Citation Needed - King Charles III

Episode Date: September 28, 2022

Charles III (Charles Philip Arthur George; born 14 November 1948) is King of the United Kingdom and 14 other Commonwealth realms.[fn 4] He acceded to the throne on 8 September 2022 upon the death of his mother, Elizabeth II. He was the longest-serving heir apparent in British history and, at the age of 73, is the oldest person to ascend the British throne. Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here.  Be sure to check our website for more details.

So he doesn't say it's more been time even one time not once no no not in the whole movie Did you ask for your money back? Oh, I didn't actually go see it Why would I why would I go see it and for this service you should henceforth be known as Sir Tom of the house of bad guys. What what what are you doing? What's going on? Wow? Oh of the house of the guys. What, what, what are you doing? What's going on? Wow. Oh, seriously, Cecil, you're interrupting my nighting.

You can sit, at least got the sword. Uh oh, Tom, why are you being nighted? If you must know, it's for this week's episode. Obviously. That's right. I'm talking about King Charles and we thought, what better way to get us in the mood than a taste of the crowd. Right.

But King's don't just randomly night people. You have to do something, you know, special for the crown in order for that to happen. Oh, he did. Oh, really? What's that? Cut the brakes on Meghan Markle's car. They'll do it. Yeah, no, that makes sense.

I did. Hello and welcome! The citation needed. The podcast where we choose a subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia and pretend we're experts because this is the internet, that's how it works now. I'm Eli Bosnick and I'll be leading you through the hall of Portrait's this evening, but I'll need my retinue.

First up, two men officially out of the Citation Needed COVID-19, Noah and Cecil. Okay, we won't give it all the consecutive baby colds you've had. out of the citation needed COVID-taunting, Noah and Cecil. Okay, well, but give it all the consecutive baby colds you've had. I feel like COVID gave up on you when it heard the wait. And now that I've lost all sense of taste, I'm thinking of moving to maybe New Jersey. Think New Jersey is what I should do. Pasta on top of the pizza, Cecil.

No. And also joining us tonight, a man who based on his vaccine card could officially be considered doping for said time to eat. Okay, it is not so much a card at this point as it is a scroll Eli. It's a, we need some real estate on that diet.

Yeah. Now, before we begin tonight, I'd like to take a second to thank our patrons. Patrons, without you, I'd feel myself. So my family's is my choice. Jesus Christ, my Lord. That's a lot of pressure. Jesus Christ, Lord, that's a lot of pressure.

Jesus Christ, Lord, that's a lot of pressure. I'll just keep it in mind. Next time, you have to tighten the belt or tie your butt. Jesus Christ. Speaking of belts, our patrons are currently enjoying our special patron-only bonus episode in which we break down the original Frank Doe article from Black Belt magazine. So if you'd like to learn how to join their ranks, be sure to stick around till the end of the show. And with that out of the way, tell us, Cecil, what person, place, thing, concept, phenomenon,

or event. Will we be talking about today? Today we're going to be talking about Lake Queen Elizabeth's son nephew, Pink Charles. And Tom, you thought to yourself, you know what? No, it's talking about right now. The royal family. Are you ready to trend? Okay. All right. I am ready or I am not the corn baller of less Sussex.

Yeah. I'm not a pedophile either, Tom. Let's have the essay. All right. We just have to say it sometimes so people know. I as I'm sure you are all aware, even if you don't want to be, the Queen of England died just the other day at the tender age of 96. What?

True. Not because the passing of royal power takes place by decree literally instantaneously, the very moment that the Queen's heart beat its last with not even one nanosecond of delay faster even than light itself can travel. Charles, formerly the Prince of Wales and after waiting longer than any other successor to the throne in history, immediately became the king of England, having finally procured his first promotion and his entire adult life at the age of 73. I would make fun here, but then I remember

that America has its own obsession with septiginarian male leaders. So I quietly set down my throwing stones. I still think it's weird you had your throwing stones monogram. I feel like it defeats the purpose. Not one of them. No, it does not have to purpose. It is the purpose.

