King Charles "Never" Declared He Wanted a Slimmed-Down Monarchy, Per Royal Biographer
"There was no specific plan," author Robert Hardman tells 'Marie Claire.'
Much has been made of King Charles's hopes for a "slimmed-down monarchy" once he took the throne, focusing on the core group of senior working royals versus extended cousins and other family members. However, when cancer diagnoses took both The King and Princess Kate away from duties last year, many commentators wondered if the Royal Family was, in fact, too slim. Speaking to Marie Claire about the British royals' plans for 2025, biographer Robert Hardman says the idea that The King specifically "called for" a smaller unit isn't actually true.
"There's always been a bit of mythology around this slimmed-down monarchy thing, because if you were to actually try and find any evidence that he advocated that, or called for it, you won't find any, because he never did," Hardman tells Marie Claire.
The Making of a King: King Charles III and The Modern Monarchy author continues that while "it was understood that he saw the monarchy moving forward as being a smaller working unit" there was "never a specific plan."
However, Hardman references the many extended Royal Family members you'd see on the Buckingham Palace balcony during the earlier years of Queen Elizabeth's reign as an example of what The King is hoping to avoid.
"Basically, what people surmised, and was never denied, was that he looked at the monarchy when The Queen came to the throne in the fifties, and there were lots of cousins and uncles and aunts and people hanging around, and you had a trigenerational unit," the royal expert continues.
The core working group of the Royal Family will eventually include Prince William and Princess Kate's children.
Hardman says The King "could see that going forward that wasn't sustainable in the 21st century. But it didn't mean a case of slimming down. Slimming down implies that you take what you've got and reduce it." He adds that what King Charles "was looking at" was "not expanding" the family "in the way that it used to expand."
Of course, the Royal Family was naturally thinned out when Prince Harry and Meghan Markle stepped down as senior royals and Prince Andrew was forced to give up his duties, and the royal commentator tells Marie Claire that did change The King's plans in that regard.
Per Hardman, the monarch thought the working group "would be with William and Harry, their wives, their children" as well as The King's siblings. "But that working model has obviously changed."
Retaining a smaller "core" group of royals is an idea that's also supported by Queen Elizabeth's former lady-in-waiting Lady Pamela Hicks, whose daughter, India Hicks, spoke with Marie Claire last fall. “She thinks that it is modernizing in a way that it should, and she absolutely believes in the thinning down of the Royal Family and making it this core hardworking foursome,” India told Marie Claire of her mother's thoughts, referring to The King, Queen and the Prince and Princess of Wales as the "foursome."
The King and Queen will keep their focus on retaining a "core" group of working royals.
However, now that only The King, Queen Camilla, Prince William, Princess Kate, Princess Anne, Prince Edward and Duchess Sophie remain as senior working royals (supported by cousins like the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester), the family unit has "become more than slimmed down," per Hardman.
"It's looking positively emaciated these days for obvious reasons, because there were two dukes and a duchess" he says, referring to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and Duke of York's departures.
The author says having "fewer people to go 'round" will be a concern for the monarchy moving forward. "Having a smaller working unit was always the aspiration, but yeah, I think you've got to recognize that's more of a challenge now that the next generation, once you get beyond the king and his siblings, you've just got William and Catherine, and that's it for quite a long time."
