harry, his father not only cut off his financial aid but also stopped taking his calls. To this were added the sayings of Meghan, who assured that a member of the royal family expressed her concern about the skin tone that her son would have with the Duke of Sussex.
The public immediately began to speculate on who this character would be and many pointed directly to Carlos, whose name had already been hit hard on social media this year.
The show was a reminder to the prince of another interview conducted 25 years earlier that also hurt his image forever. A year after he publicly acknowledged his affair with Camilla Parker Bowles, Princess Diana kept nothing to herself and spoke openly about her experiences with Carlos and the royal family.
In this conversation with the BBC, Princess Diana recalled how a phrase from Carlos about her weight had unleashed in her the bulimia that haunted her for years, she also spoke of her suicide attempts, the little attention she paid to her and how the infidelities were present each day of your marriage.
This was a turning point in the relationship between the public and the prince, who despite trying for years has not managed to regain the affection that people once had for him.
Carlos was born to be king, however, at 72 years old he has not been able to fulfill his destiny. And in that journey, the prince went from being the most coveted bachelor in the world to the least popular member of royalty, with almost no closeness to the people and described by Tom Bower, the author of Rebel Prince, as "petulant and indifferent to moments when it causes harm ”.
Different polls have made it clear that the British would prefer that the Prince of Wales step aside after the death of Queen Elizabeth, and that it was his eldest son, Prince William, who ascended the throne and became the next king. from England.
Camila Parker Bowles, his wife, has not helped clean Carlos's image in front of the public either. In fact, she is precisely one of the main factors in the rejection of the public, who continue to see her as Diana's enemy and as the person responsible for the end of the fairy tale of the princes of Wales.
The fourth season of The Crown precisely addresses this stage in the life of Prince Charles. The chapters of the Netflix series show how the prince was practically forced to find a wife when he was approaching 30 years despite being in love with Parker Bowles.
The series portrays hard moments in their lives and when he began to be jealous of the devotion that the public showed to the princess, compared to the one they felt towards him. Not to mention how Camila was always present in their lives.
The excessive interest of the press in Princess Diana made matters worse and put further pressure on an already difficult situation. In fact Prince Harry assured in his interview with Oprah that he feared that history would repeat itself if they remained as within the royal family.
Lady Di died in 1997 in a confusing car accident in France, while she was being chased by a group of paparazzi who sought to photograph her with her then partner Doddy Al Fayet.
William was 15 years old and Harry 12 when they lost his mother, since then his father and his grandmother became a fundamental part of his life.
In her interview with the BBC Diana revealed that Harry was much closer to her father than her brother, although Carlos was not happy when he learned that her son was a boy, as he expected that she was a girl. The man was so disappointed that a few hours after the baby was born and after leaving Diana at her Palace, he left to play polo with her friends.
Despite this, the relationship between father and son was always good, even when Harry married Meghan and after the controversy with the father of the former actress, the duke asked the Prince of Wales to accompany her to the altar. Today clearly that relationship is broken after Harry's decision to leave royalty and have caused one of the biggest crises of the monarchy in 85 years.
But with everything against it, can Carlos become king?
YouGov, one of the UK's biggest pollsters, conducted two polls in June and December last year to find out how many Britons would rather see the Duke of Cambridge as the next king rather than their father, of course, in a hypothetical scenario.
The clear winner was William, who beat his dad by a significant number of preferences.
“The Crown effect? Prince William now has an eight point lead over Prince Charles in public preference to succeed the queen. William - 40 percent (+2 since June), Prince Charles - 32 percent (-5), ”YouGov tweeted.
But no matter what the polls say and despite popular rejection, when Queen Elizabeth leaves the throne, Charles will automatically become the next king of the United Kingdom.
Carlos Hoy's situation
A few weeks ago a health problem was reported that caused Prince Felipe, husband of Elizabeth II, to be hospitalized "as a precaution", as detailed from the palace.
Immediately that raised a series of rumors around the monarch, some indicating a possible abdication of her at 94 years of her, in case the Duke of Edinburgh died.
For Luis Clemente Quijada, academic at the Faculty of Philosophy and Humanities of the University of Chile, that situation is no more than a rumor, since in his vision the queen has other reasons to continue.
"I believe that the Queen of England is thinking at the moment about dying in office, that is, continuing to play her role until the last of her days as long as her health allows it," he told BiobioChile.