A king Charles, whether or not the royal family interests you, and even if he thinks the whole idea of a king to be laughably and knackernistic, if not outright absurd, is, nonetheless, a remarkably interesting man. His story is just absolutely defined by its contradictions. He's lived a life of luxury and horror, has said and done some truly awful shit, and yet he still cuts a figure so tragic, it would be hard not to feel at least

a little sympathy for the man. I feel like I'm up to the challenge. Here, now I'm here. Here, here. Now we'll begin with his story in roughly chronological order in a moment, but I do also feel compelled to point out a couple of things that don't have a place in the chronology per se, but are nonetheless interesting. I mean, all things have a place in the chronology. That's how time works, Tom.

Okay. Yeah, I knew I could count on you to purposely misunderstand that point, Eli. That's what I'm here for. That's well done. Well done. First, consider that if you're Charles, your whole life was designed so that you always had to think about the death of your own mother, not just as a personal loss, but also as a political, professional, and indeed historic event. From boyhood, the very fact of who he was and how he was raised,

and indeed his very utility in the world existed only in the long shadow of death, simultaneously looming over his own mother, and then literally defining who he was to the world. A fact which he found to be, quote, ghastly and inexorable. And quote, oh, so like if your mom was a Liebitt at Hopkins award winning literal genius and you made fun of Kevin Serbo's movies for your living, would it be like that? That would have been like, I don't know if this helps Eli, but I'm pretty sure your mom, you and Lee Bennett Hopkins are the only people who have ever heard of that.

Oh, Jesus Christ. I'm sorry, Liz. I know you listened to these. I did Google who it was anyway. It's really nobody knows. No, it's. Anyway, I want to take a moment to note the rather sizeable shift in business card that the ascension to the throne entailed for Charles.

Until the other night when his mom died, Charles's title was, quote, quote, his Royal Highness, Prince Charles, Philip, Arthur, George, Prince of Wales, Earl of Chester, Duke of Cornwall, Duke of Rathacie, Earl of Kirk, Baron of Renfrew, Lord of the Isles, and Prince and great steward of Scotland." And quote, his new title is rather significantly shorter and punchier with King Charles. Now, I see why the artist formerly known as Prince just went with that one weird symbol. Yeah.

From the time he was three years old, Charles was the heir apparent, but he never really seemed terribly well suited to the role. Charles wasn't a robust and healthy kid. Remember, he was English royalty, so he's likely inbred worse than a pug from a puppy. How dare you? My pug is so much less inbred than Charles, like the most truly less inbred than Charles Like the most truly less inbred than Charles Your pug also has less sleep apnea than Charles Yeah

And small normal looking hands. Yeah, everything's Flaws of the sorry side A Charles was a sickly kid. He's prone to sinus infections And this is an article in New Yorker. He was also prone to quote Tears He's three So he was a little kid who cried and had a booger nose. That's pretty much every kid. So still crying and getting a cold wasn't stiff upper lip stuff. So his parents found him to be odd and somewhat disappointing. On his end, Charles described his mother, the former queen as, quote,

not indifferent so much as detached, end quote. The things we're not starting out with a lot of warm fuzzies. And he's not even eight years old at this point. This is before he was eight years old. I mean, I, I stand by my lack of sympathy, but it's just going to fucked up when you're a New Yorker bio, mentions who the push you were as a kid. What does it mean? What does it mean? It's just sight being a kid as proof of his woosiness, too. Well, kids are whooses.

That's true. Okay. You got it, true. A typically royal family kids were expected to engage in rich people sports and do horse writing things. But Charles wasn't a physically gifted youngster. So we pretty much bombed out of the sports thing and he was too scared of horses to attend his lessons.

So at the age of just eight years old, his mother, the queen and his father, Prince Philip, sent Charles off to boarding school. I will tell you here that if you don't remember what life was like when you were eight, that's because that is still super little kid times. And Charles was absolutely distraught at being sent to live away from home at such a young age. Because he was going to miss his mother, whom he had just described in the same terms, one uses for the garden ship. Yeah, I feel like he showed up already distraught. It's pre-destraught. Of course, Charles wasn't sent to a boarding school for sensitive kids afraid of horses.

