King Charles III's long and bumpy road to the crown

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He’s been the man who would be king — all his life.

The cliche description of Prince Charles’s career path is that he’s been waiting seven decades for the job to which he was born.

In an unkind sense, that’s true. As heir apparent to his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, since he was born, his distant destiny was always to be king.

What is untrue is that he had no mission in his life.

Monarchs and U.S. presidents, it seem, are the only people who launch their careers when they are well into their 70s.

Born in 1948, in austere, post-war Britain, Charles grew up in the royal goldfish bowl, where his every move was scrutinized and analyzed and processed into bite-sized pieces for public consumption.

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He’s endured the scandal of a very public marriage breakdown, including the leaking to the press of an embarrassing tape in which he confessed to wanting to be reincarnated as his mistress’s tampon.

Pundits have pondered his every eccentricity, from his passion for gardening and the confession that he talks to his plants, to his distaste for modern architecture. The public is always titillated by details, such as the fact he travels with a padded toilet seat.

He’s been the longest-serving Prince of Wales ever. And he’s turned that understudy role into a career.

In fact, with his Prince’s Trust Canada, over the years he has supported organizations that help veterans, young people and environmental sustainability.

He’s undertaken countless royal tours to Canada, and around the world, on behalf of the U.K. government and the Crown. He may have lacked a kingly title, but he still carved a path for himself.

The great tragedy of his life is that he was schooled in the ancient rules of kingship and monarchy and then suddenly found himself in a world where those rules had all been thrown out the window. And no one bothered to tell him.

He grew up at the end of an era where royal marriages were forged to seal treaties or to unite empires. He was expected to marry a foreign princess, at best, or at the least a member of the British aristocracy. The royal rule book said he should marry for duty. Twenty years later, when his marriage fell apart, he was blamed because he didn’t marry for love.

Growing up a drab Britain, with the Second World War still looming large in the rear-view mirror and where frills were frowned upon, his father sent Charles to his own alma mater, Gordonstoun, an austere Scottish boarding school where cold showers and early morning runs were routine. They did not want Charles to appear pampered. It was a grim fate for any youngster, but all the more difficult for a sensitive child. Bullied by his peers, he later called the school “Colditz with Kilts,” and recalled the torments he suffered in the frigid dorms. He sent his own two sons to the far more forgiving Eton College.

The oldest of Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh’s four children, he’s spent his entire life having every torment minutely scrutinized by the press. Now even Netflix has taken an avid interest, with its hit series The Crown fictionalizing details of his relationships and marriages. He took the title Prince of Wales at age nine, but was not invested with it until a lavish ceremony took place at Caernarfon Castle in Wales in 1969. He spent nine weeks ahead of the ceremony learning about Welsh culture and delivered his speech in Welsh. He earned a BA from Cambridge and served in the RAF and the Royal Navy.

In his teens and twenties, he was the most eligible bachelor in the world. Every time he was seen with a new date, speculation was ignited as to whether she was The One.

It was that toxic, tangled mix of duty and romance that led to marital disaster. In 1981, he dutifully married the lovely Diana Spencer in a spectacular ceremony in St. Paul’s Cathedral. She was 19 years old — 12 years his junior and worlds away in cultural differences. The doe-eyed daughter of an earl with a sense of style that reverberated around the globe, Diana boosted the British fashion industry and brought the royals into the 21st century.

Or so they thought. Charles, it seemed, was the only man in the world who didn’t love Diana. He still carried a torch for an old flame, Camilla Shand. Under the old royal rules, Camilla was considered an unsuitable bride for the young prince. She was a commoner and seen as too much of a woman of the world, with several past romantic relationships, to be a suitable wife for the heir. Besides, Charles had dithered over asking Camilla to marry him. In frustration, she left him for his friend, Andrew Parker-Bowles. The rest became rather sordid history and fodder for endless episodes of The Crown.

William and Harry, the heir and the spare, were born in 1982 and 1984 respectively, but the marriage was doomed. Charles and Diana separated in 1992, were divorced in 1996 and Diana died in a tragic car accident in Paris the following year.

Charles and Camilla eventually wed in 2005.

Charles has long been an advocate for numerous causes, especially on the environmental front. He’s been prophetic in his causes. An avid gardener, Charles was a proponent for organic farming long before it became popular.

He’s also a successful businessman. His Duchy of Cornwall owns vast swathes of land, mostly in the southwest of England. It operates a very successful cookie company that in partnership with a supermarket chain in the U.K. has raised more than $50 million over 30 years for the Prince of Wales’ Charitable Fund that supports charitable causes.

The great irony of his life is that in order for him to succeed, like all monarchs, his mother had to die. This is a bittersweet moment for Charles. And he has big shoes to fill. Elizabeth II was the greatest monarch the U.K. has even known. She was Queen for seven decades.

His reign will be shorter and he has some steep mountains to climb. Alienated from son Harry and with his troublesome brother Prince Andrew in the royal doghouse, Charles has promised a slimmed-down monarchy for the future. Before she died, the Queen made it clear she wanted Camilla to become Queen Consort to Charles. That was an important concession. When Camilla was Charles’s mistress, the Queen would not be seen in her company. Over the years, Charles’s wife has proved her loyalty not just to her husband and his family, but to the institution of the crown.

Camilla is level-headed has become accepted by the British public. At 73, Charles will need all the help he can get as he takes on his new role.

Change isn’t always easy, especially when the institution under reconstruction is a thousand years old and governs the underpinnings of state — from courts to Parliament.

Charles will have to tread carefully. The future of the monarchy depends on the path he takes.