Britain's King Charles leaves after addressing a joint meeting of Congress in Washington on Tuesday.Kylie Cooper/The Associated Press
As a royal, Charles’s history has been marked by promise unfulfilled and unending frustration. It’s been a life in an antechamber beset by controversy and scandal surrounding him or his wider family, all as he waited forever for the Crown – only to be greeted by cancer, for which he is still being treated, upon attaining it.
It’s like Charles has been star-crossed. He could never break free of the nimbus of gloom that stalked him.
Until now. What a contrast, in his triumphant visit to Washington this week. On the biggest stage, Charles shone. He was more political – more pointed as monarch than his mother Queen Elizabeth II – and it worked. Judging by the many “bravo” reactions of the people, the press and politicians of all stripes, it may well have been the 77-year-old’s finest moment.
Read the full transcript of King Charles’s U.S. Congress address
Charles had the fraught task of mending British-American relations tarnished by Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s initial refusal to use Britain’s military to help the U.S. in its war of choice against Iran, a move that brought on juvenile condemnations from Donald Trump, the insulter-in-chief.
In his speech to Congress, Charles made good on his mission without currying favour with Mr. Trump, who is as loathed in Britain as he is in Canada. Instead, the King laid out a vision that was more aligned with Canada and other allies and contrasted boldly with the President’s confrontational America First ethos. But Charles did so with nuance and wit that charmed Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike. At the state dinner that followed, the mood was merry.
Rather than dispute anything in the speech, Mr. Trump, who can get incensed at the slightest of slights, was smartly and atypically diplomatic. He joked that Charles’s speech was so good it made him jealous: “He got the Democrats to stand. I’ve never been able to do that.”
While not mentioning the President by name, Charles spoke of the need for checks and balances to restrain executive power, for action against climate change, for collective security, for respect for the British Navy (after Mr. Trump called their ships “toys”), and for a rejection of ultranationalism. In closing, he asserted: “I pray with all my heart … that we ignore the clarion calls to become ever more inward-looking.”
Opinion: The President who sneered at international law makes the legal case for war
When Queen Elizabeth II addressed Congress in 1991, she found no need to challenge the American way. The U.S., she said, was “the guardian of civilized conduct between nations.”
Charles, who advisedly sidestepped any mention of Jeffrey Epstein, issued no compliments for the work of the Trump administration. If the President was hoping for a reference to his peacemaking efforts, he got none. Instead, the King spoke of the need for “unyielding resolve for the defence of the Ukraine,” instead of the Trump administration’s sporadic commitment to the war.
Mr. Trump has wielded executive power like a third-world strongman, and so a roar of approval went up from the Democrats in the chamber when Charles paid homage to the Magna Carta. The document, he said, “is cited in at least 160 Supreme Court cases since 1789.” It is “the foundation of the principle that executive power is subject to checks and balances.”
Charles referenced two presidents: John F. Kennedy, for his “soaring vision” of the Atlantic partnership, and Teddy Roosevelt, an early pioneer of environmental protection. Mr. Trump has abandoned or repealed many of the measures to combat the climate crisis taken by the Biden administration, and Charles’s passion about the environment dates back a half-century. “We ignore at our peril,” he told Congress, “the collapse of critical natural systems.”
Andrew Coyne: Trump may be temporary. The damage he is doing isn’t
On his visit to Ottawa a year ago, Charles provided a symbolic endorsement of Canadian sovereignty, which was under threat by Mr. Trump. “As the anthem reminds us, the True North is indeed strong and free,” he said then. But Mr. Trump later doubled down on the 51st-state talk, offering Ottawa inclusion in his proposed “Golden Dome” missile defence system – but only if it agreed to annexation.
Given Mr. Trump’s quixotic nature, there is no guarantee the Charles visit will alter the administration’s animosity toward Mr. Starmer’s Labour government. Just prior to the King’s visit, it was reported that Christian Turner, the British ambassador to Washington, had told a high-school audience in February that if the U.S. has a “special relationship” with any country, it was “probably Israel.”
That may be true. But the performance of the real King in the face of the faux one struck a strong chord. Charles elevated the stature of his country, of himself, and of values so much worthier than his host’s.