Of course, there has been a queen of Australia for a long time: the idea of a king should not surprise us. But almost our entire population has never had to suffer the comedy of this proclamation stage, with its endless coverage and vice-regal pomposity. Australians who were around when the apple-cheeked Princess Elizabeth was declared the ultimate antipodean avatar did so in the age of the wireless, spared the sight of Karl Stefanovic in his black suit endlessly crossing to the desultory crowds at Balmoral or Buckingham Palace or that of Kevin Rudd recounting his somewhat ribald conversations with the monarch. This time, in the year of our Lord 2022, the notion of a king of Australia arrives as an absurdist and over-reported shock.

If the Queen had a genius, it was her seeming psychic immobility. Whether opening Parliament or visiting a cheese factory, she inhabited the role with a brilliant banality. She was neither puffed up nor pricked by the pomp and circumstance. She wore a crown bedecked in plundered jewels, lived in palaces with walls hung with Rembrandts, was delivered breakfast in bed every morning on the taxpayer’s dime while for much of her reign being exempt from taxation herself, and we let her get away with it because, by all appearances, it gave her no pleasure. Whether by design or instinct, Elizabeth II secured the monarchy by being a solid sovereign rock, extraordinary in her majestic dullness.

Charles is the unfortunate opposite of his mother. If her genius was to have no need to be a genius, his fatal flaw may prove to be his desire to be interesting. The queen did not need to be a someone. Being queen was quite enough, thank you. One did not need to display personality, and nor should one. Charles, however, has shown himself time and time again to be an intellectual manqué, an ego in search of acuity. Whether we ponder his devotion to the racist mystic Laurens van der Post, his fulminations about postmodern architecture, or his defence of fox hunting on environmental grounds, we note an earnest but humiliating clutching at philosophical straws. Charles has never understood that no one cares what he thinks and that we feel embarrassed for him when he tries to make us listen.

As a baby boomer, the OK boomer discourse tells us, Charles most likely believes that his generation knows best and that it has earned its wealth. Boomer pontification is irritating enough when it consists of lectures about avocado toast and Woodstock. Should the newly crowned king of Australia insist on communicating his boomer bombast to his subjects from his mortgage-free palaces, and should he evince any relish at those plundered jewels, Australians’ patience will surely wear thin.

Reflecting on Elizabeth’s reign, it was only her unsentimental sobriety that protected her relatives from justified charges of Eurotrash. What a strange thing it is to be ruled from afar by a family that has in recent years, at best, had some success at equestrian sports – for which we can thank Princess Anne and her daughter – and that at worst has paid a large settlement to the woman who alleged that she was sexually assaulted by Prince Andrew.

‘Uneasy is the head that wears the crown’; to the Queen’s credit, her demeanour indicated that she took the job far more seriously than she did herself. The risk for Charles III would be to wear the crown too easily, conflating the sovereignty he embodies with his own physical human being. If we see any evidence of a puffed-up potentate, I predict the beginning of the end for the monarchy in Australia.

This article is generously supported by the Judith Neilson Institute for Journalism and Ideas.