King Charles III and Queen Camilla have seen their popularity in the U.S. increase as they prepare for their coronation in London on May 6, new polling for Newsweek has shown.
The boost in popularity comes after most senior members of the royal family, including Charles and Camilla, saw their net approval ratings diminish in the wake of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's recent bombshell media releases, in which they made a number of revelations about life behind palace walls.
However, according to new poll data compiled exclusively for Newsweek by strategists Redfield & Wilton, as of April, both Charles and Camilla are more popular now among the American public than before Harry's Netflix show and Spare memoir.
In December, before the Sussex media bombshells, Charles had a U.S. net approval rating of +12 and Camilla, -2.
In January, after the release of the Harry & Meghan series and memoir, in which the royal couple faced allegations of leaking information to the tabloids and being generally unsupportive of Meghan, their net approval ratings slumped to +8 and -8 respectively.
New data for April shows that the couple have bounced back in the estimations of the American public, with Charles enjoying a net approval rating of +21 and Camilla, +12, among a representative sample of 1,500 U.S. registered voters. This means both are now more popular than before Harry's recent bombshells.
Part of this positive swing could be attributed to building excitement among U.S. based royal watchers for the upcoming coronation—the first of its kind in Britain since Queen Elizabeth II's ceremony in 1953.
Charles and Camilla's road to Westminster Abbey, and public acceptance as a couple, has not been smooth. Both were the focus of intense public criticism throughout the 1990s and beyond for pursuing their relationship while the prince was still married to Princess Diana.
After the princess' untimely death at the age of 36 in 1997, the couple waited eight years before announcing their engagement, eventually marrying in April 2005.
Though public attitude had thawed somewhat to the inevitability of the couple's marriage by 2005, it was still deemed necessary to announce that when Charles eventually became king, Camilla would only be known as "Princess Consort," not queen.
By 2022, Camilla had increasingly become one of the more popular members of the royal family in Britain, overtaking Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.
For Camilla's 17-years of royal service, Queen Elizabeth II announced that it was her "sincere wish" that when the time came for Charles to be king, Camilla would be take the title of his "Queen Consort." So it came to pass in September 2022, when King Charles finally acceded to the throne.
Buckingham Palace announced one month after the king's accession that his coronation would take place at Westminster Abbey on May 6, and that his wife, Camilla, would be crowned queen along side him.
The ceremony will stay true to the monarchy's world-famous pomp and pageantry but will be altered to be more representative of society today. In terms of guests, the number of attendees has been reduced from 8,000 who attended Queen Elizabeth's crowning at the abbey to 2,000. This, in part, is due to new health and safety regulations.
All senior members of the royal family are expected to be attending the celebration, though it was confirmed earlier this month that Prince Harry would not be accompanied by Meghan Markle, who will remain at home in California with the couple's children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet.
James Crawford-Smith is Newsweek's royal reporter based in London. You can find him on Twitter at @jrcrawfordsmith and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.
Do you have a question about King Charles III, William and Kate, Meghan and Harry, or their family that you would like our experienced royal correspondents to answer? Email royals@newsweek.com. We'd love to hear from you.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
James Crawford-Smith is a Newsweek Royal Reporter, based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on the British royal family ... Read more
