Prince Charles was born at Buckingham Palace to Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip, becoming heir presumptive to the British throne. Crowds gathered outside the palace gates awaiting the announcement, and gun salutes rang out across London. He would become King upon his mother's death in 2022, after the longest wait for the throne of any British monarch in history.
London in November 1948 was still recovering from the devastation of the Second World War, with rationing ongoing and bomb sites still scarring the city. Amid this austerity, the birth of a royal baby offered a moment of celebration and hope, and thousands gathered outside Buckingham Palace hoping for news.
Princess Elizabeth, then 22 and not yet queen, delivered her first child by cesarean section in the Buhl Room of the palace, which had been converted into a temporary delivery suite. King George VI, the baby's grandfather, ordered gun salutes fired from the Tower of London and Hyde Park, and fountains across the city were lit blue in celebration, breaking wartime restrictions on illumination that had only recently been lifted.
Charles would spend more than seven decades as heir before finally ascending the throne in September 2022 following Queen Elizabeth II's death, becoming the oldest person ever to be crowned British monarch at 73. His unusually long apprenticeship as Prince of Wales, filled with public controversies and personal reinvention, made his eventual coronation in 2023 one of the most anticipated and scrutinized in modern royal history.