好英语网查尔斯继承王位：从丑闻和质疑中走出的新任英国君主
LONDON — Never, perhaps, has an heir been more ready for the crown.
伦敦——大概没有哪位继承人对加冕有这么充分的准备了。
Charles, the eldest son of Queen Elizabeth II and a man born to be king, acceded to the throne on Thursday after being the designated successor for longer than anyone in the history of the British monarchy. As King Charles III, he will become sovereign of the world’s most important constitutional monarchy, head of the most storied royal family, and a symbol of continuity in a storm-tossed country.
周四，生来注定成为国王的伊丽莎白二世长子查尔斯继承了王位，他是英国君主制史上在位时间最久的王储。而作为查尔斯三世，他将成为世界上最重要的君主立宪制国家的君主，历史上最负盛名的王族的族长，同时也将是在国家风雨飘摇之中传承的象征。
作为王位继承人，查尔斯近年来承担了女王的多项职责。今年5月，他在英国议会开幕典礼上代女王发表演讲。
Having aged from an awkward, self-doubting young man into an unhappy middle-aged husband, Charles has become, at 73, a self-assured, gray-haired eminence, steeped in causes like climate change and environmental protection, which were once quirky but now seem peculiarly in sync with the times.
从局促笨拙而又自我怀疑的青年，到婚姻不快乐的中年，如今73岁的查尔斯已成为一位镇定自若、头发花白的尊贵人物，他投身于气候变化和环境保护等事业，这些曾经显得古怪的举动，如今看来却出奇地与时俱进。
Whether Charles will ever enjoy the respect or affection showered on his mother is another question. Thrust on to the throne at 25, Elizabeth reigned for longer than most Britons have been alive, anchoring her country with stoic dignity as it made a turbulent passage from globe-spanning empire to reluctant member of the European Union to an uncertain future after Brexit.
查尔斯能否得到民众倾注于他母亲身上的尊重或爱戴则是另一个问题。伊丽莎白25岁登上王位，在位时间比大多英国人的寿命还要长，从全球殖民帝国到勉强成为欧盟一员，再到脱欧后陷入未来充满变数的动荡，全过程她始终以坚忍庄严的姿态支撑着她的国家。
Charles’s journey was, perhaps inevitably, less acclaimed. His foibles and frustrations were mercilessly dissected by the news media; his pet hobbies, from architecture criticism to organic farming, were frequently mocked; his marriage to Diana, Princess of Wales, which crumbled amid lurid tabloid headlines and mutual charges of infidelity, remains for many the defining event of his public life.
或许是命中注定，查尔斯的经历并不是那样广受赞颂。新闻媒体皆在无情剖析他的缺点与挫折；从建筑评论到有机农业，他的爱好经常遭到嘲讽；他与威尔士王妃戴安娜的婚姻在耸人听闻的小报头条和对彼此不忠的指控中破裂，在许多人眼中，这依然是他公共生活的决定性事件。
At the nadir of Charles’s public life, in the mid-1990s, some critics went so far as to say that the scandal-scarred heir had forfeited the right to be king and that the crown should skip a generation, going to his elder son, Prince William, who was untarnished by public blemishes.
查尔斯公共生活的最低点是在上世纪90年代中期，一些批评者甚至认为，这位丑闻缠身的继承人已经丧失了成为国王的资格，王位应该跳过他这一代，由他的长子威廉王子继承，因为威廉的形象还没有被公开丑闻污损。
Nothing, of course, compared to his marriage to Diana. The seamy tabloid stories, the tell-all TV interviews (“There were three of us in this marriage,” Diana said to the BBC, referring to her husband and Camilla Parker-Bowles, whom he later married), the bitter divorce and Diana’s death in a car crash in Paris in 1997 — all of it crystallized the image held by many of Charles as an oafish cad and his family as unfeeling in-laws.
