King Charles III Has 'Always Seen Himself as a Victim'—Podcast

King Charles III has considered himself to be a perpetual "victim" who has always been a "work in progress," the monarch's biographer has told Newsweek's latest episode of The Royal Report podcast.

Christopher Andersen, the author of a number of prominent royal biographies including the soon-to-be-released The King: The Life of Charles III, told chief royal correspondent Jack Royston and royal commentator Kristen Meinzer how the monarch's early childhood and relationships with his parents have impacted his personal development.

"Charles' childhood is tragic in a way and really heartbreaking," he said. "From the beginning, he was an abandoned and lonely little boy.

"He saw his parents twice a day for 15 minutes, he was brought in by his nanny Mabel Anderson...other than that, almost no contact with his mother, there's a really touching photograph from years ago where Queen Elizabeth gets back from her first tour of the commonwealth and she's been gone for months, and he rushes up to hug her and she actually shoves him aside because she has dignitaries to greet," he continued.

"Only when she finally does acknowledge him she reaches down and shakes his hand like he was a 40-year-old man."

Charles let his true feelings towards his upbringing be known through an authorized biography he collaborated on with journalist and broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby in 1994. In it, the queen is depicted as a cold and remote figure, devoid of emotional warmth and his father Prince Philip as a domineering and intimidating familial force.

"That was the relationship," said Andersen. "Charles has described his mother as being cold and aloof and his father as being harsh and bullying and I think that really left a scar on him."

Going on to discuss Charles' school life, Andersen said it was a less than happy time for the future monarch as he faced abject bullying and what would today be defined as "hazing."

"He described [school] as 'pure torture' and 'pure hell'," Andersen told Meinzer and Royston. "He was physically abused, emotionally abused, kicked in the head when he snored in the night by his fellow students, berated and belittled, and viewed through today's lens a lot of this would be akin to hazing or behavior that we would not tolerate today...but that went on in the very best English boarding schools, certainly in the 1950s and 1960s."

For Andersen, these less-than-happy early experiences which Charles has carried through into his adult life, are part of what makes him a fascinating biographical subject and, indeed, monarch.

"That's what fascinates me about Charles," he said, "he's always seen himself as a victim.

"Winston Churchill by the way, when he saw little Charles at the age of three, he said, 'he's young to think so much', even then, the very intuitive Winston Churchill could see that this was going to be a special kid."

In spite of this though, the author maintains that unlike his steadfast and self-assured mother who was a "colossus clutching her purse across eight decades and five generations," Charles has never had that strength in who he was.

"Charles has always been a work in progress," he explained to Royston, "he's had to navigate all these very strong emotions he has, he's very paradoxical, we see him almost as more of a man of the 19th century than the 21st and yet he was one of the first people to speak up about the environment and organic farming and urban planning...a lot of things that were thought of as crackpot things...but in fact, we've all come to embrace a lot of this, so he's a very complicated guy and that makes him particularly fascinating as a monarch."

This, however, does not excuse some of the royal's unflattering attributes, including, as Meinzer raised, his infamous temper recently displayed during outbursts over fountain pens following his accession.

"His former valet Ken Stronach would talk in great detail about how Charles would explode and react violently and often," Andersen recounted.

"There was one scene where Charles loses his cufflink, it goes down the sink and he gets so frustrated he literally tears the sink off the wall. He did this on two occasions and another instance where he grabbed a servant by the neck and tried to strangle him...the funny thing is that here he is at 73 years old and he hasn't learned to control that temper.

"We could see it with the eyes of the world upon him...I could not believe that he would have a hissy fit over the fact that his aide had not cleared the desk quickly enough when he was signing those papers [at his accession council]. He must have known the world was looking at him at this moment and yet he still could not control that temper."

Charles' coronation will take place on May 6, 2023 at Westminster Abbey and during the earliest months of his reign has adopted much the same routine of royal business as his late mother the queen. Whether as a more mature monarch he will deviate from this remains to be seen.

The King: The Life of Charles III by Christopher Andersen, published by Gallery Books of Simon & Schuster, will be released on November 8.

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