On September 8th 2022 Charles Philip Arthur George of Windsor ascended the throne of the United Kingdom of England and Northern Ireland, succeeding his Mother, the late Queen Elizabeth II in line to inherit, assuming the royal title of Charles III. The seventy-three-year-old English nobleman was the longest-lived heir to the throne in the history of England: this has meant that, in the collective imagination, his representation of “eternal son of the Queen”, elegant, cultured and esthete, was consolidated much more than a future monarch, almost resigned to abdication in favor of Prince William once Elizabeth had made her earthly journey.

For a long time, and still today for many, his image has been clouded by the strong mediaticity of his first wife, Princess Diana Spencer, who after her tragic death has continued to be present, as a cumbersome term of comparison, among the people and events of the Crown of England over the past forty years. Not an easy mission, that of Charles, to free himself from clichés and to carve out a role and an identity in the Windsor family, originating from the Hanover, direct descendants of the Welfen, a name later Latinized in Guelphs, of Germany. A mission, in fact, accomplished in an excellent way. Charles has had 70 years to study and prepare to become King, and his curriculum in recent years has been extremely rich, distinguishing himself in military activity and holding about 560 official positions representing the Royal Family. He has been involved in philanthropy and charitable activities, founding The Prince’s Trust in 1976; he has been involved in architecture and urban planning, through The Prince’s Regeneration Trust and The Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment; he has also committed himself to activities in support of the development of alternative medicine and in concrete humanitarian aid, in support of the poorest populations or those discriminated for racial reasons, as widely and constantly documented by the international press. But perhaps the activity that Charles followed with the most visible and constant commitment was that in support of the environment and the sustainable exploitation of the wealth that nature offers to us: some may have ironically smiled when, since the 1980s, then Prince Charles began to devote himself to organic farming in the garden of his Highgrove House residence; an irony that turned into admiration when in 1990 he transformed his vocation into a thriving and profitable commercial company that makes biodiversity an added value appreciated all over the world. Charles was subsequently involved in numerous entrepreneurial development projects in the agricultural sector, author of books and papers, founder of a support program in favor of English sheep farmers. Well before the famous speech to the European Parliament in 2008, on the urgency of putting concrete solutions to climate change, Charles’ commitment to protecting the environment was constant: in 2006, the Director of the Harvard Medical School’s Center for Health and the Global Environment, motivated Charles’ Global Environmental Citizen Award: “For decades the Prince of Wales was a champion of the natural world … He was one of the world leaders to bring more and more efforts towards energy efficiency and reduce the discharge of toxic substances on the ground, in the air and in the oceans “. The Order of the Guelph Party pays homage and honors the accession to the throne of England of a personality with such a modern and concrete vision of collective well-being, a worthy Heir of the Guelph family to which we humbly refer too, thanks to the gracious investiture of pope Clement IV and the political will of the Grand Duke Cosimo I of Medici, in our daily commitment in defense and protection of the environment, of the weak and of the beauty of Creation.

Long live King Charles III!

 

Author

Marco Crisci