King Charles's whole life has been a prelude to this moment, and the future of the monarchy rests on his ability to rise to it.
Seated between his newly widowed grandmother, the Queen Mother, and his aunt Princess Margaret, the next in line waited while a hush fell over the room.
A young Prince Charles was among the crowd ensconced inside Westminster Abbey as his mother moved to take her place in what was once King Edward I's chair.
As England gained a new ruler, echoes of "God save Queen Elizabeth" rang out in the opulent hall.
Outside millions celebrated, having flocked into the streets, poured into bars and crowded around television sets in the hopes of getting a glimpse of their new monarch.
It marked the beginning of a new era for England.
But for a prince not yet five years old, it was also the start of what would be an all-consuming duty as heir to the throne.
The crown that rested on his mother's head would one day be his.
Some 69 years later, as he finally ascends to the throne, his life's ambition will be realised.
At the ripe age of 73, he will take over from England's longest-serving monarch.
And yet the glory of his ascension will be tempered by the expectation now upon him, and the importance of carving his own path.
The sensitive prince
Prince Charles was born at Buckingham Palace on the evening of November 14, 1948, and from that moment on his life was carried out in the public eye.
As his mother rested, Charles was ushered into a ballroom by his midwife for a viewing in front of the royal courtiers who served his grandfather — the King having removed the custom that a home secretary or minister be present for the birth.
Late night news broadcasts announced Princess Elizabeth "was safely delivered of a prince".
His father, who had reportedly been playing a round of squash with his secretary, declared his new son resembled "a plum pudding".
The royal birth was a welcome morale boost for a gloomy, post-war Britain struggling to get back on its feet.
Crowds gathered outside the palace throughout the night, and the water in the fountain in Trafalgar Square turned blue.
Secured of an heir, a spare to the throne shortly followed in a sister, Princess Anne.
However, just a year after her birth, Charles and his family's lives would irrevocably change when Elizabeth was thrust into the position of ruler upon the death of her father.
The newly crowned monarch soon became absorbed with the role, leaving her less time to spend with her young children.
They were left in the care of nursery staff, who witnessed Charles's first steps and helped raised him, the prince later told his biographer Jonathan Dimbleby.
Charles worshipped his mother, but mostly from afar.
She was a "remote and glamorous figure" who would come to kiss him goodnight, "smelling of lavender and dressed for dinner," he told Dimbleby.
Yet the sensitive boy prince was close to one member of the royal family: the Queen Mother, who gave him hugs and taught him "how to look at things".
Throughout his childhood, she remained a source of affection and guidance to him.
Charles would visit her at Clarence House, where he would eventually also make his home.
A timorous, "sickly" child, Charles suffered several bouts of ill health, from sinus infections to hospitalisation for a tonsillectomy while at boarding school, Sally Bedell Smith wrote in her book Prince Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life.
His illnesses often failed to bring forth a visit from his parents, including when Charles was bedridden with a new flu virus that had swiftly spread across the world.
Charles received a letter in place of a visit from the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh.
The couple were busily preparing for a royal tour of Canada, Bedell Smith wrote, and had sent their son a letter to say goodbye.
Philip's "forceful personality" in particular was at odds with that of his son, and his "mocking banter" brought Charles to tears "particularly at social gatherings," according to Dimbleby.
The Duke of Edinburgh thought his son was in need of "toughening up" and shipped Charles off to Gordonstoun at age 13, hoping it would shape his son as it had done himself.
Nestled in the north-east of Scotland, Gordonstoun was a remote school founded on the idea of emancipating "the sons of the powerful" from their privileged upbringings.
Students were encouraged to go for long runs before breakfast and take cold showers.
For Charles, the school was a "prison sentence" where he found himself the target of bullies, experiencing a "crushing loneliness" and longing to be at home with his family.
The prince had "middling success" at his coursework, according to Bedell Smith, and was drawn to more creative pursuits like poetry, painting and the stage.
