The Queen invested her son as Prince of Wales in July, 1969. He took his seat in the House of Lords in February, 1970.

The Prince began a military career in 1971, receiving training as a pilot. He entered the navy, following in the footsteps of his father, grandfather and both his great-grandfathers. He served on a guided missile destroyer and two frigates. In 1974 Prince Charles qualified as a helicopter pilot and then joined a naval air squadron which operated from a carrier. In 1976, he took command of a coastal minehunter for his last nine months in the Navy.

The Prince of Wales was married to Lady Diana Spencer in 1981. The Prince and Princess of Wales had two sons: Prince William (b. 1982), now the first in line to the throne, and Prince Harry (b. 1984), now the second in line to the throne. The Prince and Princess of Wales separated in late 1992, and the marriage was dissolved in 1996. The Princess died in a car crash in 1997. In 2005 The Prince of Wales married Mrs Parker-Bowles, who now has the title HRM The Queen of the United Kingdom.

Charles became King on the death of his mother Queen Elizabeth II on September 8, 2022.

King Charles III has a wide range of interests which are reflected in 'The Prince's Charities', a group of twenty not-for-profit organizations of which he is President. Eighteen of the twenty charities were founded personally by The King. This group of organizations is the largest multi-cause charitable enterprise in the United Kingdom, raising over £119 million annually. These charities represent a broad range of areas, such as: opportunity and enterprise, education, health, the built environment, responsible business, and the natural environment. The King has also become Patron or President of hundreds of similar organizations. He has presented many articles and speeches on architecture, the inner cities, rural communities, education, religion, interfaith tolerance, health, farming, and other areas reflecting his broad interests.

Of particular interest to Perennialists and Traditionalists, The King is actively interested in traditional thought and its applications to the problems of the modern world. He is the Patron of the Temenos Academy, which is dedicated to the central ideas of the Perennial Philosophy. The Temenos Academy Review is the journal of the Academy and is the successor to the journal Temenos, first published in 1981 and founded by Keith Critchlow, Brian Keeble, Kathleen Raine and Philip Sherrard. HRM Charles III wrote that the Academy and its review are “committed both to the perennial philosophy and to the notion that Man is, at root, a spiritual creature with spiritual and intellectual needs which have to be nourished if we are to fulfill our potential.”

Because of this interest in the Perennial Philosophy and Tradition, King Charles III, while still The Prince of Wales, gave an opening videotaped address to the Sacred Web conference on “Tradition in the Modern World.” The Prince of Wales' videotaped address is given in full on Tradition in the Modern World: Sacred Web 2006 Conference, a two-disc DVD set.

Selected books authored or edited by H.R.H. The Prince of Wales

H.R.H. The Prince of Wales and Stephanie Donaldson. The Elements of Organic Gardening. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson Illustrated, 2007.

H.R.H. The Prince of Wales and Candida Lycett Green. The Garden at Highgrove. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000.

Travels with the Prince: Paintings and Drawings Selected by His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales. [London]: Sheeran Lock, 1998.

Shakespeare, William. The Prince's Choice: A Personal Selection from Shakespeare by the Prince of Wales. Edited by H.R.H. The Prince of Wales. Hodder & Stoughton Ltd (November 2, 1995).

Islam and the West: a Lecture Given in the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford on 27 October 1993. Oxford, England: Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, 1993.

H.R.H. The Prince of Wales and Charles Clover. Highgrove: Portrait of an Estate. London: Chapmans, 1993.

The People’s Prince: a collection of major addresses. Published for the Australian Heritage Society by Veritas, 1992.

Watercolours. H.R.H. the Prince of Wales. L ondon: Little, Brown, [1991].

An Exhibition of Watercolour Sketches by H.R.H. The Prince of Wales. London: Anna Hunter and Guy Thompson, c1990.

The Rainforest Lecture: given by His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew on 6 February 1990. [London?]: Friends of the Earth Trust, [1990].

A Vision of Britain: A Personal View of Architecture. London: Doubleday, 1989.

Charles in his Own Words. Compiled by Rosemary York. London: W.H. Allen, 1981.

The Old Man of Lochnagar. London: Hamilton, 1980.

For me, the teachings of Tradition suggest the presence of a reality that can bring about a reality of integration, and it is this reality that can be contrasted with so much of Modernism’s obsession with dis-integration, dis-connection and de-construction – that which is sometimes termed the “malaise of modernity”. Cut off at the root from the Transcendent, Modernism has become deracinated and has separated itself – and thereby everything that comes within its thrall – from that which integrates; that which enables us to turn towards and reconnect with the Divine.

In this way, the loss of Tradition cuts to the very core of our being since it conditions that which we can “know” and “be”. For Modernism, by its unrelenting emphasis on the quantitative view of reality, limits and distorts the true nature of the Real and our perception of it. Whilst it has enabled us to know much that has been of material benefit, it also prevents us from knowing that which I would like to refer to as the knowledge of the Heart; that which enables us to be fully human.

This dilemma is captured in ancient notions of balance and harmony; notions that are, for example, expressed in many guises in that wonderful Kabbalistic diagram of the Tree of Life. As the Temenos Fellow, Warren Kenton, so beautifully explains in his lectures to the students of the Academy, the teaching of the Tree of Life is that the “active” and the “passive” aspects of life, which on their own may lead to imbalance and disharmony, must be, can only be, brought together in harmony by the influx into our lives of the Divine and the Sacred. Whether or not we interpret this image as an explanation of an outer or an inner orientation, it is in this way, and only in this way, that the forces, or characteristics, of expansion and constraint can be brought into balance.