Instead, he was sent to the same school his father was shipped off to because the important thing about suffering is spreading it to those you love. Anyway, the school that Charles attended was like, like full metal jacket meets Hogwarts. It had a reputation for being particularly unpleasant and austere, and this was also in the days when people believed that men needed to be toughened up through dehumanizing systemic abuse.

The school was actually founded on the promise of, quote, emancipating the sons of the powerful from the prison of privilege, end quote. Now, also since Charles was known to everyone as the heir apparent to the throne, he was mercilessly bullied and ostracized by the other boys who resented his position. The bullying was so severe in fact that if any of the other boys were seen being nice

to Charles, they themselves were mocked for being suck-ups. As bad as this was, Charles was still the future king, so he wasn't treated by the school itself as badly as the other kids treated him. He was given leave to spend his weekends off campus at the home of nearby family friends where we would hang out, and I'm not kidding, just cry all weekend. Okay, wait, his classmates thought it would be a good idea to make fun of the future. He do, if he decides to do a mass shooting can employ the army to do it, it's some kind of strategy,

guys. It's bad. Well, I've started to flate your point, Eli, but we're dedicating an entire episode to making fun of the king a month and a half before half of us are going to his country. So I'm gonna wear a mustache though. So they won't. As Charles moved through the rarefied worlds of privilege that surrounded him, he constantly failed to live up to the normal standards of those institutions. And so those institutions just changed their standards for Charles, so he would meet them. For example, after surviving boarding school, Charles went to Trinity College. But he shouldn't have, because he didn't earn his way into that school academically.

And once he was enrolled, the college actually got a bunch of its staff together to create a curriculum just for Charles. And it was definitely nowhere near as rigorous as it would have been had he not been the Prince of Wales. Okay, look, I understand where you're coming from here Tom, but like he's the king, right? School should consider things outside of academics. And I think one of the things they should consider is whether or not this particular student will one day be the king of it. All right.

Here's a solution. What if you added like a, if you're too dumb to get into the college despite a subjugated continent or two's worth of privilege We bump you down the line of succession clause, right? That's also a problem too I have to graduate in with his made up curriculum from a school He didn't earn his way into completing even that dumbed-down education with so-so grades Charles joined the Royal Navy again following in his father's footsteps. Except he was kind of fucking stupid,

but again, he was also like British Simba. So they even fudge the military form. When his superiors learned that Charles had, quote, an inability to add or generally to cope well with figures." Wow. Yeah. They did the same thing as Trinity College

and made up some shit for him to do and quote, Taylor duties closer to his abilities, end quote. They changed his assignment so that he was a communications officer rather than navigator. And again, here they fudged his performance reviews so they could concentrate not on his abilities, but on how he was such a nice guy. A quality most militaries work to extinguish in the first six weeks of basic training. Yes. I don't know how he's going

to be prepared for that demanding job of British royalty. All that waving doesn't do itself time. Come on. Said like a man who hasn't Googled King Charles Hans. He's a way in those. So terrible. Beanbag chairs takes work. Okay, it takes work. Okay, podcast was just Eli has inserted a picture here of Charles's hands into our notes.

And they look like he's having an allergic reaction to being in Canada. Yeah, I was with you. It's like, they to being a terrifying balloon sculpture at the entrance to the uncanny valleys play plays. Oh, man, I don't know what tune his fingers are playing, but it's a banger. That's all I'm saying. It's a fucking banger.

Bangers are sausages and right now. Okay, forget that. Continue on. All right. And unlike scumbag, Prince Charles was definitely not in charge. I mean, he was incredibly pathologically tightly choreographed in every single thing that he did, including his relationships with women, but the choreographers were fucking monsters. But the choreographers were fucking monsters.

