prins af Wales Charles - Prince Charles: the passions and paradoxes of an improbable life

Prince Charles, Prince Harry, and Prince William arrive for the Invictus Games in London, September 11, 2014. Chris Jackson/Getty Images

Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, at the Commonwealth Heads of Government banquet, Colombo, Sri Lanka, November 15, 2013. Tim Rooke/REX/Shutterstock

I T WAS A moment he had spent most of his life anticipating. Prince Charles, heir to the throne of the United Kingdom and fifteen other realms, gazed across a ballroom bedecked with silk damask, the tables gleaming with silver-gilt, and rapped the monarchs gavel.

The Queen had decided at age eighty-seven that she could no longer undertake long-haul international travel. After sixty-one years as head of the Commonwealththe association of fifty-three nations formerly constituting the British Empireshe had deputed her eldest son to represent her at the biennial meeting of the Commonwealth leaders in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in November 2013. Opening its summit had been one of her most cherished duties.

Acting on behalf of the monarch for the first time in this particular capacity was highly significant, the start of an unofficial transitional period. The Queen had already begun trimming her schedule as a concession to her advancing age. The occasion was something of a harmonic convergence as well. The previous day Prince Charles had celebrated his sixty-fifth birthdayretirement, for most people. He was now the oldest heir to the throne in three hundred years.

I had decided to make the long trip to this event because I sensed its importance as a turning point in a life with many unforeseen twists. It had been more than twenty years since I first met the Prince of Wales socially, at a polo match in Windsor on a rainy June afternoon in 1991, when he was forty-two. An avid player, he had been sidelined because of back pain, and afterward he joined my group, which included seventy-four-year-old Zara Cazalet, a close friend of his adored grandmother, the Queen Mother. Zara! he exclaimed, giving her a big kiss on the cheek. I was struck by how comfortable he was with an older woman, how affectionate and attentive he was to her. Contrary to his image as a fogey, he was surprisingly informal in his blue blazer and tan trousers and far warmer than his aloof portrayal in the tabloid press.

Eight years later, just as I was finishing a biography of Diana, Princess of Wales, I came across Charles at another polo match, a benefit for one of his charities. He surprised me again that day at the Cirencester Park Polo Club. Under the tent at the post-match reception, well-heeled country gentry waited expectantly to meet him. They had paid for the privilege, and he compliedup to a point. But he chose to spend most of his time talking to a young woman who received the check on behalf of his inner-city charity, showing an empathetic side of his character, along with an independent spirit.

My view of him expanded a decade later when I wrote a biography of Queen Elizabeth II that was published in 2012 during her Diamond Jubilee marking sixty years on the throne. Although the focus of my research was the life of Charless mother, I attended seven private dinners for the Prince of Wales Foundation at Buckingham Palace, St. Jamess Palace, and Kensington Palace. In those imposing surroundings, I had brief conversations with him but also witnessed his emotional intelligence as he adroitly yet cozily connected with an elite group of benefactors, most from the United States.

My encounters with Charles were tantalizing, so I decided to examine him head-on, to find out what made this multi-layered man tick and how he had developed since our first meeting in 1991. I had already studied him through the lens of his late wife and from the vantage point of his formidable mother. By the time I traveled to Sri Lanka, I had uncovered facets of his life that had not been apparent earlier. Now I witnessed for the first time his talent as a consummate diplomat.