He later seemed to have had a change of heart about the place he once described as "Coldie in kilts" — a reference to a notorious German castle used to house high-value British prisoners during World War II.
He reflected in 1975 that Gordonstoun "was only tough in the sense that it demanded more of you as an individual than most other schools did — mentally or physically".
"I am lucky in that I believe it taught me a great deal about myself and my own abilities and disabilities. It taught me to accept challenges and take the initiative," he added.
They were two lessons Prince Charles appears to have carried with him for the rest of his life, as he sought to find meaning in his position as next in line.
The making of the Prince of Wales
It was during a semester abroad as a teenager in Australia that the young prince enjoyed his education the most.
While at Timbertop in Victoria, Charles was liberated, taking comfort in a place where there is "no such thing as aristocracy or anything like it".
Loosely based on the same ideals as Gordonstoun, Charles — who had wondered whether people would like him at his new school — thrived under a different environment.
He undertook cross-country expeditions, watched the sun set on mountain ridges, and endured freezing nights evading the bite of bull ants while sleeping in his tent.
"He was shy, naturally diffident, extremely dutiful, very kind," his tutor Michael Collins-Persse told the Age in 2005.
From Australia it was back to Gordonstoun, where he was made head boy, and on to Cambridge, where Charles studied at Trinity College.
The master of the college, Rab Butler, insisted that Charles would receive no "special treatment," though he was allowed to undertake a specially tailored degree.
Charles took part in plays, studied archaeology and embraced independent thinking while at university.
He graduated with a 2.2 honours degree in history, an average result at Cambridge at the time.
It was Butler's opinion that Charles would have done much better if he hadn't had to carry out royal duties.
But duty came part and parcel of life as a royal, and Charles's studies happened to coincide with an important historical moment.
Plans were in motion for his formal investiture as Prince of Wales and Charles was sent to the University of Aberystwyth to learn more about Welsh language and culture in preparation for the event.
Tensions were high on the eve of the investiture ceremony.
Many were supportive of the investiture at Caernarfon Castle, but Welsh nationalists had condemned it as a symbol of centuries of English occupation of Wales.
Hours before it was set to take place, two Welsh extremists set out to plant a bomb near the Abergele railway.
The prince was due to use the railway to travel along the rugged coast of North Wales to the ceremony.
But the bombs went off before they reached their target, killing both men.
The ceremony went ahead as planned.
Everything from the order of arrival of the royal family to the carrying of the Great Sword of State was steeped in tradition.
As the Queen bestowed Charles with the girdle, sword, coronet, ring, rod and kingly mantle — in that specific order — he pledged his allegiance to her.
"I, Charles, Prince of Wales do become your liege man of life and limb," he said.
The ceremony introduced the man who would one day be king to the world, with the investiture watched by millions.
But privately Charles was grappling with the uniqueness of his position.
"[My childhood] is a disadvantage I suppose in the sense one is trying to lead as normal a life as possible at school and Cambridge, but it's not a disadvantage if you're leading a sheltered life," he said in a television interview in 1969.
The 'action man'
It was during these formative years that Charles found an adviser and confidant in Lord Louis Mountbatten.
"Uncle Dickie" represented the grandfather Charles never had, and someone he relied on as as he struggled to reconcile a normal life with his destiny as a future king.
It was also Dickie who rakishly encouraged Charles to "sow his wild oats and have as many affairs as he can".
The young prince followed in the footsteps of his father, grandfather, and great-grandfathers by embarking on a career in the Royal Navy.
He served on the frigate HMS Jupiter as part of its Pacific voyage, having scraped through a condensed course of training — just six weeks instead of the customary three months at the Royal Naval College.
Though he worked hard, the prince struggled with the technical details of the job.
"His shortcomings were conspicuous compared to those of his father and Mountbatten, both of whom excelled at navigation," Bedell Smith writes.
As a sensitive man prone to bouts of "self doubt", Charles was often reminded of the divide between him and the men he served with.
