Biography | Charles III — The Slate Dais Where His Welsh Title Became Public

People remember Charles III's crown in Westminster Abbey, but the royal title that defined most of his adult life was made visible on a slate platform here fifty-four years earlier.

On 1 July 1969, twenty-year-old Charles entered the inner ward of Caernarfon Castle to be formally invested as Prince of Wales by Queen Elizabeth II.

The Queen had created him Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester in 1958, when he was nine. The title was already his; the ceremony gave it a public form.

Elizabeth placed a newly made coronet on his head and presented the insignia of the office. The Royal Collection records a gold ring, rod and sword alongside the mantle made for the occasion.

On a circular slate dais beneath a clear canopy, the ceremony was arranged so people inside the castle and television cameras could see the ritual. Its surviving platform fixes this memory to a precise point within the walls, rather than to Caernarfon as a whole.

That setting was politically charged. Edward I began the castle after the English conquest of Wales, and by 1969 the Prince of Wales title had become a focus for Welsh nationalist opposition as well as royal celebration.

Demonstrations preceded and accompanied the investiture. Contemporary recollections preserved by the BBC describe cheering crowds, heavy security and visible disagreement in the same streets.

Charles had spent a term at University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, learning Welsh before the ceremony. His address at Caernarfon included both Welsh and English, making language part of the public role he was being asked to perform.

For the next fifty-three years, the title followed his charitable work, military service and constitutional duties. It ended only when he became King Charles III in September 2022.

The photograph shows the ceremonial procession through Caernarfon during the 1969 investiture series. It records the people and pageantry surrounding the castle ceremony rather than pretending to show Charles on the dais.

Photo: Geoff Charles / National Library of Wales, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.