他最大的污点自然是与戴安娜的婚姻。阴暗的小报故事，揭丑的电视采访（戴安娜告诉BBC，“这段婚姻中有三个人”，指的是她的丈夫与卡米拉·帕克-鲍尔斯，两人后来结为夫妇），煎熬的离婚以及1997年戴安娜在巴黎出车祸去世，这一切的一切都让很多人形成了对查尔斯的顽固印象，即他是个愚蠢卑鄙的男人，而他一家都是冷酷无情的婆家人。
From 1991 to 1996, the percentage of people who said they thought Charles would make a good king plunged to 41 percent from 82 percent, according to the polling firm MORI. But Diana’s death proved a turning point: Charles worked with Tony Blair, the prime minister at the time, to nudge his mother into honoring Diana’s memory, amid a national outpouring of grief, and then set about rehabilitating his own image.
根据MORI民调公司的数据，从1991年到1996年，认为查尔斯能成为一位好国王的民众比例从82%下降至41%。但戴安娜之死成为了一个拐点：查尔斯与时任首相布莱尔合作，在举国哀悼的氛围中劝说他的母亲悼念戴安娜，然后又开始重塑自己的形象。
He has mostly succeeded. Few Britons now recoil at the prospect of King Charles III, even if he sometimes seems more a fuddy-duddy uncle than a national patriarch.
他的努力大体是成功的。现在基本没有多少英国人对查尔斯三世登基存在抵触情绪，即便他有时看起来更像一位守旧的叔叔，而非一个国家的大家长。
Married since 2005 to Camilla, with whom he was romantically involved before and during his marriage to Diana, Charles has found stability in his personal life. With the death of his father, Prince Philip, at 99, last year, he became paterfamilias of the House of Windsor. Camilla, 75, who will take the title of queen consort, is a sturdy and respectable presence at his side.
2005年与卡米拉结婚后，查尔斯的私生活安稳下来，在与戴安娜结婚之前和期间，两人一直保持着私情。去年，在他的父亲菲利普亲王去世后，他成为了温莎王朝的一家之父。75岁获得王后头衔的卡米拉一直是查尔斯身边坚定而可敬的存在。
But Charles takes the helm of a royal family that has been rocked by a series of upheavals: a bitter falling-out with his younger son, Prince Harry, and his American-actress wife, Meghan, and the unsavory ties of his brother Prince Andrew with the financier Jeffrey Epstein, which resulted in a civil suit against Andrew accusing him of sexual abuse of a teenager. Charles has struggled to keep wayward family members in line.
但查尔斯继承执掌的王室已经受到了一系列动荡的冲击：与小儿子哈里王子及其美国演员妻子梅根的激烈冲突；还有他的弟弟安德鲁王子与金融家杰弗里·爱泼斯坦声名狼藉的关系，导致安德鲁惹上民事诉讼，被指控性侵一名青少年。查尔斯始终难以控制家族成员的任性妄为。
He has also long pushed to streamline the monarchy, partly to reduce its drain on the public purse. As king, he will be able to put that plan fully into action. The end of the second Elizabethan Age thus promises to be a momentous transition, not just because of the passing of a beloved queen but also because Charles will bring his own ideas into a job for which he has spent a lifetime preparing.
多年来，他一直在推动精简王室规模，部分目的是为了减少王室对公共财政的消耗。作为国王，他可以将此计划全面付诸行动。因此，第二个伊丽莎白时代的终结有望成为一个重大转变的发端，这不仅在于深受爱戴的女王去世了，还在于查尔斯将会把自己的理念带到他毕生准备继承的事业之中。
“The style will be very different,” said Vernon Bogdanor, a professor of government at King’s College London who has written about the role of the monarchy in Britain’s constitutional system. “He will be an active king and he will probably push his prerogatives to the limits, but he won’t go beyond them.”