Special requirements were made to ensure his personal protection officers remained with him while he was onshore.
Regardless, Charles continued to serve, completing his Pacific tour before serving as a pilot on board the HMS Hermes.
In his final few months, he was given command of his own ship. Once again, Charles was given a glimpse of a "normal life".
"The in-built hierarchies of the military mean that it almost supersedes the hierarchy that makes people bow and scrape to them. They actually have real jobs to do and real jobs where they have camaraderie with people," royal biographer Catherine Mayer says.
As next in line, Prince Charles also cut ribbons and unveiled plaques up and down the country and travelled to far-flung corners of the globe to represent his mother.
"In the 1970s all they saw was 'action man' — a label he detested — playing polo, vaulting fences on horseback and dashing around the world," Bedell Smith wrote.
It was a stark contrast to the spiritual transformation Charles had undergone.
The prince was drawn to the work of Laurens van der Post, a celebrated South African author, filmmaker and lecturer, and became interested in psychotherapy and Eastern religions.
By 1976, Charles finished his service and used his 7,400 pounds severance pay to fund another pet passion he was pursuing: The Prince's Trust.
Within a year, he would also meet his future wife.
From fairytale couple to affairs and tragedy
When Charles met Diana Spencer in 1977, the defining chapter of his life to that point would begin.
She was just 16 at the time, and Charles 29.
"We sort of met in a ploughed field," Diana recalled in an interview following their engagement in 1981.
She confessed to author Andrew Morton in later years that her first thought upon meeting the Prince of Wales was: "God, what a sad man."
He, on the other hand, was struck by what a "very jolly and amusing and attractive 16-year-old she was".
As Charles approached his 31st birthday, grieving the loss of his mentor Mountbatten, who was assassinated in August in Northern Ireland, pressure was mounting on him to find a suitable bride.
Charles began to think seriously of Diana.
She was sensitive, sweet and tender with children. And the Spencers were one of England's oldest families, their bloodlines long entwined with the royal family.
An invitation to Balmoral in September 1980 confirmed their courtship, setting the tabloid press into a frenzy.
Articles proclaimed Charles had met his love and Diana would be the next queen.
Some months later, however, the intense public scrutiny of the couple took a scandalous turn.
The Sunday Mirror published a story suggesting the pair had spent two nights together on the royal train in Wiltshire.
A tabloid claimed Diana was smuggled onboard "the Love Train" and spent a number of hours with Prince Charles "in the carriage normally used by the Duke of Edinburgh".
The report drew the ire of the Queen, prompting a rare response from the palace. Her Majesty's press secretary, Michael Shea, declared the story "a total fabrication!" He demanded an apology.
But the Sunday Mirror stood by its story and the damage was done.
Prince Philip eventually gave his son an ultimatum to marry Diana or give her up.
Dimbleby wrote that the duke argued Diana had "no past" and was young enough to be moulded into the future queen.
The prince apparently clung to these calculations amid a state of emotional confusion, as "the pressures on him began to sweep him toward his destiny".
In asking for her hand, Charles had hoped to give Diana time to mull it over. He was said to be taken aback that she accepted almost immediately.
Their engagement was kept a secret until an official announcement was made, when the prince delivered the now unforgettable response to a question about whether they were in love.
"Whatever in love means," he responded.
Wrapped up in his duties, Prince Charles was often called away in the lead up to their wedding.
The pair had only met "13 times" before they got married on July 29, 1981.
The wedding took part in front of 3,500 guests and 750 million viewers worldwide.
The UK declared it a national holiday as many gathered at street parties across the country to celebrate the bride and groom.
It marked a high point in the popularity of the royal family.
To the press, they were the perfect couple, their love portrayed as an epic fairytale: the young Princess Diana cast as Cinderella to Charles's Prince Charming.
But as they performed their roles — giving interviews, smiling for the cameras and embarking on tours around the world — cracks soon started to appear in their marriage.
