London, Sep 14 (EFE) .- The pressure to which King Charles III is subjected, who in the same week has lost his mother and has ascended to the throne after waiting for decades, has begun to take its toll on him in some public events, in which he has been irritated by small details of the protocol.
Social networks are burning with a video in which the 73-year-old monarch loses patience when he is signing the guest book at Hillsborough Castle, the official seat of the Northern Ireland Government. “For God’s sake, I hate this pen,” snaps Carlos III, after staining his hand with ink.
The monarch gets up from the table and, visibly angry, continues to express his frustration: “I can’t stand this damn thing! (…) They do it every fucking time!”, he complains while wiping himself with a handkerchief.
Carlos III’s anger had started a few seconds before, when he realized that he had signed with the wrong date. Exasperated, the monarch leaves the room without waiting for Camila, queen consort, who has yet to stamp her signature on the document.
THE PERSONALITY OF THE KING UNDER THE MAGNIFYING GLASS
This is not the first setback that Carlos III suffers with stationery items in the first six days of his reign. In the ceremony in which he was officially proclaimed sovereign, under the watchful eye of several former British prime ministers and the leadership of the State, Elizabeth II’s eldest son lost his temper with a misplaced inkwell.
His impatient gesture for an assistant to quickly move the object that prevented him from signing comfortably also went around the world and triggered the first speculations about the personality of the new king.
Also under scrutiny in the British media is his decision to lay off the hundred employees who worked at his official residence as heir apparent, Clarence House, once he became king, some of whom will be relocated to other posts.
Comparisons with her mother, Elizabeth II, who during her seven decades on the throne maintained the image of a discreet sovereign, diplomatic and oblivious to personal controversies, have been inevitable.
His eldest son, on the other hand, has been involved in numerous controversies during his time as Prince of Wales and has interfered in political affairs from which the queen had always stayed away until now.
Speculation about some of his interference was confirmed in 2015, when the Supreme Court ordered the publication of a series of documents, baptized by the press as the “black spider” letters, which the now king sent to ministers and senior officials for years of the Government to pressure in favor of certain political interests.
The then heir to the throne abandoned in these texts the traditional neutrality of the monarchy and expressed his concerns on agricultural matters -among the properties he controls are numerous farms and holdings-, laws on genetic modification, global warming, social issues, as well as on urban planning and architecture.
GOOD TUNING IN NORTHERN IRELAND AND SCOTLAND
Despite the protocol fiascoes he has been involved in in recent days, Charles III has shown good harmony with the political leaders of Scotland and Northern Ireland in his first visits as monarch to both British nations.
At Edinburgh’s Home Rule Parliament, he received a warm welcome from the chief minister, pro-independence Nicola Sturgeon. “Your Majesty, we are prepared to support you, while you continue with your life of service”, declared the leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP), who praised the figure of Elizabeth II, whom she referred to as the “queen of the Scots”.
The trip to Belfast was also peaceful, despite the fact that the memory of the assassination by the IRA in 1979 of Luis Mountbatten, great-uncle and mentor of Carlos III, hovered in the atmosphere.
The new king, who visited the site of that death in 2015 and then launched a message of reconciliation to “heal wounds”, held affable talks on Tuesday with representatives of Sinn Féin, the former political arm of the now inactive IRA and the main Northern Irish party since May elections. They, for his part, conveyed condolences on the death of his mother.
One of the most talked about moments of the visit was a talk with Republican leader Alex Maskey. “You are now the main party, aren’t you?”, comments the king, to which Maskey replies, with some complicity: “Don’t you tell Jeffrey that now”, in reference to Jeffrey Donaldson, unionist leader, who He watched circumstantially from a short distance.
Guillermo Ximenis
(c) EFE Agency