charles ascension to the throne marks a pivotal moment for the united kingdom. it s facing a potential breakup scotland braces for independence. and uncertain world after leaving the eu. max foster is at buckingham palace. max, i show enjoyed your commentary. you ve been doing a great job. what is occurring at this particular moment? reporter: audiences at buckingham palace, so we re into the more mundane matters, if you like, after a lot of the pomp and ceremony where the king has to meet all the key people in the state and have meetings with them in order to govern over this state. look at the crowds. today the barriers have gone up. the roads are being closed. they re preparing for the massive state funeral which president biden confirmed he will be going to. we could see all the seniors heads of state from all around the world coming in. i know president putin enjoyed his visit to london. will he be allowed to come under sanctions is a big question. president xi enjoye
new prince and princess of wales will, i know, continue to inspire and lead our national conversations, helping to bring the marginal to the center ground, where vital help can be given. i want also to express my love for harry and meghan as they continue to build their lives overseas. now that charles is king, what does this mean for prince william and where does the future of the monarchy go from here. joining me now to talk about all the above is patrick jeffson. you ll remember he was princess deanna s private secretary and chief of staff and served the princess for eight years. he s also the author of the books shadows of a princess and the meghan factor and the recent piece just published in the daily mail, mystique, aura and majesty radiated from her majesty like an electric force field. actually patrick, let s begin with that. the piece that you wrote talks about you being summoned to meet
year. is there a lot of pressure now brought to bear on meghan, beyond that which already existed because the eyes of the world will be scrutinizing every step that she takes during the course of the next ten days? well, it s a wonderful piece of good fortune, probably, that harry and meghan were already in england when the queen entered her final illness. they had a successful visit to manchester and their last engagement in london was overshadowed by the queen s death. there will be many question marks, i think, about her participation in the events that loi lie ahead, particularly the state fun yal. we ll remember the queen s platinum jubilee, service of thanksgiving, harry and meghan were consigned to the pews along with the junior members of the royal family.
overseas. the shift of state is sailing on and harry and meghan seems gotten their own boat and gone off to their own desert island. you know, patrick, we have all grieved. we have all grieved loss. sometimes it s a unifier. maybe it s an opportunity for the brothers to the extent there s a schism between them to put it back together? we would hope so, michael. certainly grief can have a unifying effect, even on the most fractured family, but the signs are not good. harry arrived after everybody else at balmoral, when the queen passed. and he left first. so, we read he also had to make his own way there. made his own arrangements for travel. the signs are that the distance between harry and the rest of his family at the moment is about as far as it could be. and it doesn t look like it s going to get any better in the near term with we re promised his own memoirs due to come out in a book before the end of the
created william, his heir, prince of wales. that means in simple terms that he is next up. god forbid if anything happened to the new king, william would become king as quickly as charles did when his mother passed. so, this is a shifting of the perspective. the british constitutional system has delivered a replacement head of state in william and his work now is to prepare for that day may it be far off when he in turn assumes the throne. in a sense, it underlines the die verging paths between william and his younger brother harry. they used to be so close. i knew them when they were still small boys. now it seems they re set on further and further distant paths ahead. it s significant that prince charles said sorry, the king said, that william is heir. harry is building his life