THE KING HE WILL BE

Charles may not have that special brand of magic his mother had but he's determined to make his mark in a challenging world

- NICOLA WHITFIELD

KING Charles III has a hard act to follow. When his mother acceded to the throne, she was just 25, an almost ethereal beauty with an hourglass figure and the magnetism of a movie star.

She reigned for 70 years, overseeing some of the most momentous changes and events in history and presiding over family disintegrations and dramas with steely astuteness and stiff-upper-lip stoicism.

She was The Firm's real rock star, the one who kept the mystery and magic of the royal family alive, and when she died some of the sheen faded too.

Queen Elizabeth may have had tiny size four feet, but she's left big shoes to fill. And now it's up to the man who waited in the wings for a record seven decades to make his mark on history.

In many ways, Charles has been more fortunate than his mother, who was so young when she became monarch she was robbed of the chance of living any kind of life of her own.

The king, on the other hand, has done plenty. He went to university. He had strings of gorgeous young lovers. He had time to indulge passions such as the environment, farming and architecture. He was even permitted to divorce and marry his mistress.

But Charles has never had his mother's star quality in fact, after Diana's death he was so deeply unpopular many hoped hed be overlooked and the crown passed to his son William instead.

Yet becoming king was Charles' birthright and "with the fullness of time, as his mother was wont to say, he'd become monarch. Now here he is - and the figure he cuts is vastly different to the vision his young mother was at her coronation.

CHARLES has been mocked for talking to trees and called a tweedy radical and a red-cheeked landowner who looks like he's stepped out of an 18th C century painting.

Which may be harsh, but the 74-year-old is a public figure and that means he's fair game and has to take it on the chin.