Their 12-year age gap, dissimilar interests and lack of mutual friends were difficult to overcome.
There had been their tour of Australia, where Prince Charles had apparently simmered with jealousy over his wife's growing popularity.
"He was jealous; I understood the jealousy but I couldn't explain that I didn't ask for it,' she told Morton years later.
As their relationship deteriorated, Charles wrote to an unidentified friend: "How awful incompatibility is, and how dreadfully destructive it can be for the players in this extraordinary drama."
"It has all the ingredients of a Greek tragedy … I never thought it would end up like this," he added.
By 1986, Charles decided that his marriage had "irretrievably broken down," and embarked on an affair with his ex-girlfriend and longtime friend, Camilla Parker Bowles. Diana started seeing other men.
The couple's marital woes were an open secret until they eventually separated in 1992. That same year a blistering tell-all revealed Charles's affair and Diana's own mental health struggle.
Her True Story by Andrew Morton opened the floodgates in the so-called Battle of Wales, its scathing account of the Prince of Wales delivering a devastating blow to the whole royal family.
Morton had characterised the next in line as having unrelenting contempt for his wife and a seeming lack of interest in his sons.
The controversy surrounding the pair continued and months later leaked tapes of telephone conversations held by both Charles and Diana prompted more tabloid stories.
A recording of a phone conversation between Diana and James Gilbey was released in August 1992, which was soon dubbed "Squidgygate". During the calls, Gilbey affectionately refers to Diana by the names "Squidgy" and "Squidge".
Three months later, recorded exchanges between Charles and Camilla. The explicit conversation, printed by an Australian magazine and a German tabloid, was soon dubbed "Camillagate".
The six-minute phone call is now best remembered by Charles's cringeworthy remark about living inside Camilla as a tampon.
The tape delivered a devastating blow to the prince, prompting several newspapers and government ministers at the time to openly question whether the scandal would see him stripped of his status as next in line.
Worried about the personal fallout, Charles commissioned Jonathan Dimbleby to write and film a profile about him in 1994.
It was an 18-month project that granted unprecedented access, including one-on-one interviews and private diary entries.
But Charles's confession that he had strayed — without actually naming Camilla — only worsened his standing.
The public's appetite for the tawdry details about the collapse of their marriage showed no sign of abating and, in 1995, Diana gave her infamous Panorama interview.
"Well, there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded," Diana said of Camilla.
The breakdown of Charles's marriage to Princess Diana remains his greatest crime in the court of public opinion.
A population who adored the "People's Princess" were suddenly privy to Charles's most intimate conversations with Camilla. Charles was easily cast as the villain who shattered the perfect royal dream.
At the urging of the Queen, the couple officially divorced in 1996, just a year before Diana's tragic death in Paris.
A long struggle to win over the public
Charles and his two sons were away in Balmoral when news of Diana's death reached them.
Diana, Dodi Fayed and the couple's driver died when their limousine slammed into the wall of the Alma tunnel in Paris.
With William and Harry asleep down the hall, Charles was told the news in the middle of the night and reportedly became distraught.
"What have we done to deserve this?" he repeatedly asked.
The next morning, he had to tell his young sons that their mother was dead.
Diana's tragic death shocked the world and left the United Kingdom reeling.
The outpouring of public grief soon turned to anger amid the palace's silence in the days after the accident.
"Has the House of Windsor a heart?" asked the Daily Mail. The UK Express demanded the family "Show us you care".
Privately, the Queen and Prince Charles were helping the vulnerable princes cope with their grief, sheltering them from the public and keeping them outdoors.
"One of the hardest things for a parent to have to do is to tell your children that your other parent has died," Prince Harry said in an interview for the 2017 documentary, Diana: 7 Days That Shook the Windsors.
"How you deal with that I don't know but, you know, he was there for us."
Eventually the Queen "relented" to the public pressure, according to a former official, and returned home early.
As Britain seethed, the monarch made a special address to the nation, only the second in her long reign, ahead of Diana's funeral.
