King Charles Has a Weird Ice Quirk, Won't Leave Home Without His Toy
The king of Britain is also the king of quirky behavior, according to new reports.
King Charles III will be “one of the most eccentric sovereigns Great Britain has ever had,” Christopher Andersen, the author of “The King: The Life of Charles III,” said in a recent interview, according to Entertainment Tonight.
“I think one of the funniest quirks — a number of royals have this, the queen had it as well — they don’t like square ice cubes,” Andersen said. “They carry around ice cube trays, have them brought with them wherever they go, because they don’t like the clinking sound that square cubes make.”
Charles “travels with a custom-made toilet seat,” Andersen said.
Charles also “travels with a childhood teddy bear,” Andersen said, according to the New York Post.
Andersen said the bear was guarded by valet Michael Fawcett, and only one nanny could be allowed to mend it.
“The only person who’s been allowed to mend King Charles’ teddy bear is his childhood nanny, Mabel Anderson, who he remains very close to,”
One repair took place when Charles “was well into his 40s, and every time that teddy needed to be repaired, you would think it was his own child having major surgery,” Fawcett is quoted as saying in the book.
Valet Ken Stronach said in the book that he would tuck the adult prince into bed and ensure the bear was in its proper place with Charles.
“So much about Charles you could really trace back to his childhood, which was heartbreakingly lonely,” Andersen said, according to ET. “Charles has described his relationship with his mother [by saying] that she was cold and aloof, that his father was a bully who hectored him, who made him cry in front of other people, physically bullied him.”
“I think it’s very telling that Charles only spent as a boy … two 15-minute periods a day [with his parents],” Anderson said. “When he had a tonsillectomy, when he had a very bad case of the flu, when he fell down the stairs and broke his ankle, when he had an emergency appendectomy at the age of 13, neither his mother or his father visited him in the hospital.”
Charles called his time at a Scottish boarding school “pure hell,” Andersen said.
“What he went through is really quite alarming. As a boy, as a young man, he was routinely beaten by older students, hung up naked in a shower and sprayed with cold water and left there. He was pummeled and wrestled to the ground,” Andersen said. “He wrote these pleading letters to his parents to please take him out of the school … By today’s standards, it would be akin to hazing or child abuse frankly, and yet his parents turned a blind eye to it. I think that caused a tremendous resentment.”
The book noted one incident of rage when visiting a friend’s home in France, according to the NY Post.
“Flying into a blind rage, he pulled the sink off the wall, then smashed it, looking for the cuff link,” Andersen wrote in his book. “Unable to find the missing jewelry, a wild-eyed Prince of Wales spun around and grabbed his valet by the throat. Stronach broke free, darted out a side door — and into a linen closet. Terrified, he huddled there for 30 minutes before he could hear Charles leave the bathroom.”
The king’s bottom line? “He wants what he wants when he wants it,” Andersen explains.
The New York Post noted that an Amazon Prime documentary, “Serving the Royals: Inside the Firm,” offered a window into the royal world of privilege.
The Post noted that staff at Clarence House, where he has lived with Queen Consort Camilla since 2003, refer to him as the “pampered prince.”
Charles had “everything done for him,” butler Paul Burrell revealed in the documentary.
“His pajamas are pressed every morning. His shoelaces are pressed flat with an iron. The bath plug has to be in a certain position, and the water temperature has to be just tepid,” Burrell said.
The king even “has his valets squeeze one inch of toothpaste onto his toothbrush every morning.”
Burrell had another anecdote the Express found worth sharing in 2019.
“On one occasion, he [Charles] rang me from his library and he said, ‘Oh Paul, a letter from the Queen seems to have fallen into my wastepaper bin. Would you pick it out?’” Burrell said.
The website My London reported in April about the new king’s eating eccentricities.
Citing what it called “a Royal source” the site did not name, the site said Charles demands biscuits at a specific temperature.
“Prince Charles enjoys cheese and biscuits at the end of many of his meals. Since he’s particular about everything, he insists that they be a certain temperature. The staff keeps a warming pan just to make sure they are hot enough for his liking,” the site quoted the insider as saying.
This spring, a book by Tina Brown called “The Palace Papers,” gave some inside information on the royal family, according to Page Six.
The book said Fawcett would oversee the “paraphernalia that preceded his boss like the baggage train of a Tudor traveling court including the Prince’s orthopedic bed, lavatory seat and Kleenex Velvet lavatory paper, plus two landscapes of the Scottish landscapes.”
“When he traveled to stay at friends’ country houses, a truck arrived the day before, bringing his bed, furniture, and even pictures, which his pampering aide Michael Fawcett ensured would be hung in his allotted bedroom in place of the possessions of his host,” Brown wrote.
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