“This has a reason, and it is because she knows that her replacement in the crown, that is, the Prince of Wales, is not the person most loved by public opinion, that is, without doubting Carlos's ability to act as future king, it is clear that public opinion does not accept him as if he wants the current queen, "he added in his analysis.
María Loreto Urbina is a Chilean journalist, a Communication and Journalism scholar at the University of Wolverhampton, who has been living in the United Kingdom for several years; so she has closely followed the reactions in the British people on these latest events.
In his analysis to BioBioChile he assured that the broadcast of the interview with Meghan and Harry, as well as the fourth season of The Crown, did not affect the image that the citizens of that country have regarding the Royal Family, although we have to wait to find out what This will have an effect on Carlos.
“Here the British public continues to support the Royal Family, in fact the monarchy and the queen in particular have a support over 70%, so with the series and with the interview the public supports the monarchy. This interview hasn't changed him, ”she explained.
“Now, looking at one of the biggest polls, which is YouGov, looking at the data that is right now, this week while the Queen and Royal Family have 36% support, Meghan and Harry only have 22%. So the interview did not radically change that vision, ”she analyzed.
“Now, from a communicational and strategic point of view, this interview was focused on the North American public. Not only because he gave it to Oprah, and in a prime time for the United States, but if you look at the issues he touched, such as racism, they fit better in the North American agenda, which has been quite convulsed with the Black Lives movement Matter, for the police abuse in that country ”, he continued.
“In this sense, and going back to the same survey, 47% of British people find that the interview was inappropriate, while 44% of Americans tend to believe Meghan and Harry. If you look at it, this interview was mostly focused on the American public, "she commented.
For Urbina, another interesting situation that this survey reflected was that the youngest public, between 18 and 24 years old, showed greater support for the Dukes of Sussex, while adults over 64 reflected a behavior attached to the monarchy.
“Now, what implications can these have in the future? You have to wait and see what happens, but, as I told you, at this time there is no change to what is the support of the British Royal Family, "she said.
The future for royalty in that country, at least in the medium term, is Carlos and Camilla Parker Bowles. The last, for decades, has been a character that has generated controversy within the body.
For Luis Clemente, Parker Bowles could be another drawback for royalty and his popularity, considering the identification that much of the community had with Charles' ex-wife, Diana of Wales.
“Camilla Parker is also not the person most loved by public opinion, Lady Di was. She is seen as a usurper of what Lady Di should have been, it is also added that Camilla comes from an aristocratic family and currently something that many of the monarchies that subsist are putting into practice is that the princes and princesses do not marry members of the Aristocracy, that is, there is a kind of openness to the people, regardless of their purchasing power or wealth, "he said.
"This is seen as a form of openness or adapting the current monarchies, and in that sense Camilla Parker, coming from an aristocratic family, would join that idea to that rejection that the opinion of her figure has," she added.
For Clemente, the present would not be in favor of Prince Charles on this occasion, also taking into account the possible consequences that The Crown and the interview of the dukes may have on his figure.
“This has resulted in the prince being seen as a person not very fit to be king, a position that he also holds without being chosen by anyone. From that point on, public opinion is much more demanding, that is, "If you are going to inherit a position without us being able to vote for you or remove you, we hope you are a capable and distinguished person," he stressed.
Racist monarchy
For María Loreto Urbina, racism was one of the points of the conversation of the dukes that generated the most discussion in the United Kingdom, although without leaving the Royal Family as a “racist family”.
“What has generated a lot of debate is the issue of racism, and the implication that she had that issue in the coverage that she received in the media while she was a senior royal. It is an issue that not only came up in this interview, in fact in October 2019 some 70 members of Parliament, women, both Conservative and Labor, signed a letter of support to Meghan, for the unfair treatment that, in their opinion, had received in the press ”, he analyzed.
For example Buzzfeed, that same year, compared headlines between Kate Middleton and the coverage that Meghan received. Twenty headlines and most tended to be negative with Meghan. The same was done by The Guardian who titled a story last year, in the same way that Buzzfeed did, that "Meghan could receive twice the negative coverage compared to other members," he said.
It should be noted that, in the same interview with Oprah, Harry claimed to be disappointed in his father, Carlos, hinting that there is currently no relationship between the two.
"I'm really disappointed, because he's been through something similar, he knows what pain feels like and Archie is his grandson," he said.
At the beginning of this year, the dukes had to return some titles and honors to Elizabeth II, after having defined her final departure from her Royal Family.
