The man in a hurry: King Charles III rushes to make a mark

LONDON — King Charles III is a man in a hurry.

After waiting nearly 74 years to become king, Charles used his first six months on the throne to meet faith leaders across the country, reshuffle royal residences, stage his first overseas state visit and hold a sleepover at Windsor Castle that included the coach of the England soccer team.

Then there was the big news: He opened the royal archives to researchers investigating the crown’s links to slavery.

“We are already surprised by the Prince Charles who was turned into King Charles and who we still call Prince Charles, because that’s how we think of him,” quipped royal historian Robert Lacey. “But, actually, he’s become a monarch quicker than people expected.”

With the coronation planned for next weekend, Charles and the Buckingham Palace machine are working at top speed to show the new king at work. The public is seeing a new kind of sovereign as he tries to slim down the monarchy and show that it is still relevant in a modern, multi-cultural nation where reverence for Queen Elizabeth II muted criticism during her 70 years on the throne.

Out is the matronly decorum that characterized Elizabeth’s reign. In is a more human monarch, who held back tears as he addressed the nation after his mother’s death and threw a mini-tantrum when a pen leaked on his fingers while signing a book in Northern Ireland. The public had a good laugh. The king now carries his own pen for signing emergencies.

While Elizabeth progressed grandly through meetings with subjects who bowed and curtseyed before her, King Charles sat on the floor with the congregation during a visit to a gurdwara, or Sikh house of worship, in Luton, some 30 miles northwest of London. On his first state visit, he displayed an ability to properly roll his R’s while flipping between German and English in a speech to the Bundestag, the German parliament.

Germans were impressed. Britons were surprised. Who knew he could speak German?

It’s as if Charles, long derided as gray and stiff, has just stepped into the room. With extreme subtlety, his personality is starting to show, such as with the ever-changing pocket squares that give a dash of color to his conservative suits.

“Charles, the monarch, with his faults and virtues, has become a subject of more genuine interest,” said Lacey, the author of “Battle of Brothers: William & Harry and the Inside Story of Family in Tumult.”

One reason Charles is so eager to get started may be because he knows he won’t have much time to make his mark.

The man who waited a lifetime to be king alluded to the march of time during a white tie dinner at the presidential palace in Berlin, saying he hoped he and Camilla would “live long enough” to return to see the sapling they just planted grow into a tree.

But there are speed bumps on the horizon, some linked to history, others to family.

Charles tried to get ahead of the history question by promising openness about the crown’s links to slavery, but some think that commitment fell short.

Laura Trevelyan, whose ancestors enslaved at least 1,000 people on the island of Grenada, says the king should do what her family did and apologize.

“I hope that he will use some of the wealth that the royal family accumulated from the slave trade to better the lives of people in the Caribbean and in Britain who are descendants of the enslaved,” she told the Times of London.

Then there is family.

Charles continues to fend off criticism from Prince Harry, whose memoir “Spare” painted his father as distant and unsympathetic toward a son who struggled with the death of his mother, Princess Diana. Harry also contended the royal family should have done more to accept his wife, Meghan, a biracial American.

But the biggest controversy of Charles’ life was the breakdown of his marriage to Princess Diana amid stories about his long-time relationship with the woman who would become his second wife, Camilla Parker-Bowles.

Many people still remember Charles’ admission of adultery and the leaked tapes of intimate conversations between Charles and Camilla, including one in which he compared himself to a tampon.

It took Charles years to shake off the failure of his first marriage, and many people were slow to accept Camilla.

In “Spare,” Harry wrote bitterly of the palace’s effort to rehabilitate Camilla’s image, suggesting that unflattering and untrue stories about him were leaked to the media in exchange for more glowing portraits of the senior royals.

Hugo Vickers, a royal historian and author of “Coronation: The Crowning of Elizabeth II,” compared the new king’s accession to the throne with being named chairman of a global corporation at a time when most people have retired. It’s a job where he will face questions of religion, the armed forces and politics, in addition to running the royal household and mediating family feuds.

“It’s a big thing to take on at that age,” Vickers said of Charles, who turns 75 in November. “So, yes, I suspect he’s a man in a hurry.”