Since becoming sovereign, however, Charles had to scale his own personal views and interests back. Read More: Why King Charles III Will Be Worth the Wait It’s little wonder that one of his biographers, royals expert Christopher Anderson, dubbed him “one of the most eccentric sovereigns Great Britain has ever had.” “But he’s also an extremely hard worker.” This perception can get lost amid Charles’ more peculiar idiosyncrasies, from his reported preference to travel with his own custom-made toilet seat to his apparent unwillingness to administer his own toothpaste. “He has a fogeyish side, there’s no doubt about it,” says Richard Fitzwilliams, a longtime royal expert. “He was very busy he was a man in a hurry.” His time as Prince of Wales “was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a life spent in waiting,” Bedell Smith says, noting his work with more than 400 charities, many of which were directly tied to his interests. That Charles has so many passions-to say nothing of his interest in philosophy, homeopathic medicine, and Islam-is, in many ways, a direct consequence of his extended stint as heir to the throne, a period in which he had both the time and the resources to pursue his interests. To critics, however, it’s seen as more of a feudal Disneyland. Due to be completed in 2025, Poundbury has been hailed as a model for new, livable urbanism. We did that.”) A living embodiment of Charles’ architectural worldview can be found 130 miles southwest of London in Poundbury, a town featuring pastel-colored houses, abundant courtyards, and signless roads that was designed by Charles as an experimental planning project in the 1980s. “When it knocked down our buildings, it didn’t replace them with anything more offensive than rubble. (“You have, ladies and gentlemen, to give this much to the Luftwaffe,” he once told attendees of an event marking the Royal Institute of British Architects’ 150th anniversary. He once described a proposed addition to London’s National Gallery as “ a monstrous carbuncle” and even likened London’s contemporary landscape to the Battle of Britain in World War II. Among Charles’ other noted pastimes is architecture and, in particular, how it has been stained in the modern era. But the monarch’s interests don’t end with the planet.
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