25 Times King Charles III Has Courted Controversy

The members of the royal family are not supposed to get involved in British politics. However, Charles received confidential cabinet papers for decades and wrote to senior policy-making officials to lobby for certain causes. Known as the “black spider memos” because of Charles’s handwriting, these memos, sent between 2004 and 2005, pushed for causes ranging from better equipment for troops in Iraq to more public access to alternative herbal medicines.

In 2021, Charles’s close aide Michael Fawcett was investigated over allegations that he accepted $2 million in donations for Charles’s charity, The Prince’s Foundation, from Saudi billionaire Mahfouz Marei Mubarak bin Mahfouz in exchange for an honorary CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire). Charles has denied knowledge of the exchange.

The leak of the so-called Paradise Papers, financial documents disclosing where many global elites keep their money offshore, revealed that the Duchy of Cornwall – a vast estate in the south of England (most of it not in Cornwall) that was owned by Charles until it passed to Prince William upon Charles’s accession to the throne – purchased shares in a Bermuda forestry company in 2007. Charles subsequently came under fire for failing to disclose his investment while campaigning to alter climate change agreements in a way that would benefit the company.

In 2013, Charles accepted $1.2 million from two of Osama bin Laden’s half-brothers, despite his advisors reportedly pleading with him to return the money. The funds went to his charity organization – the Prince of Wales Charitable Fund – which awards grants to various UK nonprofits.

During a visit to India with Princess Diana in 1992, Charles opted to speak at an architecture school while Diana went to the Taj Mahal alone. An image of the princess sitting solo in front of the monument to love took on new meaning when the couple separated later that year.

When 8-year-old Prince William sustained a skull fracture at school and went into emergency surgery, Diana stayed by her son’s side overnight while Charles visited for 15 minutes then kept his previous plans of attending the opera.

Ahead of his marriage to Diana, Charles made a telling comment at their engagement interview. When asked “Are you in love?” Diana replied “Of course,” while Charles remarked, “Whatever ‘in love’ means.”

Charles came under fire in 2022 for accepting $3 million in cash from a Qatari sheik between 2011 and 2015, including $1 million in cash that was stuffed into a suitcase. The funds were legally deposited into Charles’s charitable fund.

A proponent of alternative forms of medicine, Charles has said that he even treats his livestock with homeopathic remedies. This proclivity has led to some critics calling him “anti-science.”

In what was seen as a diplomatic blunder, Charles shook the hand of Zimbabwe’s president, revolutionary socialist Robert Mugabe, at the funeral of Pope John Paul II in 2005. Mugabe’s regime had recently been criticized for condoning the violent seizure of the nation’s white-owned farms for redistribution back to Black farmers.

When he was 14, Charles went to a pub with some classmates and ordered a cherry brandy – an action which made it into the tabloids and got his beloved bodyguard and father figure Don Green fired.

Charles, who has been outspoken on the dangers of climate change, flew 7,000 miles round-trip in a private jet in order to receive a Global Environmental Citizen Prize presented by Al Gore at Harvard in 2007. Critics insisted that he should have accepted the award remotely, by video, instead.

According to “Diana: Her True Story – in Her Own Words,” based in part of secret tapes the princess shared with her biographer, Andrew Morton, her struggle with bulimia was triggered in part by her then-fiancé Charles grabbing her waist and commenting how chubby she was.

Charles dated Camilla Parker Bowles before his engagement to Diana. After he and Diana got married, he carried on an affair with Camilla, which became increasingly apparent and ultimately precipitated the royal couple’s divorce. Diana once referenced the affair by saying, “There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.”

During a 1994 interview in which journalist Jonathan Dimbleby asked Charles if he had remained faithful and honorable during his marriage, the prince admitted his infidelity by replying, “Yes, until it became irretrievably broken down…”

In response to Diana’s secretly working with author Andrew Morton on her revealing biography, Charles collaborated with Jonathan Dimbleby on a biography of his own – which received scathing reviews. Some critics remarked that it contained whining complaints from an out-of-touch and privileged man.

In 1992, while Charles was still married to Diana, a flirtatious telephone conversation between him and Camilla was leaked to the press, in which Charles remarked that he wished he could live in her pants, and the two joked that he could turn into a pair of underwear or a tampon.

Charles issued numerous scathing public comments condemning modernist architecture that may have led to the termination of upcoming projects, including a Chelsea Barracks project by award-winning architect Richard Rogers and an extension to the National Gallery, which he called “a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend.”

Although it is considered taboo for members of the royal family to marry a divorced person, in 2005 Charles – himself divorced – finally married the love of his life, Camilla, who had divorced her husband Andrew Parker Bowles in 1995. His parents did not attend the wedding, although they did turn up for the reception.

After the British government announced in 2022 that it planned on sending asylum-seekers to Rwanda, Charles called the policy “appalling.” Cabinet members have warned that if he keeps meddling in politics as king, it will cause a constitutional crisis.

When Indian-British multimillionaire Kolin Dhillon joined the Cirencester Park Polo Club and played against members of the royal family, Charles gave him the nickname “Sooty.” The press labeled Charles racist and out of touch for using the name; however, Dhillon himself insisted that it was a term of affection.

In 2002, Charles wrote a letter lobbying then Prime Minister Tony Blair not to outlaw the popular English sport of fox hunting, stating that the sport is “completely natural in that it relies entirely on man’s ancient and, indeed, romantic relationship with dogs and horses.” Animal rights activists won in the end, and the act of chasing any wild mammals with hounds was outlawed in 2005.

In an interview with Oprah Winfrey, Prince Harry revealed that his father had stopped taking his calls amid the very public controversy over Harry and Meghan’s retreat from royal duties in 2020. Harry has also accused his father of cutting him off financially and criticizing his parenting techniques.

After Charles was invited to guest edit the 40th anniversary edition of the British African-Caribbean newspaper The Voice, some readers were outraged, demanding that the monarchy take steps to apologize for its role in the slave trade.

In journalist and devout monarchist Sally Bedell Smith’s 2017 biography “Prince Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life,” the future king is described as a petulant man who is “hopelessly thin-skinned…naive and resentful.”