King Charles Didn’t Want to Solidify Queen Elizabeth Regency Plans: ‘You Are Tempting Fate’ — Biography
King Charles III standing in for Queen Elizabeth II as regent? The idea, according to a new royal biography, wasn’t a welcome one for the 75-year-old monarch. King Charles “didn’t want to dwell on the details” of possibly having to stand in for his mother in the years before the queen died on Sept. 8, 2022.
Queen Elizabeth regency discussions
In his latest biography, The Making of a King: King Charles III and the Modern Monarchy, author Robert Hardman claimed talk of a potential regency had been going on for years behind palace walls.
By 2022, the queen, a friend said, per a Daily Mail excerpt, realized she wasn’t going to make it to 100. Therefore, “she’d been determined to make the most of that [final] year.’”
Hardman also wrote that long before her declining health became more apparent, there’d been “serious and detailed thought” given to the “prospect of a regency, whereby Prince Charles might stand in for her if she was incapacitated.”
“You would still have needed a near-full Queen’s household and a near-full Prince’s household,” a senior royal aide said. “And it would have been very hard for the regent.”
“I always hoped it wouldn’t happen while I was there. But I didn’t see how we could get out of it, to be honest.”
Amid fears the queen may collapse during a public appearance or slowly decline in heath were “growing voices” for a regency.
“We dreaded something happening in public,” an aide sai. “So engagements were kept very tight and very short, with limited media.”
King Charles was ‘extremely reluctant’ to discuss taking over for the queen as regent
Hardman continued, writing: “Aides would always find Prince Charles extremely reluctant to engage on the subject.”
Every so often, they’d create a number of regency options. They ranged from “’regency-light’ (with minimal princely involvement) and ‘reversible regency,’ in the event of short-term incapacitation.”
“All the possibilities” were considered. As long as it was on the subject of a possible regency, Charles, however, was hesitant to discuss it.
“You could turn up with all the papers, and he would say, ‘Have you been through it all? Are you happy with this?’ and that would be that,’” an aide said.
“He didn’t want to dwell on the details … I think he felt that if you reach out for something, you are tempting fate.”
Hardman also noted planning for King Charles’s ascension and crowning — his coronation took place on May 6, 2023, at Westminster Abbey — started in late 2015 after the U.K. government had long been “gently lobbying” his staff to outline a plan.
King Charles never stepped in as regent for the queen
Queen Elizabeth died at the age of 96 without her oldest son and heir ever serving as regent. As Hardman shared, the queen’s final days included work.
Queen Elizabeth had a red box — the traditional briefcase-style leather box containing government papers for the monarch to review — next to her bed when she died.
In it, the author wrote, “was the last completed homework of the longest reign in history” — the queen’s picks for the six individuals to join the Order of Merit — along with sealed letters to King Charles and her private secretary, Sir Edward Young.
