The King's Speech

This sneak peek from the forthcoming THE NEW ROYALS captures what's happening inside the Windsor family as Charles prepares to take the throne

- Katie Nicholl

The King's Speech, the address Charles will make to the nation on his accession, has already been written.

It has been refined and rehearsed and is being kept under lock and key until it is needed. This will be the most important address of his life, partly an obituary of what or rather who-has gone, and partly a promise of what is to come. Given the turmoil of recent years, it also amounts to a defense of his realm.

Consider Charles's woes: his own son and daughter-in-law's familial abdication, and the complete disgrace of his brother Prince Andrew, the Duke of York. The Prince's Foundation, Charles's charity, became the target of a police investigation following cash-for-honors allegations. (Charles has not been charged with any crime; a spokesperson has said that he has "no knowledge of any deal.") More recently, The Sunday Times reported that the prince accepted 3 million euro in cash donations from a Qatari sheik for the Prince of Wales's Charitable Fund, though the paper noted that "there is no suggestion the payments were illegal."

Charles's accession will be the moment many countries and realms in the Commonwealth consider their own futures. For now the queen is the sovereign of those realms-venerated, celebrated. But there remain those who feel the need for a hereditary monarchy, with its seat thousands of miles away on another continent, dies with her. However, what worries Charles more than any of this, according to my sources, is the existential threat to the United Kingdom posed by the Scottish independence movement. "His absolute preoccupation is keeping the union intact," according to a close friend. "His view is that if he ends up being the King of England, then the kingdom would be diminished and it would become a huge issue in terms of our global status." In so many ways, this could hardly be a more perilous period for the new Charles III.