At this point, Charles was being controlled in many ways by his great uncle, Lord Montbatten. One of the most just wildly toxic and misogynist men I have ever read about. If this guy is his own episode, it's unreal. The public image that Montbatten and by extension, Charles wanted to portray was that of Charles the playboy. So dashing and irresistible, he might never be persuaded to settle down when in fact, Charles

was emotionally immature and just terribly awkward. Still, Mountbatten told the press that Charles was constantly quote, popping in and out of bed with girls." And quote, in an effort to make Charles seem more virile and masculine, rather than, you know, sensitive and not terribly talented. And Montbatten wanted Charles to live that life, not just portray it. He offered up his home to Charles as a place to bed women and encouraged him to have, quote, as many affairs as he can. And quote, Charles got the house in Andrew got the doll house.

Oh, Jesus. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm confused. Why are affairs the goal? They want to spread the right of succession around me. Get another war of the roses going. Get your dick wet, son. Fate of a nation.

Well, instead what happened was that Charles fell in love with a woman named Camilla Shan when he turned about 23. But Camilla was unacceptable relationship material sense. And guys, I swear this is true. She was divorced and thus not a virgin. Montbatten considered Camilla a fun, quote, learning experience. And she was, but he was never gonna prove of her as a real love interest, which was just a huge bummer for Charles because he was in fact very much in love with her. Instead, Charles allowed himself to get set up with Lady Diana Spencer, a woman he did

not love and barely knew. And in fact, on the night before his marriage to Diana, he wept for having been forced away from his real love and towards being forced to marry a woman he didn't love just because no one had ever fucked her yet. All right, well, it's obvious that Tom is team Markle, so while I attempt to defend the crest and ground in a duel, we'll take a little break for Apple Poe, nothing. Oh boohoo! Boohoo I say! Boohoo!

All's Charles! Who's there? It's me, your first has an 18 times removed! King Henry V! Why do you weep Charles? O fifth has an eighteen time was removed. I shall never live up to the title of King. I am soft and stupid and I can't lead anyone. Don't be silly Charles. You're going to be a fantastic King.

But, but I'm not good at anything and nobody likes me. Oh, who fucking cares, Charles? Oh, you think I was good at anything? I wiped with my hand and I thought God gave me dreams! You make it through your rule without a genocide or a war. You're automatically in like the top 10% of all-k. I am? You sure are, hell.

You're going to be the head of one of the most progressive churches in the world just by ignoring. I am, aren't I? But, but cousin, surely there's a better way, a system by which a man or a woman can rule themselves. What about democracy? Not democracy. At least the Boris Johnson and Donald Trump, Charles. Are you worse than either of them? No, I...

I suppose I'm not, am I? But thank you, cousin Harry. I remember, remember what I've told you here today, Charles, and also remember that your mom and dad were cousins. They were cousins. That's true. Yeah. And we're back. When we left off, Charles was ripped from the arms of love and forced to marry some

chick from cheers or something. What happened next? Alright, so more ink has been spilled delving into that nightmare marriage and there's no way to possibly and meaningfully add to that story. But from all accounts, this doomed marriage brokered by a massageness who needed a virgin like an old-timey fairy tale villain, went off the rails pretty much right away.

And both Diana and Charles behaved pretty terribly. And there's plenty in both of them to find challenging to identify with and morally justified. And where your sympathies lie likely depends more on whose version of which story you're getting. Charles was and is by many accounts an insufferable twat. He's haughty and he's arrogant without having much to be all that chest-pumpingly proud of. And he was not just raised but actually bred for the position he found himself in. And Diana was no demure wallflower content to sit back and watch the incompetent juggered

nitty strut and print. Instead, she mocked him for his arrogance and impomposity and he belittled her for just about everything. Uh oh, and Charles never stopped loving and sleeping with Camilla. Like not at all. They were not to put it mildly a happy couple. Okay. As I granted, it could just be your telling, but I'm finding Diana super duper easy to identify with and morally justify.

