“Sit down and shut up.” How Prince Charles Was Raised to Be King
He was three years old when his mother became queen and an avalanche of responsibilities fell upon him. Carol was raised by nannies, a strict, violent father and schools where discipline and violence prevailed. A sensitive, shy, clumsy boy must become a “real man” thanks to them.
The birth of the prince, the son of the “presumptive heir to the throne” – as the “Times” wrote – was confirmed on November 14, 1948 by the roar of salvos and the ringing of bells. Winston Churchill rose from his chair in the House of Commons and offered his best wishes: “Our thoughts go out to mother and father, and especially to the little prince who has come into this world of strife and storm today.” In his speech, Prime Minister Clement Attlee announced: “We will watch with great interest as he grows up, knowing that he will receive an upbringing in his own home based on examples rather than bare orders.”
Prince Philip gave an example of how a man should behave on the day of his son’s birth. When the princess went into labor, her husband played squash in the palace courtyard. “Anxious but composed,” said journalist Dermot Mora.
Carol’s first word: Nanny
When Charles was born, his mother was still a princess, but even then, with many duties and tours of the British Commonwealth, she relieved her father, George VI, who was suffering from cancer. She did not spend much time with her son. After the King’s death in February 1952, an avalanche of tasks fell on the young Queen, so she had even less time for Charles and one-and-a-half-year-old Anna. It goes hand in hand with emotional abstinence. As Philip Eade, author of Prince Philip: The Turbulent Early Life of the Man Who Married Queen Elizabeth II, writes, the queen was “a single parent, almost as much a mother as her own.” Responsibility for raising children and She delegated decisions regarding their education to her husband, Prince Philip. The nannies took care of Carol every day. With one of them, Mabel Anderson, the little prince developed such a strong bond that the first word he uttered was “nanny”.
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After George VI’s death, his four-year-old grandson automatically assumed the title of Duke of Cornwall. He lived with his family at Buckingham Palace, where the Children’s Room occupied six rooms. At the Queen’s insistence, the practice of her children bowing before the King was abandoned. The judgment was interpreted in court as heralding a new era. At the same time, as Philip Eade notes, Elizabeth II’s aloof attitude towards children “seemed very much in the style of the 1930s”.
Prince Charles with his motherGood pictures
A few years old Princess Anne played the Queen’s daughter. For example, when she walked in front of the guards, she quickly noticed that they had given her weapons, so she deliberately walked back and forth. Compared to her sister, Carol is shy, withdrawn and somewhat shy. Years later, he would say of himself:
I am an ordinary man in an extraordinary situation.
As a child, he is always afraid. The first governess assigned to teach him when he was five years old (for two hours every morning) quickly noticed that this polite, serious, precocious boy was also very sensitive and insecure. – If someone raised a voice to him, he hid in a shell and for a long time nothing reached him – she recalled many years later. He acted as if he wanted to please everyone around him. Father first.
Prince Charles with his parents and Princess Anne, summer 1951Good pictures
“Sit down and shut up”
Prince Philip has often been heard to say of his son: “I want him to be a real man.” He bought Charles a cricket bat for his first birthday, according to a News Chronicle reporter. He entrusts his son’s care to Mabel Anderson and fires the nanny, who has had too much of the boy’s taste. He – although kind and gentle by nature – can be firm and ruthless, unable to refrain from hitting if necessary. Carol became so attached to her that she became a “surrogate mother” to him.
When Prince Philip scolded his son, he easily made him cry. Even at Balmoral, where Charles was very happy and the family spent much time hunting, hiking and playing, Charles remained quiet and modest. This irritated my father. He supported the energetic, temperamental Anna and scolded and ridiculed his son for even the slightest mistake in front of his family and friends.
In the accounts of those who witnessed it, the words “disgrace”, “indescribably harsh behavior”, “the tyranny of the son” appear. “Prince Philip was tearing up his throat, screaming, and Charles was trembling in front of him,” said an anonymous court official. Cousin Lady Mountbatten tried to justify it years later. She said the prince “saw that Charles was a terribly sensitive boy” but “he was going to have a lot of problems”. So Philip “thought he had to help him not mind a lot of the things that kids do. (…) I’m sure he wanted to help him be tough. But in retrospect, I think he might have overdone it sometimes. He was a bit tricky. ” It is also worth noting that the queen did not stand up for her son to witness these circumstances.
Charles himself did not deny that his father was strict with him. In her first interview with the BBC in 1969, she was asked if Prince Philip would ever tell her to “sit down and shut up”. He replied, “Yes, all the time.” After a moment of silence, she added: “I think he had a huge impact on me, especially when I was younger…”. But he remembers many good moments. He recalls his father reading the romantic poem “The Song of Hajawata” and taking him to see famous people such as actor James Robertson Justice and sailor Ufa Fox, which had a great impact on the boy. They enjoyed hunting and fishing trips together.
The heir to the throne and the “normal” school
According to a media release from “Her Majesty and the Duke of Edinburgh,” Charles was eight years old when he decided he wanted to start attending school with other children. The queen insisted on it, wanting her son to enjoy as “normal” a life as possible. Hill House Preparatory School in London was selected. Facility officials were forced to treat the prince like a normal child, but the first school showed that no one would treat the queen’s son that way. When the Prince drew the picture on the first day, newspapers across Britain wrote about it, and the Daily Mail offered a large sum of money to publish it. Going to the pool? The heir to the throne was not allowed to use the public swimming pool, so every week two black taxis took the prince and his friends to the swimming pool at Buckingham Palace.
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