Queen Elizabeth II’s long life is over.
Now, Britain’s new monarch, King Charles III, faces two immediate challenges: first, to comfort and reassure a grieving nation even as he mourns the loss of his own mother, and second, to show he can abandon his former penchant for political interventions.
This second point bears special note. After all, the first responsibility of a British monarch is to serve as chief officer of that nation’s unwritten constitution — and not, that is to say, as a privileged voice for particular politics or social preferences.