Is the juggered thing? I don't know about what it was for you guys, but the juggered. I don't know. I spent a ton more time in the drama than unfolded as Charles and Diana's marriage collapse, but obviously the couple did their duty at least a few times to produce errors. Eventually, Charles and Diana would separate and formally divorce, and then he chased Diana down and killed her in a tunnel in Paris by a group there. Okay. I'll have you know that divorcing and murdering your wife is a fine English tradition for kings. Save to say that Charles' life has not been a happy one to date, and he hasn't had much

in the way of meaningful success in anything he's tried or that has been forced to. And you're now Lauren's Vanderpost. Vanderpost was a documentarian and author, and also whatever this means, quote, an amateur ethnographer. And quote, I don't know how you do that at the amateur level. Vanderposts believe that humanity needed to be rescued from the quote, superstition of the intellect. And quote, and the Charles with his decidedly uninspired intellect was essential to this rescue. He told Charles, quote, the battle for our renewal can be most naturally led by what is

still one of the few great living symbols accessible to us, the symbol of the crown. And quote, I don't really know what that means, but I do know how it sounds. And it sounds like telling a guy who has never made to feel personally important that he finally matters. And so Charles Doug right the fucking. He sure did, right? Oh, I'm an important and misunderstood genius sent to save the world from the fall of culture.

Hmm, well, I think I'm the best person to assess this claim. Let's hear what he has to say. Let's see. Okay, but look, he was living in a 775 room castle at the expense of the state and told that it was like ordained by God to lead this country. I feel like somebody made him feel personally important before this. No.

Golden handcuffs, no illusions, golden handcuffs. Charles at this point basically enters his teen girl wicking face. All right. And everyone's got he jumps into his sacred geometry and dream analysis as well as suphism, which in case you didn't Google that a few minutes ago, like I did is a kind of Islamic mysticism. He didn't start going to faith healers to help him understand, quote, a lot of bottled feelings. End quote.

He went to the Kalahari desert and had a vision while looking into a herd of zebras of an earthly eternity. Again, no idea what that means, but likely neither does Charles. Man, I think we can all agree. Some people just have too much fucking money. Right, they're just too much fucking money. Right. Just too money, fucking money.

Yeah. I mean, not us. We need more people out there. No, no, no. Look, if you're British royalty, you want to become a patron on a per episode basis. We're so lonely. We're so viable.

You have no idea how viable we are. We don't have to head into the section of the essay where I relate some of the baffling and horrible and just bizarre shit Charles has said in the weird hills he keeps trying to die on. He's known for sending long misses to government ministers, which are known as black spider memos because of the distinctive scroll that is his handwriting. He's promoted gerson therapy. Now. That is the quack cancer cure

that suggests that if you eat a bunch of vegetables and turn your blood alkaline, your cancer is going to go away. It won't, by the way, will not do that. No, it's not. Okay. If your mom was kept necromanthically alive for longer than any other queen in history, you'd start doubling the dark arts to, Tom. He likes a point. He likes a point. He likes a point. He likes a point. He's argued that the Western world

has taken a far too mechanistic approach to science, which I guess is true in the sense that science is literally a mechanism. But this is a guy who is a vocal patron and supporter of homeopathy. Charles also lobbies for the use of complimentary medicine, which is basically pairing real medicine with nonsense and then attributing some of the success to the nonsense. Right. Which is, by the way, how we know that the King hates spread to the show Michael Marshall, who famously called him a dumbass and a national paper.

Before I get to give his beloved homeopathy shit dropped from the NIH, I'm just saying, we know a guy who the king of England personally hates. That's resume material. Yeah. I go and only drives with Marsh, while we're at QD, I'll tell you that. The Charles pretty much had no reason to even be alive while Queen Elizabeth was still kicking. And so he behaved over the years like a man adrift, just bounding around trying to say or

believe or do anything even accidentally relevant. He's given speeches on the decline of the Patagonian toothfish. He opined on which helicopters, British soldiers, and Iraq should be using. He's known for his hot takes on the problem of omitting the study of Shakespeare in school and has bitterly complained about the hideousness of tall buildings. Basically, he was the internet before anyone else was honest. He was a rich guy with no filter before Twitter. He was a trailblazer. Thank you very much. I mean, he is, he's just a hot-take machine and his takes are all super fucking weird.

He's a vocal defender of Fox hunting, which by the way, no one should be. That's cruel, but he's also an avid and vocal and consistent environmentalist. I don't have consistent. Is the right word there? And then he says, shit like this word salad jumble. Quote, I have come to realize that my entire life has been so far motivated by a desire to heal. To heal the dismembered landscape and the poison to soul, the cruelly shattered townscape where harmony has been replaced by cacophony.