“他的作风将大为不同，”伦敦国王学院的政府学教授弗农·博格丹诺表示，他曾著文探讨君主政体在英国宪制中的作用。“他将会是一位主动进取的国王，可能会把自己的王室特权利用到极致，但也不会逾矩。”
Charles, he said, fought to carve out an identity as the Prince of Wales, a role that he held longer than anyone but that comes without a job description. He founded formidable charities like the Prince’s Trust, which has helped nearly a million disadvantaged young people, and championed causes like sustainable urban planning and environmental protection, long before they became fashionable.
他说，作为威尔士亲王，查尔斯竭力打造出了自己的定位，他拥有这一并无具体职位描述的头衔的时间比任何人都长。他创立了如王子信托基金这样的强大慈善机构，帮助了近100万弱势青年群体，并在可持续城市规划及环境保护等事业成为时代潮流的很久之前就提出了倡议。
In recent years, he has taken on several of the queen’s duties, from foreign trips to investitures, where people are granted knighthoods. On Remembrance Day, he placed a wreath at the monument to Britain’s fallen soldiers on her behalf. At the state opening of Parliament, he escorted her into the Palace of Westminster.
近年来，从海外出访到主持封爵的授勋仪式，他分担了女王的多项职责。在国殇纪念日，他要代表女王向英国阵亡将士的纪念碑敬献花圈。而在国会开幕大典时，他会护送女王进入威斯敏斯特宫。
Charles has also not hesitated to wade into fraught political issues. He has spoken out regularly for religious tolerance and against Islamophobia, which some credit with helping mute a potential backlash against Muslims after a series of deadly terrorist attacks carried out by Islamic extremists in London in 2005.
对于敏感政治议题，查尔斯也会毫不犹豫参与其中。他经常公开呼吁宗教宽容，反对仇穆情绪，当2005年伊斯兰极端分子在伦敦接连发动致命的恐怖袭击，一些人认为他的姿态有助于缓和可能的报复反应。
“He could have spent his time in nightclubs or doing nothing at all, but he’s found a role,” said Professor Bogdanor.
“他大可以在夜店消磨时间，或是什么都不管，但他找到了自己的角色，”博格丹诺说。
At times, Charles’s strong opinions have gotten him into hot water. In 1984, he famously ridiculed a proposed extension to the National Gallery as a “monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend.” The plan was scrapped, but years later, prominent architects complained that his backdoor lobbying against designs that he did not favor was an abuse of his constitutional role.
查尔斯的鲜明观点有时会使他陷入困境。1984年，他对国家美术馆的扩建计划进行了著名的嘲讽，称其是“一位深受爱戴的优雅朋友脸上的巨大痈肿”。这个计划后来取消了，但多年后，一些著名建筑师抱怨说，查尔斯通过走后门游说反对自己不喜欢的设计，这是对他宪法角色的滥用。
As king, Charles will have to keep his opinions to himself. His mother was so discreet that royal watchers could not decipher her positions even on furiously debated issues like Brexit. Charles, too, was careful not to opine on Brexit, though he gave a glimpse into his thinking when he told the German Parliament in 2020 that “no country is really an island” and pleaded for Germany to keep working with Britain.
作为国王，查尔斯将不得不把意见憋在心里。他的母亲非常谨慎，即使在英国脱欧这样争论激烈的问题上，王室观察人士也无法解读她的立场。查尔斯也小心翼翼地不就英国脱欧发表意见，尽管他在2020年对德国议会表示，“没有哪个国家是真正的孤岛，”并请求德国继续与英国合作，这透露了他的想法。
It is not clear whether Charles will continue his extensive philanthropy. He is a patron or president of more than 400 charities, in addition to the Prince’s Trust. But his philanthropic work has not been without problems: The chief executive of another of Charles’s charities, Michael Fawcett, resigned after he was accused of promising to obtain a knighthood for a billionaire Saudi donor.