Dressed in black and with their heads downcast, three generations of royals walked behind Diana's coffin.
Prince Charles, his sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, and his father, the Duke of Edinburgh, were conscious of the scrutiny they were under as they made the long, lonely walk through London.
Taking part in the procession may have been a tradition for royal men, but the decision to include the boys was a source of controversy.
Charles disappeared from public view for two weeks following Princess Diana's death, retreating to the Gloucestershire estate with his two boys.
His approval rating dropped to 42 per cent, with only 36 per cent believing he should ever be crowned king.
The massive outpouring of grief over his former wife's death had bewildered the prince.
"I felt an alien in my own country," he said.
With his popularity at an all-time low, his advisers went to work on rehabilitating his image and winning over his future subjects.
Charles's reappearance into public life was meticulously planned to include a visit to a housing estate in Manchester and a fundraising appeal for cancer nurses.
Privileged sources were also fed information about how Prince Charles made pivotal decisions in Diana's funeral arrangements, while the Queen refused to yield.
It created tension between the two households, prompting a rare rebuttal from Buckingham Palace to set the record straight.
"The Queen and the Prince of Wales worked together as a team on the preparations," the Telegraph was told.
Ultimately it was a trip to South Africa in November with his son Prince Harry which helped to repair his relationship with his mother, the press and the public he hoped to one day to rule over.
On the flight over, Prince Charles wooed journalists with his chattiness and humour and after landing in Africa, he charmed crowds by reflecting on Princess Diana's contributions to combating AIDS and poverty.
His public appearances with Harry revealed his softer side, as the pair greeted crowds, waved together on balconies, and hung out backstage at a Spice Girls concert in Johannesburg.
Diana's death was a turning point for Charles and upon his return to England, he was careful not to be seen in public with Camilla Parker Bowles.
His advisors were wary of stirring public anger just as the heir's reputation had begun to recover.
Their interactions were kept out of the public eye as Charles sought to build a closer relationship with his two sons.
Eventually Prince Harry and Prince William supported their father's relationship, and so too did the Queen and Prince Phillip — despite having reportedly urged the couple to break up after Diana's death.
It was while in Scotland over New Year's in 2005 that Charles asked Camilla to marry him after speaking to his mother, his sons, and the rest of the family at Christmas.
Only months later, on April 8, the couple took part in a civil ceremony, with Prince William as the best man.
As Charles slipped a wedding ring crafted from Welsh gold onto Camilla's finger, the pair promised to be faithful to each other for the rest of their lives.
Since then, Prince Charles has remained happily married to the love of his life, marking a period of stability in his personal life.
He has also become a grandfather several times over and until recently, enjoyed a close relationship with his sons, William and Harry, even offering to walk his daughter-in-law Meghan Markle down the aisle when her father pulled out.
His relationship with his father also changed over time, with Charles looking to Prince Philip for guidance before eventually taking on more duties as he grew older.
Both acted in supporting roles for the Queen for decades, with markedly different approaches to their duties.
How Charles crafted his role as next in line
For decades, Charles has been painted as a man itching to be king.
But he will take the helm at a time when the royal family appears as divided as it has ever been.
His brother Andrew has stepped back from royal duties after his connection with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein sparked controversy, which culminated in a disastrous interview that exposed the palace to scandal.
The decision of Prince Harry, and his wife Meghan, to leave their royal duties and move to America delivered a further blow, both personally and to Charles's reputation as a future monarch.
Harry revealed in early 2021 that Charles had cut him off financially and emotionally in the wake of their decision.
"I feel really let down because he's been through something similar. He knows what pain feels like, and Archie's his grandson," he told Oprah Winfrey, referring specifically to the parallels between Meghan and Princess Diana.
"But at the same time, I will always love him. There's a lot of hurt that's happened, and I will continue to make it one of my priorities to try and heal that relationship."
Charles will now have to balance the task of managing family politics while reassuring an anxious public that he has what it takes to be king.
