GAVAN REILLY: Interesting times ahead for the new King

Monarchies are an odd affair really, aren’t they?

The legitimacy of monarchies goes back to the fanciful notion of the ‘divine right of kings’ – that royal families had the right to claim authority over the rest of their peoples because of some Godly approval.

For what it’s worth I think that threadbare logic only survived the centuries because kings and queens were distant, aloof figures.

Until a few decades ago you didn’t routinely see them on the telly – for most of their existence you wouldn’t even ever have heard their voices. A king was a distant powerful man in a nice palace, with a pseudo-mystical right to reign.

That premise doesn’t cut it in the modern day any more, and for our neighbours I suspect it survived only because Elizabeth II, while accessible, was still an unknown quantity.

We could probably count on one hand the opinions she held in public. Charles is far less an unknown quantity: not only is he already a familiar sight (perhaps too familiar for some in Britain?), he must now also defend the Crown’s role in the UK at a time when other countries can’t shed it quickly enough.

We live in interesting times.