目前还不清楚查尔斯是否会继续他广泛的慈善事业。除了王子信托基金，他还是400多个慈善机构的赞助人或主席。但他的慈善工作并非没有问题：查尔斯另一家慈善机构的首席执行官迈克尔·福塞特在被指控承诺为一名沙特亿万富翁捐赠者获得爵位后辞职。
For some, the scandal laid bare one of Charles’s biggest weaknesses: a lack of judgment about those around him. Advisers had long questioned the conduct of Mr. Fawcett, who had served as the prince’s valet before ascending into powerful posts in his charity network. But Charles, whose spokesman said he had not been aware of the cash-for-honors accusation, hung on to Mr. Fawcett stubbornly.
一些人认为，这起丑闻暴露了查尔斯最大的弱点之一：对他周围的人缺乏判断力。长期以来，顾问们一直质疑福塞特的行为。在进入王子的慈善网络担任要职之前，福塞特曾是王子的贴身男仆。查尔斯的发言人说，他并不知道现金换爵位的指控，但查尔斯还是固执地不肯放弃福塞特。
Charles is still not overly popular. Last year, he was picked as the favorite member of the royal family by just 11 percent of those surveyed, according to Ipsos MORI, trailing the queen; William and his wife, Kate; Harry and Meghan; Princess Anne; Prince Philip; and any of the queen’s great-grandchildren.
目前，查尔斯依然不太受欢迎。据益普索·莫里调查公司，去年，他仅被11%的受访者选择为最受欢迎的王室成员，排在女王、威廉和妻子凯特、哈里和梅根、安妮公主、菲利普亲王，以及女王的全部曾孙辈之后。
But for now, the future of the monarchy seems secure: 43 percent of people said Britain would be worse off without it, while only 19 percent said it would be better off, and 31 percent said there would be no difference. Those numbers barely budged even after Harry and Meghan gave a sensational interview to Oprah Winfrey in which they accused the royal family of callous and racist treatment.
但就目前而言，君主制的未来似乎是安全的：43%的人认为没有君主制，英国会更糟，只有19%的人认为会更好，31%的人认为不会有什么不同。即使在哈里和梅根接受奥普拉·温弗瑞的采访，指责王室无情而他们受到了种族主义对待之后，这些数字也几乎没有变化。
For Charles, the biggest personal challenge may be healing the rift with his son. Harry told Ms. Winfrey that his father had stopped taking his calls for a while. “There’s a lot of hurt that has happened,” Harry said. There is little sign of a reconciliation, and Harry is writing a memoir that people close to Buckingham Palace fear will reopen the wounds from the couple’s split with the family.
对查尔斯来说，个人最大的挑战可能是弥合与儿子之间的裂痕。哈里告诉温弗瑞，他的父亲有一段时间不接他的电话了。“有许多的伤害，”哈利说。目前几乎没有和解的迹象，哈里正在写一本回忆录，与白金汉宫关系密切的人担心，这本回忆录会重新揭开这对夫妇与王室决裂的创伤。
Charles must also deal with the legal fallout from his brother Andrew’s relationship with Mr. Epstein. He moved swiftly to sideline Andrew from royal duties after his brother gave a damning interview to the BBC in a misbegotten effort to clear his name. Royal watchers said it was a sign, even before his mother died, that Charles was cementing his role as the leader of the family and a king in waiting.
查尔斯还必须处理弟弟安德鲁与爱泼斯坦的关系带来的法律后果。在弟弟接受BBC采访，为洗刷自己的名声而做出错误的努力后，他迅速采取行动，让安德鲁不再担负王室职责。王室观察人士说，这是一个迹象，表明在母亲去世之前，查尔斯就已开始巩固自己作为族长和未来国王的角色。
“He has grown in stature in recent years,” said Penny Junor, a royal historian. “He’s looking like a much more confident character, happier in his own skin.”
“近年来，他的声望有所提高，”王室历史学家彭妮·朱诺说。“他看起来像一个更自信的角色，更加游刃有余。”