At 73, Prince Charles has spent virtually his entire life in waiting. Queen Elizabeth has shown remarkable longevity (although her mother lived to be 101) as well as resilience. She has had to put up with a vast number of indiscretions in the royal family, most recently Prince Andrew being forced to settle a sex abuse lawsuit that stemmed from his association with Jeffrey Epstein. Yet, most of the royal wrath has been aimed at Harry and Meghan for breaking ranks and making a go of it on their own in LA. Meanwhile, Charles bides his time.
The Queen has passed some of her duties onto him, but most of these had previously belonged to his father. No one is ready to call him King, and many would like to see him abdicate and pass the title onto his eldest son, William, who is far more popular among the English populace. That's unlikely to happen as Charles has been waiting for this moment far too long to pass it over.
Not that he hasn't occupied his time. After a rather cavalier beginning, he settled down more and less, and tried his hand at a great number of things, ranging from architectural criticism to watercolors. I won't get into his marriage with Lady Diana, as it simply becomes too complex and unpleasant to recall.
Lately, he has taken on "affordable housing," if you can call it that. His Poundbury looks like something out of Edwardian times, with the cheapest one-bedroom flat selling for 190,000 quid. You might call it the maid's room.
Charles has been a stern critic of contemporary architecture, admonishing the Royal Institute of British Architects time and again. Much of his wrath was aimed at Sir Richard Rogers, who until his death in 2021 was widely regarded as the greatest living British architect. Charles simply couldn't get his modern forms, favoring traditional architecture instead. So, the Prince set about making his model village in 1993, which now bears fruition nearly 30 years later.
You can take Poundbury or leave it. He enlisted the Luxembourg architect, Leon Krier, who drew up the town plan along the same lines as Seaside, Florida, which he had previously consulted on. It harks back to the more gentle times of England, recalling the virtues of Ebenezer Howard's Garden Cities. I suppose in this sense you can call it sustainable. This movement has been dubbed New Urbanism, and has become very popular among those trying to evoke more simple times. Disney built several villages along these lines in Central Florida, such as Celebration, which takes this urbanism to the level of kitsch.
Granted, modern architecture can be overwhelming at times, but you can achieve these same urban goals with modern forms. Charles Moore did it with Sea Ranch, California, in the 1970s, which looks as fresh today as it did when it was started. In fact, many modern architects have experimented with local vernacular forms, seeing if they can turn them into something fresh and inspiring. The whole point of architecture is to capture the times we live in.
Not so for Prince Charles, he prefers the staid architecture he grew up in, and feels these traditional forms are timeless. He sees Poundbury as his architectural legacy.
I suppose there are worse things he could have done, like become a painter. His watercolors were once on exhibit in Vilnius, and very few local art critics came away impressed, least of all my mother-in-law. She said she did better watercolors in high school. Like his architecture, Charles seems trapped in the past. As bad as they are, they sure do make the rounds. I don't know if this is something he still does, or if the same watercolors are on perpetual tour.
Suffice it to say, Charles in no way represents progress. He isn't going to further the Crown one bit. Rather, he will sink it into an even deeper miasma than it already is. Whether his creative abilities were stifled as a child in that rough boarding school his father shipped him away to, or he simply lacked the creative genius to ever be more than a prince in waiting is anyone's guess.
The worst part about it is that William will now be forced to wait. Hopefully, not as long as his father, but most likely he won't take the throne before he turns 60, as it seems this royal family has remarkable longevity in its genes.
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