What do we expect of a modern king?

Perhaps we have not focused enough on the fact that we are crowning a king, rather than a queen, as monarch. It is nearly 90 years since this last happened, so no one alive today has an adult memory of what was expected. There is a further difficulty, in that the coronation of Charles III occurs in circumstances almost diametrically different from those of the coronation of George VI. In 1937, what was happening had not been foreseen before December of the previous year. It was Edward VIII’s coronation that everyone had been expecting, and although those in the know were aware of Edward’s inadequacies, these had been kept from a public most of whom found him very glamorous. With the shock of Edward’s abdication came the arrival of the shy Duke of York, George VI. Could he be an adequate replacement? Five days before the ceremony, he addressed a great luncheon given in Westminster Hall.