According to real experts Charles III He would have many manias and as many defects, such as the alleged shots of anger that he would regret immediately. A real expert and an exceptional source, Harry, revealed that the king would also have a very particular habit, but it would be reductive to define it only a vice, or simply a small obsession. In fact, it would be something deeper, linked to Carlo’s childhood, a period not really simple for him, made of privileges, of course, but also of so much loneliness.
“As if it were his son”
We know that Charles III would never get on the road without first having assured himself of having certain objects with him, including, as listed by Tom Bower in the book “Rebel Prince. The Power, Passion and Defiance of Prince Charles “(2018), the orthopedic bed, the sheets, its favorite toilet paper and a tailor -made toilet seat. The royal expert Christopher Andersen added in his work “The King. The Life of Charles III “(2022) that His Majesty It would also bring something very particular in the suitcase: the teddy bear with whom he played during the childhood. As Andersen reiterated in the Entertainment Tonight program, mentioned by the Daily Mail, the sovereign would treat the plush “As if it were his son”.
“The only human being”
According to the revelations contained in Andersen’s book to no staff member would be allowed to touch the plush. The only one who had the allowed to do so and even to make repairs was the highly trusted Tata di Carlo, Mabel Anderson, as reported by Page Six and the Daily Mail. In this regard Andersen wrote: (The nanny) was the only human being to whom he was allowed to take needle and thread to (adjust) the bear of Prince Charles. He had exceeded forty years and every time the plush needed repairs, one could think that it was his own son who had to undergo an important surgery “. After the retirement of the nanny, the task of guarding Teddy Bear would have been entrusted to the ex -vallery Michael Fawcett (involved in the stage of honors in 2021), who would have had among his tasks also to squeeze the toothpaste on the brush of Carlo, make his beard, help him to wear his pants and tie his shoes. However, Andersen added in the biography, “At 48, Carlo still traveled everywhere with the plush and when the toy lost a button or began to wear insisted on that it was called the Tata Mabel to mend it and put it back to new”.
The key role of the nanny
The Tata Mabel Anderson, as the Telegraph reported, worked for the Royal Family From 1949 until 1981. When he crossed the threshold of the building he was 22 years old. Queen Elizabeth and Prince Filippo admired his discreet character very much. It seems that Carlo was very fond of them and that this feeling has never faded despite the past years. “Over his life (Carlo) he did everything to include it in his life and still does it despite the advanced age (of the nanny)”wrote Ingrid Seward on the Daily Mail. “Carlo said he did not remember a kiss of his mother since he turned eight years old and told his girlfriend with nostalgia who from an emotional point of view his two nanny (the Anderson and, even earlier, the Scottish Helen Lighbody, taken a month after the birth of the king) had a greater meaning than his mother had ever had”. Robert Jobson underlined Express: “Certainly Mabel Anderson was Carlo’s rock when he was a small and sensitive child.” When the nanny retired, explained Time, Queen Elisabetta wanted to reward her for her services, granting her an apartment near the Windsor Castle and inviting her every year to spend Christmas in Sandringham.
Marriage proposal in the Nursery
We need this digression on real nanns to better understand what the memory of early childhood would represent for Carlo. His Majesty, in fact, would rethink the early years of his life as a sort of personal “golden age”. An enchanted period that time has taken away and that he tried not to forget by preserving the Teddy Bearwhich is a tangible symbol. It is no coincidence, for example, if Carlo, as Seward said again, “In the afternoon in which he made the marriage proposal to Lady Diana Spencer, he chose to do it in the Nursery of the Windsor Castle.” All this, however, must not suggest that Carlo was the classic Mammone. On the contrary, it is a much less linear and more rooted question in the personality, experiences and fate of the sovereign.
“If the bullies had the better of him …”
Is the Prince Harryin his “SPARE” Memoir, to explain the true value of the Orsacchiotto for Carlo: “Dad confessed that he had been ‘persecuted’ as a boy. To tempore it, his grandmother and grandfather had sent him to Gordonstoun, a college where he had been horribly bullied “. The Duke refers to the period between 1962 and 1967 in which his father studied in the Scottish school of Gordonstoun, founded in 1934. Carlo was the first heir to the throne to attend a school, instead of taking lessons from private guardians, as the BBC pointed out. So Gordonstoun was the first school to welcome a future king. However, the then Prince of Wales would have spent happy years there, as Harry said: “… he said that the most probable victims of the Bulli of Gordonstoun were the creative, sensitive types, lovers of books; In other words: he … I remember murmur gloomy: ‘I barely survived’. How? Bassa head, tightening the teddy bear it still has many years later “.
“Put to the carpet”
A Entertainment Tonight Christopher Andersen focused precisely on the bullying episodes of which Carlo would have been a victim in Gordonstoun and who reflect all the solitude and sense of helplessness that the then Prince would have suffered: “What he crossed is quite disturbing. When he was a boy, a young man was regularly beaten by the older students, hanging naked in the shower, sprayed with cold water and left there. He was punched and put to the carpet. He wrote … letters to the parents, imploring them to take him away from the school … frankly by today’s standards this would be similar to non -grandfather, or to the abuse of minor, yet his parents pretended not to see. I believe that this caused him a terrible resentment “. If the situation was really as Andersen described it, it is not surprising that theteddy bear It was the only “friend”, let’s call it that, for Carlo and that he wanted to keep him for a lifetime. Who knows, then, if for the sovereign to obtain, in 2024, the patronage of Gordonstoun (a role previously covered by Prince Filippo, pointed out the people) was a small revenge, or if he awakened in him the memory of painful moments.
Like the Linus blanket?
For the king the plush would be a bit like the proverbial Linus blanketin addition to a memory of a time that will no longer return. In him Carlo would have found the comfort sought but, it seems, not received by the parents, taken from their official roles. The bear, however, would also have been a kind of psychological defense, a protective barrier against the harassment of his companions. An escape route. Harry writes: “Teddy … was now in a pitiful state, with broken legs and unstitched threads, and packed holes here and there. I imagined that this would be the appearance of dad if the bullies had had the better of him. “ The prince makes in a very convincing way, through the image of the now underworld bear, what would have suffered his father in the years of training. Finally, use a word that summarizes this situation perfectly: “Teddy eloquently expressed the substantial solitude of dad’s childhood, and much better than he could ever do”. There “loneliness” of a future king.
A little yellow
In his book Andersen suggests that Teddy Bear is still placed in Carlo’s suitcase for each shift. A Entertainment Tonight the expert confirmed: “(The king) still travels with the bear of the (his) childhood”. In his autobiography, however, the Duke of Sussex would support the opposite: “Teddy went everywhere with dad … Willy and I agreed that dad deserved better and, with the due apologies to Teddy, he needed a real partner. That’s why, at his request, we promised to welcome Camilla in our family … “.
It seems to understand that with the arrival of Camilla at Corte Carlo has decided to leave the plush in his private apartments, while continuing to keep him carefully, as a memory of his life, of beautiful moments and difficult events, to testify that, despite the adversities, the king made it.