The Triumph of King Charles

After decades of waiting, the new monarch meets his moment

- By Tina Brown. Photography by Victoria Jones

King Charles III, in solemnity, wearing the St. Edward's Crown and holding the Sovereign's Sceptres in Westminster Abbey on May 6.

As he stood in for his ailing 96-year-old mother at the opening of Parliament in May 2022, it was hard not to catch Prince Charles gazing mournfully at the Imperial Crown next to him on a velvet cushion. The irresistible thought bubble his expression suggested was “Mummy, when?”

Cue trumpets. On May 6, 2023, the 74-year-old man who spent more than five decades in the waiting room of his destiny—longer than any Prince of Wales in history—finally walked through its door. King Charles III by the Grace of God, of the (still) United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of His Other Realms and Territory, Head of the Commonwealth, and Defender of the Faith, had placed on his head by the Most Rev. Justin Welby (Archbishop of Canterbury) the nearly 5-lb. solid gold St. Edward’s Crown at Westminster Abbey. Crowned alongside him was the 75-year-old woman who has herself shown years of shrewd, strategic patience: Queen Camilla. Even the baleful stare of Prince Harry, who blurted late that he would attend the ceremony—but without Meghan— cannot throw shade on the former mistress’s vindication.

The coronation procession, with Queen Camilla, inside Westminster.