To heal the divisions between intuitive and rational thought, between mind and body and soul, so that the temple of our humanity can once again be lit by a sacred flame. Who? Are you gonna sell one of your many secret jewels so that you can do some of that stuff? No, okay, I just check them.

Also, sir, this is Oendys. I'm not sure it's on the menu, man. Bring me to this Wendy. I desire an affair with her. The Charles eventually married his first love, Camilla in 2005. And he is now the actual king of England and the whole damn English empire, but Charles is not particularly well-liked or loved.

Although a significant majority still believe the country is better off having a region to the not, it seems clear that they'd prefer pretty much anyone to Charles. In both liberal and conservative media, Charles is described variously as a twit, a prat, an idiot, hopelessly thin skinned, naive, and a preening snob. Among many other insults. He travels with his own white leather toilet seat. Oh, fuck you for leaving that to the end of the ass say so that we could make jokes about that the whole time.

And again, the King of England campaigns against a secular decadent Western world. Just that we now have this contradiction of a man as the new king of England seems a perfect metaphor for a world at once rightfully disdainful of monarchs and Absolutely fascinated by them and if you had to summarize what you've learned in one sentence. What would it be? It's not actually all that good to begin I'll take it if he doesn't want it and are you ready for the quiz? Let's do it All right, I have a question here for you.

You presented a really sympathetic portrait here, and I think that's good, right? Everybody focuses on all the thing the person born into fabulous wealth, earned by the exploitation of foreign lands and the subjugation of their people has. But not enough people focused on the things he doesn't have. So in addition to the stuff that you've talked about in the essay, what other thing that the rest of us just take for granted

has King Charles never had? Ha ha ha. Amazing. The feeling of wondering if he could afford something. Ha ha ha ha ha. Be the feeling of wondering if he had room for it in his house. Ha ha ha ha. See, the perpetual angst of knowing he's a few unfortunate turns away from object poverty or

D. Care in the fucking world, my God, the man has had a gap like. Okay. It's secret answer. E, it's all of those above. Absolutely. It's kind of reject the premise. I apologize. Yeah.

I know. All right, Tom. A lot of people the premise. I apologize. Yeah, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I Because they'd like to reduce their tourist attractions from an old lady's fancy house to literally Holy shit man That's fucking true See? So that England could focus on its robust culture of going down to the pub for a pint every evening of your life until you die in a great share Wow

For Jesus Christ of your life until you die in a great share. Wow. For Jesus Christ. They just really hate long lines and they don't want to do another one. Man. This is the truest set of questions you've ever written, but it's clear. Oh, I don't know.

It's clearly see, so it goes to focus on its culture of going to the box. Correct. And it is. Correct. Normally, I don't mind going after Noah and Eli, but they really crushed this question this week. Good for you guys. Okay. I have a really bad one. Tom King Charles will have one more name change after he dies. What will it be? Hey, if he lies in state, he'll be the Duke of Roddingham. Be throw him in with the other relics of the British Museum and he could be six feet plunder. See, if he's cremated, he could be Charlie or D. If he's buried, brown chuck.

Brown chuck. Brown chuck. It's brown chuck. I'm sorry, it is the duke of rotting, ham. Look at his fingers, ham. Look at his fingers, you can tell, you know, you know. I'm sure, I know. Cecil identified the dead body in our essay,

so Cecil wins. All right, I'm gonna pick Noah next week. All right, well, four, Tom, Cecil, Noah, and Heathen, right? I'm Eli Bosnick, thank you for hanging out with us today. We'll be back next week and by then, Noah will be an expert on something else. Which we now and then you can listen to our podcast by googling us and scrolling past our Facebooks. And if you'd like to help keep the show going, you can make a very episode donation at

patreon.com, slash citation pod, or hey, leave us a five star review everywhere you can. And if you'd like to get in touch with us, check out past episodes, connect with us on social media, or check the show notes, be sure to check out citation pod dot com. you