"He, of course, has been an activist for most of his life and that is modelling a new kind of royalty," royal biographer Catherine Mayer said.
"He also certainly has a very acute understanding of the need for monarchy to mirror the population it represents, so there are certain modernising things he would want to do."
However, his record of strong public opinions could prove something of a double-edged sword while a monarch.
A favourable view of the prince's position is that his public record shows he has much in common with the broader British population, particularly as concerns over climate change and organic farming have become more fashionable.
But his critics argue Charles's interventions have undermined the convention of the British monarchy's independence from government.
On other issues, Charles has been more radical. He has spent much of his life campaigning on environmental issues, once remarking that humans must live in harmony with their environment or else it "will prove catastrophic".
And along with his interest in promoting ecology and alternative medicine, he has taken a decided stance against modern architecture.
"What is proposed is like a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend," he once remarked of a proposed extension of the National Gallery.
He has also written several books, arguing in Harmony that "the westernised world has become far too firmly framed by a mechanistic approach to science".
For nearly 30 years, his passion for causes prompted him to send letters to different governments advocating for those positions.
These missives were eventually made public in what were dubbed the "Spider" memos in a great moment of embarrassment for the palace.
When asked about his "meddling" by documentary maker John Bridcut, who followed him around for 12 months, Charles was said to have "bridled a bit" at the use of the word.
"If it's meddling to worry about the inner cities as I did 40 years ago, then if that's meddling I'm proud of it," the heir to the throne said.
But he went on to add that he would no longer pursue his public campaigning once he was king, saying he was not that "stupid".
He also expressed a desire for a slimmed-down, low-cost monarchy, which he has stressed would need to be "radically modernised".
It was his opinion some 20 years ago that he, rather than the Queen, was in a position to make the changes.
As King, he will now be able to put that plan into action.
Charles as King
While his mother was adored, as was his first wife, Charles has struggled to win over the British public in the same way.
"I think his main frustration is that he has done so much and that … he has been sort of massively misunderstood," Sally Bedell Smith told PBS in 2017.
"He's sort of been caught between two worlds: the world of his mother, revered, now beloved; and Diana, the ghost of whom still shadows him; and then his incredibly glamorous sons."
A poll in January 2018 found only 9 per cent picked Charles as among their favourite royals.
But since the turn of the century, he has managed to repair some of his image.
With Camilla by his side, Charles has made inroads with the public and the press, and is considered by some to be a fairly relaxed royal with a healthy sense of humour.
He has the ability to charm thousands of strangers at a public event, and behind the scenes act as a loyal friend to those close to him.
But he can also be petulant and intolerant of "opinions contrary to his own," according to Sally Bedell Smith.
When Queen Elizabeth II came to the throne, she oversaw a powerful and sprawling British Empire whose reach extended to Africa, Asia, and elsewhere around the globe.
Over time that was slowly dismantled and in its place rose the Commonwealth of Nations, which grew to 53 members, including Australia.
Most people in these nations have only known Queen Elizabeth II as their monarch and it is not clear how the Commonwealth will survive without her at the helm.
Elizabeth II withstood periods of great instability during her reign, but through it all she managed to keep a steady hand on the tiller.
As Britain mourns the death of its ruler, the future of the monarchy is now under a cloud of uncertainty.
With political instability at home and war blighting Europe again, the new monarch will need to act quickly to present the image of stability that is required of his new role.
With decades of experience behind him, the hope is that he is prepared for the challenge ahead.
"I feel more than anything else it's my duty to worry about everybody and their lives in this country, to try to find a way of improving things if I possibly can," he once told Time magazine.
The test now will be whether King Charles III can live up to his mother's legacy while forging his own.
Credits
- Research, reporting and digital production: Lucia Stein
Notes about this story:
This story is partly based on archived Australian newspaper and magazine articles, royal biographies, and additional reporting by ABC News journalist Philippa Quinn, AP and Reuters.
