Charles: No training for kingship; Camilla could be queen (Roundup)

By Pat Reber Nov 20, 2010, 4:19 GMT

Washington - Britain's Prince Charles said his wife Camilla could become queen if he becomes king, and described how little preparation he received for royal life, in an interview with NBC broadcast Friday.

In a rare broadcast interview, Charles, 62, spoke about how there was no training or job description when he became Prince of Wales, first in line to succeed the throne after his mother Elizabeth II.

How to become a king was simply not discussed in the family, he said.

'You pick it up as you go along. You watch and learn,' Charles said.

Much of the interview focussed on Charles' self-declared mission as an environmentalist. After the hour-long interview, NBC aired Charles' latest documentary: Harmony, A New Way Of Looking At Our World.

Several times, Charles observed that he may die before becoming king. If that happened, his oldest son William, whose mother was the late Princess Diana, would ascend the throne.

Elizabeth is 84.

Charles has rarely commented on the prospects of becoming king or on the status of Camilla, 63, his second wife. Camilla became Duchess of Cornwall when they married in 2005.

Asked by NBC interviewer Brian Williams if Camilla would become queen, Charles said: 'You know, I mean, we'll see and I don't know if I'll ... if I'll still be alive, but that - that could be,' he said.

Charles spoke reticently about what would happen to his environmental and organic farming activism if he became king. Under England's unwritten constitution, the monarch is to remain neutral on controversial issues.

'I don't know, it's all in the providence of God. I don't know. I may drop dead long before then. But ... I am absolutely determined to defend nature. Somebody has to ... no matter how unpopular it might make you in the short term,' he said.

Charles hesitated to discuss becoming king because 'if it comes to it, regrettably, it comes as the result of the death of your parent. Better not to think too much about it, except if it comes, then you have to deal with it.'

The interview was broadcast just three days after Prince William and Kate Middletown announced their intention to marry, unleashing a gush of media attention. The marital problems that Charles and Diana Spencer had, leading to their break-up a year before she died in a car accident, are blamed by some on the intense media interest.

Charles said the spotlight was 'very intrusive indeed. I feel for him (William) deeply because in my day it was difficult enough.'

The Prince of Wales talked about his affection for the Queen Mother, who died at age 101 in 2002, and her sense of mischief, her laughter and her idiosyncracies. Part of the interview was filmed at her Castle of Mey in Scotland, on the North Sea, where Charles roamed as a boy in the gardens and along the coastline.

Sitting at a memorial placed at one of her favourite outlooks, Charles recalled summers with the Queen Mother: 'You'd get eaten to death by midges ... eventually, you were driven in.'

Charles was ridiculed when he seriously took up the cause of the environment, global warming, and acid rain. He once said that he talked to the plants.

But he made clear that his life-long mission is to help people see the order and inspiration in nature.

'We've ceased to understand that not only do we take from ... nature ... but we need to give something back,' he said.

He is pushing for nature to be properly valued for the services it provides, calling it 'natural capital' that must be studied in discipline of 'macro-economics for sustainability.'

'If we don't (get in tune,) we're stuffed,' he said.

Read more about Great Britain Royalty

Read more about US