As head of the British Royal Family, King Charles is a name known by billions of people across the globe.
However, while the King is the only senior person in the Royal Family named Charles, it appears he isn’t the only living royal with that first name.
The grandson of Princess Margaret – Charles Armstrong-Jones – shares the same first name as the monarch, who is also his second cousin.
As one of the late Princess Margaret’s four grandchildren, 25-year-old Charles Armstrong-Jones lives a fairly ordinary life, despite his royal title as Viscount Linley.
Charles, whose job is a musician, inherited the title following the death of his grandfather and ex husband of Princess Margaret Antony Armstrong-Jones in 2017. He is also set to adopt another royal title – the 3rd Earl of Snowdon – when his father David – Princess Margaret’s son – dies.
Despite being related to the King, and being the only grandchild of the late Queen’s sister to have a royal title, the young Charles has lived a more ordinary life than other members of the Royal Family, however there are still some similarities.
As well as a brief two-year term living at Kensington Palace as a toddler while his grandmother Princess Margaret was ill, Charles also received an education not too dissimilar to other royals as he attended Eton College.
In 2012, Charles was also made the first Page of Honour to his great-aunt the late Queen, which required him to carry the long train of the Queen’s robes at state occasions such as the Order of the Garter service.
However, Charles only carried out this role until 2015. After studying at Eton, Charles – who inherited the title of Earl of Snowdon after the death of his grandfather in 2017 – went on to study product design engineering at Loughborough University.
He was able to live a fairly ordinary student life, with very few knowing his connection to the Royal Family, whom he would often spend Christmas with under Queen Elizabeth II’s reign. Since graduating from university in 2021, the young royal has taken up music and is said to have a love for orchestral music.
His younger sister Lady Margarita, who was a bridesmaid at Prince William and Princess Kate’s wedding in 2011, said: “He is self-taught and he can sing, play the piano and the guitar. It’s wonderful. Somehow he combines it all together – including online choirs – on his laptop into one piece of music.”
Despite being a member of the Royal Family, neither Charles or his sister will ever become working royals. Although his grandmother was the younger sister of Queen Elizabeth II, she was famously said not to have wanted her children to be royal, with the same rule applying to her grandchildren.
The Sun reported that Princess Margaret, who died age in 2002 at the age of 71, said: “My children are not royal; they just happen to have the Queen for their aunt.”
