Newswise — It is a role he has been preparing for his entire life.
On Saturday, May 6, Charles Philip Arthur George will be anointed King Charles III of the United Kingdom and 14 other Commonwealth realms.
While he officially became king upon the death of his mother Queen Elizabeth II on Sept. 8, 2022, Charles III will be crowned alongside his wife Camilla, queen consort, during a coronation ceremony at London’s Westminster Abbey—the site of every coronation since 1066.
The religious service will be performed by Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury and leader of the Church of England. It is expected that hundreds of millions of people around the world will watch Charles III be crowned with the St. Edward’s Crown, which was originally made for King Charles II in 1661.
For many around the world, it will be the first coronation they have witnessed.
The last coronation of a British monarch—that of Elizabeth II—was in 1953. As depicted in the popular Netflix series “The Crown,” that service was the first to be televised, and, according to The Royal Family website, was watched by 27 million people in the United Kingdom alone.
Juliana Wheeler, a double alumna of the University of Miami, is the head of financial communications for the Church of England. Having worked for the Church of England for three years, Wheeler shared that it is an enormous undertaking to communicate the coronation and the church’s role.
“Some of this goes back more than 1,000 years,” Wheeler said of the ceremony. “While [the service] will certainly be up to date, there will be some elements that will be recognizable to those who watched 70 years ago.”
A financial journalist by training, Wheeler has lived in London for more than 20 years. During her undergraduate coursework in English literature, she studied Shakespeare and the romantic poets.
“I’ve always been a bit of an Anglophile. Even for those who are not Royalists, people leave other differences aside to celebrate as a community,” Wheeler said of the festivities planned throughout the U.K. over the bank holiday weekend. “I feel really privileged and honored to play a small role—to be part of this momentous occasion.”
Hugh Thomas, a professor in the Department of History and outgoing director of the Center for the Humanities, studies the history of medieval Europe with a focus on England. He currently is working on a 12th-century king, Henry II—the founder of the Plantagenet dynasty that ruled England for more than 300 years. If the history books are correct, Henry II is the 23rd great-grandfather of Charles III.
“A medieval or early modern coronation in England represented a reach change of power since, even with the rise of parliament, the monarch was still the key figure in government,” Thomas said. In the modern age of global politics, the coronation has far less political importance, since the prime minister and the ruling party in parliament run the country, he pointed out.
“Much of this is symbolic, with an emphasis on tradition or perhaps nostalgia,” Thomas noted. “Increasingly, and somewhat at odds with the idea of tradition, it is very much a celebrity event.”
As the longest-serving Prince of Wales—his investiture was celebrated in 1969—Charles III has fully matured in the public eye. His successes and failures played out over “decades of media fixation on the trials and tribulations of the royal family,” said Philip Harling, professor of history in the College of Arts and Sciences.
As Prince of Wales, Charles III was the patron of more than 400 charities, and among his successes, he “has championed environmental concerns for decades, long before it became fashionable,” said John Quelch, the Leonard M. Miller University Professor at the Miami Herbert Business School, who met the monarch more than 20 years ago at a Windsor Castle dinner.
In 2021, the then-Prince of Wales delivered a five-point video message to the Miami Herbert Business School’s Chief Sustainability Officer Summit, where he urged company and industry leaders to work together to accelerate the transition to a more sustainable future.
Charles III has long signaled for a slimmed-down monarchy—one that is more informal, inclusive, and fiscally responsible. But he also has the added challenge of being crowned at an unsettled time, according to Harling.
“High inflation, economic stagnation, growing inequality, and the puzzling uncertainties of the post-Brexit world are preoccupying many Britons—especially younger ones, who are understandably trying to figure out what British identity will come to mean in a post-imperial, post-EU, and indeed possibly a post-UK world,” Harling said.
As for the future of the British monarchy, “like any new leader taking over from a long-serving predecessor, King Charles has to revitalize the monarchy,” said the London-born Quelch. “The British Monarchy remains in good hands and will not merely survive but thrive with King Charles at the helm.”
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