Last week, at the state opening of Parliament, King Charles “snapped” at one of the page boys attending to him. These page boys are generally the sons of aristocrats or sons of the well-heeled friends-of-Windsors. The poor kid was just trying to adjust the king’s ridiculous f–king fur robe and Charles tried to swat him away. This was yet another in a long line of public incidents involving Charles’s temper. He got fussy over an inkpot as soon as he became king. He threw a full tantrum over a leaky pen a few days after that. Royal reporter Valentine Low – best known for all of the crazy sh-t he’s said and written about the Duchess of Sussex – even reported fully on Charles’s long history of being ill-tempered, dysfunctional and a horrible manager. He also “falls under people’s spells,” because that’s absolutely what people want in a head of state. Well, the Daily Beast’s Royalist column had a story about the king’s tantrums. Some highlights:
“Charles can have a terrible temper,” says one former employee, “Anything he perceives as incompetence particularly brings it out. He doesn’t suffer fools gladly. In fairness to him, as anyone who has actually worked with him will tell you, he himself is always extremely well prepared, well-read on the subject matter of people he meets and is working with, diligent and respectful of expertise. The counter of that is that he expects other people to show him the same respect; he can certainly go off at the staff in pretty blunt terms when he perceives someone has not done their job properly, or is just being, to use one of his preferred terms, ‘idiotic.’”
The former employee added: “Ultimately, people like working for him, but everyone is under a lot of pressure, because his office is incredibly busy. He’s absolutely not a monster in the office, but he is human, and he snaps sometimes. Unfortunately there is sometimes a camera on him when it happens.”
A friend of Charles and Camilla adds: “He has an irascible streak to be sure, but it is much better since he has been with Camilla. Everyone, regardless of their position or status, experiences everyday irritations, but literally every move, every gesture he makes is scrutinized.”
Another friend of the family said: “A tendency towards temper tantrums runs through the Windsors. Philip had it, Charles has it, William has it, and Harry has it. You wouldn’t believe what used to come out of William’s mouth when he was playing football!”
Penny Junor, a royal biographer who is often perceived as being close to Charles’ camp, has written about his irritability and temper. In her book The Firm, Junor describes Charles as having a “fearsome temper” and noted that he can be difficult to advise because he often prefers to hear agreement rather than impartial advice.
Christopher Andersen, a biographer of the king whose new book The King has been a New York Times bestseller, told The Daily Beast: “The king has a famously volcanic temper, and there are plenty of examples of the tantrums he’s thrown over the years.Once on vacation in the South of France, Charles became so enraged at a stuck window that he threw a chair through it, and then smashed another window when he felt he still wasn’t getting enough fresh air. At Highgrove, Charles used to stand on the porch and shout orders at his gardeners through a green megaphone. I was told repeatedly that you simply could not fall short at your job or he’d let you know in blistering terms that he was not amused.”
Andersen thinks that Charles has “mellowed” since becoming king and receiving a cancer diagnosis, saying: “Facing one’s mortality obviously puts things in perspective. Things like lost cufflinks and having to wait a few extra seconds for a pen seem less important.”
Charles has mellowed since his cancer diagnosis? He literally tried to swat away a child who was trying to help him!! While some of his public incidents were nowhere near what I would call “tantrums,” they were revealing of Charles’s permanent Eeyore status, his inability to simply let go and roll through weird or awkward moments. So what if an inkpot is in the wrong place? So what if a pen leaked a little bit? But Charles’s nature is to complain and then wallow in how everything is going wrong. Anyway, yet another reminder that the Windsors have always treated staff like sh-t and they projected all of their sh-t onto Meghan.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.