What will William be like as king?

When he becomes king, Prince William will have “change” on his agenda – “change for the good”. So he’s told actor Eugene Levy in a revealing new interview for “The Reluctant Traveller”, Levy’s Apple TV+ show.

Britain’s future monarch also said he doesn’t fear change, and won’t be “restricted” by history.

What did the commentators say?

“When the crown lands on his head,” will William “be a disruptor” or “a steady hand at the tiller?” said ITV's royal editor Chris Ship. It’s “a question many have asked but it seems it took a Hollywood actor, born in Canada, to get the answers”.

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William clearly wants “a different kind of monarchy”, and he “refuses to feel overwhelmed by the weight of history on his shoulders”. The picture that emerges from the interview is that “tradition will stay” but William’s reign will “speed up the process of change”.

People close to William “would say it’s the most publicly vulnerable we have seen him”, said Rhiannon Mills, royal correspondent for Sky News. He’s “not signalling that he will politically interfere”, as his father has been accused of doing, but he’s laying out a plan for “evolution, rather than revolution”. It’s clear he respects tradition but, crucially, he is “not afraid to ask why certain things happen, and question if it's really fit for now”.

The Prince of Wales has previously referred to his approach as putting “a smaller R in royal”, said Daniela Relph, the BBC’s senior royal correspondent. That said, we shouldn’t “expect the big stuff to change dramatically”: there will “definitely be a coronation”, and Trooping the Colour and Remembrance Sunday will “remain fixed and important parts of the royal year”.

To understand how William “might change an ancient institution”, look at how he’s “already done it” with the “billion-pound business empire” of the Duchy of Cornwall, said The Times in April. He’s “set about instigating changes across the vast estate like a modern-day CEO”, including a bid to “get the estate to net zero by 2032, and a focus on mental health and new accommodation for the homeless”.

It’s “widely expected” that he’ll be a “transformative monarch in a way that his father has not been”, said Alexander Larman in The Spectator. “His comments that he will not be looking to the past were more telling than might have been intended.” It may be that a “trusted courtier or two” will “convince him that change” on a “significant scale” isn’t “always a good or even necessary thing” but, “in any case, a reign that many have pre-emptively dismissed as dull might yet surprise the world”.

What next?

There have been recent rumours of a rift between William and King Charles, said Kristin Contino in Marie Claire, although “multiple palace insiders” insist there are “no issues between the King and his heir”. And yet “it was notable” that William “talked fondly about his grandmother at several points during the interview” while “his father was barely mentioned”, said The Spectator’s Larman. The “recent gossip” of a “strained” relationship between father and son “will only be fanned by this, rather than dispelled”.