Do British subjects really want to pledge allegiance to the king?

Or so it has been reported. Maybe the fond hope expressed in the last sentence is over-egging things a little. Avid royal-watchers will pick up my reference to egging immediately.

Charles nearly egged

An incident took place in York recently when the new king came under a barrage of raw eggs. None of them hit their target, though one came within inches of the monarch's shoulder.

The author of this protest, one Patrick Thelwell, has since refused to repent of the action and asked a Guardian reporter "Who doesn't want to egg the king?"

"It's a protest against the descent into fascism of this country. The way that the crowd reacted, people just lost their minds. They were, like, ripping my hair out in chunks and kicking at me and calling for my head on a spike," he said.

So, to the question 'who doesn't' received a fairly unequivocal answer.

Eggs are not the kind of thing that can easily put Charles off his stride, and not simply because he has a gift for dodging them successfully.

The incident near Buckingham Palace on 2 May, when a man carrying a knife threw something like shotgun cartridges into the palace grounds and had his bag blown up by police as a precaution, was a sign of a far more serious level of hostility.

Growing scepticism

Violence aside, there does seem to be growing scepticism about what used to be called The Firm. Following ructions in the family, Prince Harry has stopped calling it that, opting instead to call it 'the institution' with all the madhouse connotations of that phrase.

Things have not been staying calm and carrying on quite as they should. As a family motto, 'Never complain, never explain' is under severe strain. Walter Bagehot once famously said that the British monarchy's mystery was its life, adding 'We must not let in daylight upon magic.'

That life — excepting the brief hiatus of Thomas Cromwell — has endured many centuries. In all that time, and despite periods when it was hugely unpopular with the British public, the crown has been able to persist.

Now Harry and his uncle, Andrew, have thrust the curtains wide apart, leaving the monarchy, like some tardy vampire with slow reflexes, stumbling through the glare.

There is talk of dirty money gained from slavery in the past, excessive wealth going untaxed and abused influence. There have even been demands that Charles pay for the coronation himself. 

No one knows yet if this flood of daylight will prove fatal. It is the young, apparently, who have the least patience left, but it is also a well-attested fact that the young grow old with time.

Read more: King Charles III inherits throne in uncertain time

Perhaps the monarch's 'base' — to which the pledge idea was designed to appeal, rather than to the whingeing liberals — will grow old with him, an ageing demographic fit for a king. It should come naturally to any venerable organisation to play the long game.  

For now, it may — or, then again, it may not — come as some consolation to our brand-new king that the Australian pop star, Nick Cave, has confessed 'an inexplicable attachment to the royals', thus risking the chagrin and bemusement of his fans.

However, he has also attributed this attachment largely to an encounter with the late queen at Buckingham Palace, explaining: "she seemed almost extra-terrestrial and was the most charismatic woman I have ever met. Maybe it was the lighting, but she actually glowed."

Clearly, it would be just as well for Charles to play the long game. Mummy is proving one heck of a tough act to follow.