Now that Charles Philip Arthur George is King, will I be tried under Section 32 of the Treason Act of 1842 like teenager John Morgan who tossed a nine-pound breeze block at the Queen’s Rolls Royce in Belfast in 1966?

A few years ago Charles tried to sue me in Romania when I was editor of a national newspaper after I published an article based on British newspaper reports saying Charles had stated publicly he would leave England and give up his rights to Royalty if the Government passed a law banning fox hunting.

The then Labour Government did indeed pass such a law but Charles didn’t follow through on his promise.

Rather, he bought vast tracts of land in Transylvania, the birthplace of my wife, which he still owns today.

In view of fairness, I contacted Charles directly through his private secretary at Buckingham Palace by email asking him if he had purchased the land deep in the Romanian countryside simply to pursue his love of killing foxes for sport (which, for the record, I consider to be merciless and cruel in the extreme).

I received a prompt response.

But not in answer to my question.

Instead, it was in the form of a letter from one of Charles’s organisations in London – the Mihai Eminescu Trust, named after the poet laureate of Romania, which with the grandiosely named ‘Prince’s Foundation’ is under Charles’s supervision – threatening me with a lawsuit if I did not publish an immediate apology, the exact text for which it provided – but with still no answer to my original question. The letter also pointed put that the apology it wrote and demanded to be published was the very same word count as the original article in my newspaper.

Naturally, I politely declined to do so, quoting freedom of the press, which Charles had said previously he fully supported. After this exchange of love letters, no lawsuit ensued.

Now that Charles is the new-crowned King, is my liberty at risk? Must I seek political asylum aka Julian Assange in an endless array of Embassies worldwide?

I’m delighted since then that in April the UK passed a law declaring all animals as sentient beings with rights to a normal, decent life like the rest of us, thus protecting foxes from this awful ‘blood sport.’

In view of all this, it is despicable to learn of stories about unethical fund-raising schemes by Charles and the ‘Prince’s Foundation.’

For example, from oil-rich people in the Middle East. Charles’s foundation offered to help a Saudi Arabian billionaire obtain a knighthood and UK citizenship in exchange for generous donations, with police investigating this money-making ‘cash-for-honours’ racket. It must be remembered, Jamal Khashoggi, a US-based journalist and critic of Saudi Arabia’s government, was murdered recently by Saudi officials inside its own Embassy in Istanbul and his dead body cut into pieces and dumped, allegedly to be eaten by dogs.

Charles also raised money by offering free accommodation and private dinners with him at Dumfries House, a Palladian mansion in Scotland he purchased and renovated with public money. Such people included former Russian bankers and the wife of Turkish billionaire, Cem Uzan, after the couple donated 400,000 pounds to the ‘Prince’s Foundation.’ It emerged Uzan was under investigation for fraud-related offences in the US.

Charles’s foundation was also found to have taken millions of euros from high-ranking Qatari officials – all in plastic bags – a total of three million euro (2.6m pounds) from billionaire Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani, former prime minister of Qatar. The cash was handed to Charles in a suitcase on one occasion, a hold-all on another, as well as in Fortnum & Mason carrier bags, the up-market department store which holds a royal warrant to supply Charles with groceries. 

Jaber al-Thani, one of the richest men in the world who stayed regularly at Charles’s Royal castle in Mey, Scotland, also gave Charles a horse named Dark Swan worth around 200,000 euro.

On a political level, not being a Royalist, I cannot accept Charles as King. But on a personal level, he has my gravest sympathy upon the death of his mother.