King Charles’ ‘Coronation Year Special’ Will ‘Contradict the Image of Charles as a Remote and Unfeeling Dad,’ Says Royal Expert
A new British television special centering on King Charles‘s coronation year will “contradict the image of Charles as a remote and unfeeling dad,” claims a royal expert. It will instead show the United Kingdom’s king in a manner different than he has ever been previously portrayed within the royal family.
King Charles will be depicted in a very different manner in a new holiday special
Royal commentator Daniela Elser revealed the BBC has been filming King Charles for months. The resulting special will air on Boxing Day in the UK and is called Charles III: The Coronation Year.
The special will show the lead-up to Charles’ coronation. It will share how Charles and Camilla have handled their new jobs thus far.
However, Elser admitted that one element of the special may push royal watchers to the edge. It is the closeness visibly seen between Charles and his oldest son, Prince William, ahead of the coronation.
“A sweet bit of father-son bonding? A shared moment of fun? Again, this all interferes with the version of Charles that Harry has put forth. A cold and distant father who sometimes hung him out to dry,” Elser wrote.
She continued, “Maybe Charles is now doing a much better job as a dad today than he ever did when his boys were grief-stricken and lost teenagers in desperate need of more than a character-building long march in the drizzle in Scotland and an occasional stiff pat on the shoulder.”
Elser claims that the king might have been “a rubbish parent who failed his children, wholly neglecting to provide the emotional and psychological support they needed after the death of their mother but has come good later in life. But still, it looks like that Year, whether intentionally or not, will counteract the image of Charles as a remote and unfeeling dad.”
King Charles is shifting the monarchy’s persona from inaccessible to accessible
This new television special opens up King Charles in a new light. This is a complete shift in the monarchy’s persona from inaccessible to accessible.
Daniela Elser wrote, “This new-found willingness to be open signals a massive shift from the late Queen’s example. It viewed inscrutability as a virtue and a handy way to ramp up the mystique. But mystique doesn’t sell these days; authenticity and vulnerability do.”
She continued, “His Majesty’s willingness to offer such an intimate view of himself as an actual person. Nervous, excited, giggling, rather than an inscrutable signet-ring twiddling cipher, speaks to how big of a fight he has on his hands.” Elser then noted the shift in the monarchy’s popularity among young Britons.
“To that end, Coronation Year is a big, bold bit of marketing. A sovereign’s version of a splashy Super Bowl ad, seemingly geared to reframe his image,” Elser concluded.
Will this King Charles special help the monarch in popularity?
This new special focusing on King Charles could generate a positive uptick in popularity for the reigning monarch. However, as Daniela Elser discusses, will a collective “amnesia” of the royal mishaps of the past few years be so easy to forget?
“So will this rousing bit of pro-Palace promotion, after suffering the slings and arrows of the Sussexes and the disgrace of Prince Andrew, work?” she questioned. “Will The Firm finally be able to engineer a sort of collective public amnesia about all the palaver and pain of recent years? And will anyone under 25 look up from TikTok long enough to form an opinion on all this?”
Charles III: The Coronation Year is a 2023 television documentary film following King Charles III and Queen Camilla in the aftermath of the death and state funeral of Queen Elizabeth II and the events surrounding their coronations. The film will be broadcast on BBC One and BBC iPlayer on Dec. 26, 2023.
