Little more than a fortnight from the funeral for Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, the future outlines of the British Monarchy are taking shape. His son and the presumptive heir to the throne, Prince Charles, is assuming a role once the preserve of his father. With 95-year-old Queen Elizabeth II herself at the twilight of her reign, Prince Charles is quickly acquiring a mantle of responsibilities that will be his if crowned king. In these highly politicized times, though, can he rule for all his subjects as a “Patriot King”?

The most obvious sign of Prince Charles’s evolving duties will come into focus on May 11, at the State Opening of Parliament. He will accompany the Queen as she reads the Government’s agenda of priorities, a supportive role once performed by the Duke, until he retired from public life in 2017. Her Majesty is said to be worried that the Crown will “skip” a generation — Charles is himself 72-years-old — and wants to devolve power slowly unto him. This while she is ever-mindful of her 21st-birthday pledge to the Commonwealth, that her “whole life whether it be long or short shall be devoted to your service.”

The Queen is clearly cognizant of the controversy created at the Abdication Crisis of 1936, when Edward VIII passed the crown to the next in line, Elizabeth’s father, George VI, so that Edward could marry the Yank divorcée Wallis Simpson. It could be argued that the shake-up to “The Firm” following the Duke of Edinburgh’s death could yet prove more consequential. The Queen’s own mortality is become a pressing concern, and Charles is anxious to put the Monarchy on a firm foundation.

One doesn’t have to go so far as the London Daily Star, which is out today with a headline proclaiming, that “Nostradamus predicts Queen’s death will end Royal Family in shocking prophecy.” Yet the lead story on the New York Post website at the moment is headlined “British Monarchy near its ‘End Game,’ won’t outlast Prince William: Expert.”

No wonder “rationalizing” the Royal Family is front-and-center, reducing the number of royals who are funded by the Civil List to Charles’s own wife Camilla, Prince William, Kate, and their children. A prudent step in its own right, it also justifies any final separation of Prince Harry and Meghan from further royal intrigue.

In another move, Charles is actively trying to neutralize any negative press arising from brother Prince Andrew and his association with the late financier Jeffrey Epstein. Within the last six months, for instance, Charles has quietly become patron of York Minster Cathedral and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, formerly represented by his younger sibling.

Watching the Windsors gather, amidst the grief of Prince Philip’s passing and the anxiety over Harry and Meghan’s “American adventure,” only the most cynical could not have sympathized. Benjamin Disraeli called England a “domestic country,” one represented by a Royal Family. “If that family is educated with a sense of responsibility and a sentiment of public duty,” he averred, “it is difficult to exaggerate the salutary influence they may exercise over a nation.”

Realistically, not all Britons are so romantically attached to the Royals. Hence the talk about how practical measures must be taken to ensure the Monarchy’s survival, and none more important than to minimize opposition and to reign on the widest possible basis.

These were the aspirations of Viscount Bolingbroke, whose early eighteenth-century monograph “The Idea of a Patriot King” inspired future monarchs. Bolingbroke believed that the Crown ruled best when it severed itself from self-interested parties for a devotion to the common good. “Instead of abetting the divisions of his people, he will endeavor to unite them,” Bolingbroke advised his king; on the contrary, “he will distinguish the voice of his people from the clamor of a faction, and will hearken to it.”

Yet this raises the thorny question: How well does Prince Charles conform to the patriot king model? For the Prince has never shied away from even the limited scope to speak his mind that court etiquette permits. In his middle years, it was campaigns against modernist architecture and genetically modified foods. Now, ever closer to the throne, he supports the “Great Reset” and its program to “build back better,” two initiatives that, in the wake of Brexit, give power to unaccountable élites and frustrate individual liberties.

Elizabeth II enjoys the benefits of a 69-year reign during which she seldom (if ever) put a foot wrong. Prince Charles approaches his swing at sovereignty by embracing social and economic ideas that are neither popular nor populist. Monarchists take little comfort that Prince William is no less “woke” than his father.

If the British Monarchy is to have a future, it will need to confront its own progressive biases, consider who constitutes its bedrock support, and contemplate the wisdom of Bolingbroke: “To what higher station, to what greater glory can any mortal aspire, than to be, during the whole course of his life, the support of good, the control of bad government, and the guardian of public liberty?”

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