Britain's King Charles III, formerly known as The Prince of Wales, became King on the death of his mother Queen Elizabeth II on September 8, 2022. Born in Buckingham Palace at 9.14 p.m. on Nov. 14, 1948, Charles is the eldest son of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip.
Charles was the first heir to go to school and university, being educated at Cheam School near London, Gordonstoun School in northern Scotland, and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he obtained a second-class history degree.
Charles married Diana Spencer at St Paul’s Cathedral on July 29, 1981. About 750,000 people watched the ceremony live on television and a crowd of more than 500,000 lined the route between Buckingham Palace and the cathedral.
However, a few years later Charles and Diana were divorced in August 1996 after years of acrimonious marital problems. Diana blamed Charles for his refusal to end his affair with his long-term lover, Camilla Parker Bowles. Charles said he had remained faithful in the marriage “until it became irretrievably broken down”. The statement from Buckingham Palace said the divorce was entirely amicable. On Aug. 31, 1997, Diana died in a car crash in Paris.
After that Charles and Camilla were married on April 9, 2005, in a civil ceremony in Windsor. They were later joined by 800 guests for a service of prayer and dedication at St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, before a reception hosted by the queen.
Multiple years after that, Charles' father Prince Philip died on April 9, 2021, aged 99. Philip was married to Queen Elizabeth for more than seven decades and helped to modernise the British monarchy and steer the royal family through repeated crises.
Queen Elizabeth, Britain's longest-reigning monarch and the nation's figurehead for seven decades, died at her home in Scotland aged 96 on September 8, 2022. Elizabeth's eldest son Charles, 73, automatically became king of the United Kingdom and the head of state of 14 other realms including Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. His wife Camilla became Queen Consort.
King Charles III was anointed and crowned on May 6, 2023, in Britain's biggest ceremonial event for seven decades, a display of pomp and pageantry that sought to marry 1,000 years of history with a monarchy fit for a new era. In front of a congregation including about 100 world leaders and a television audience of millions, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the spiritual leader of the Anglican Church, slowly placed the 360-year-old St Edward's Crown on Charles' head as he sat upon a 14th-century throne in Westminster Abbey.
Britain's King Charles returned home from hospital on January 29, 2024, after spending three nights in hospital for a corrective procedure on an enlarged prostate. Charles, 75, smiled and waved to crowds as he left the London Clinic accompanied by his wife Queen Camilla. A few hours earlier, his daughter-in-law Kate, the Princess of Wales, also headed home after spending two weeks at the same private hospital following abdominal surgery.