The difficult job of being Queen – and the expectations of the King who succeeds her

Queen Elizabeth had an impossibly difficult job during a remarkable period in world history that saw rapid and radical change. No one, not even her heir King Charles III, will ever truly understand her complex role, its complicated history, and trying to balance that with the demands of her family. “Every morning she has to get up knowing that she has to be the Queen and all that that entails,” says Gerald Strober, co-author of “Queen Elizabeth II: An Oral History,” along with his wife Deborah Hart Strober. “At the same time she has her private life…So there’s that balance, the tension between the official person the whole world was looking at and the mother and the grandmother and the wife.” The pair spoke extensively with staff, family friends, and international leaders to capture a full view of the monarch. Now, King Charles III must figure out how he can be most effective as he assumes her place atop the British monarchy. And he will have to confront his own set of unique challenges as the new king. Strober calls King Charles a “middleman…trying to follow in the footsteps of his mother with his son’s footsteps racing behind.”