A Right Royal Makeover

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Long before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Charles was calling on the West to engage with Islam. "The degree of misunderstanding between the Islamic and Western worlds remains dangerously high, and ... the need for the two to live and work together in our increasingly interdependent world has never been greater," he said in 1993. Even alternative medicine can now be obtained on the National Health Service. "He is always pushing the boundaries, he wants to go further," says farm manager Wilson. "And he takes a very long view."

His communications director, Paddy Harverson, says Charles "works ferociously hard." Last year he had 501 public engagements and wrote 2,300 letters. He never eats lunch (but likes an evening martini, straight up). The directors of his charities receive regular calls (no e-mails, he doesn't use a computer) and notes they call "black spiders" because of his handwriting. "The interest he takes in whether these charities make a difference is intense," says Polly Courtice, co-director of his Business and the Environment Programme. And he gets stuck into the details. "If he had time he would take care of the pigs," says Wilson.

What drives Charles? In an essay he wrote in 2002 he said he had "come to realize that my entire life so far has been motivated by a desire to heal — to heal the dismembered landscape and the poisoned soil; the cruelly shattered townscape, where harmony has been replaced by cacophony; to heal the divisions between intuitive and rational thought, between mind and body, and soul." Like him or not, he is the only member of the royal family in a century who would have been able to string that sentence together and know what the words meant.

His ambition is huge; but there is also a sense among those who know him that the Prince himself may long for some healing. One old friend says "he started out an old soul" whose quest for social and spiritual harmony has roots in the fact that "he has always been lonely, and anxious about life." A more recent associate confirms he is often "concerned and full of worry" — which can spill over into petulance, evident earlier this year when he called royal reporters "bloody people" under his breath, or described a black female employee who requested training for promotion as "so PC it frightens me rigid." A more enduring source of anger, says the associate, is that Charles "remembers the ridicule he took for his ideas from people who now take credit for them." Princes are allowed to be both passionate and petulant. Constitutional monarchs are best if boringly bland. Tristram Hunt, a historian at Queen Mary College, London, thinks Charles has already strayed beyond propriety by frequently lobbying ministers with his ideas and letting some of his disagreements with government policy — over genetically modified food, for example — become obvious. As King, says Hunt, "I'm skeptical he'll suddenly be able to throw away his beliefs." Harverson says his boss "fully understands he can't be a campaigner as King." When on the throne, Charles' charities will be run by others. "He will be a symbol of national unity and continuity."

Camilla will help. Friends say his marriage has calmed him down. Polls show two-thirds of the public approve of the union (though a similar proportion still don't want her to be Queen). He has modernized his office and pays income tax voluntarily. His focus on what we will hand down to future generations makes him an environmental activist, but a constitutional conservative. So it may be that when the time comes, Charles will retreat into a decorum as impervious and uninspiring as his mother's. Which may help explain why he is a workaholic now. The clock is ticking — and Charles is an old soul in a hurry.