Charles is king. Can he also become a unifier?

It was hardly a surprise. Yet it was still a shock, and not just because the benign presence of Queen Elizabeth II has been a steadying constant in British life over the past seven decades.

Amid all the public and private shows of grief since her passing last Thursday, it’s becoming clear that, for millions of Britons, Elizabeth II’s reign supplied an answer to a question that’s vexing countries beyond their own divided and economically troubled nation. It is tugging at the fabric of many other countries, too, including the United States.

We know what divides us. But what holds us together?

By far the most important, and daunting, challenge facing her son and heir, the new King Charles III, will be to exert this unifying influence himself.

The institution he heads – Britain’s constitutional monarchy – is a 21^st century anachronism. Many younger people feel that passing on the role of head of state as if it were a family heirloom, even if shorn of day-to-day political power, jars with the values they hold and the lives they lead.

Ben Stansall/AP

King Charles III attends a meeting Sept.12 of both houses of Parliament at Westminster Hall to express condolences following the death of Queen Elizabeth II. The queen, Britain's longest-reigning monarch and a rock of stability across much of a turbulent century, died Sept. 8, 2022, after 70 years on the throne.

For many countries in the post-colonial Commonwealth of Nations, the monarchy is also associated with a British empire that exploited their resources, nullified any prospect of independence, and benefited from the slave trade.

Yet under Elizabeth, the Commonwealth thrived. At home, even among the young, calls for the abolition of the monarchy were confined to a fringe, far outweighed by those who continued to view it as a valued and essential part of what Britain is, and what being British means.

Part of this was down simply to Elizabeth’s longevity. The arc of her life reached from empire, through the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, to the more recent decades in which Britain became a far more open, modern, and multiethnic nation.

Above all, she was a link to World War II, when as a teenage princess, she briefly trained as driver and mechanic in the army’s Auxiliary Territorial Service. She appeared on the balcony of Buckingham Palace in her ATS uniform as hundreds of thousands celebrated the end of the war in Europe. She was a link to what Churchill famously called Britain’s “finest hour.”

The quiet force all this brought to her voice was never so evident as during the pandemic.

In a televised address to millions of her locked-down subjects, she extolled the virtues of self-sacrifice, generosity, and a “pride in who we are.” And she ended with a deliberate echo of the most popular song of Britain’s wartime years: “We will be with our friends again. We will be with our families again, we will meet again.”

Tyrone Siu/Reuters

People queue up outside the British Consulate-General in Hong Kong Sept. 12 to pay their respects to Queen Elizabeth II after her death.

She viewed her role as standing above the political fray, accommodating rather than resisting the huge changes around her, and seeking to bring people together.

Although she met weekly – in substantive, but hermetically private – conversations with 15 British prime ministers, she never publicly voiced her own political views. Her position was rooted not so much in what she did or said, as in what she chose not to do or say.

This was critical to her role as unifier: It allowed Britons young and old, on the right or left, to feel somehow that she shared their own views, their values and aspirations.

For the immediate future, Charles will benefit from the refracted affection tens of thousands of people across the country are showing toward his mother, likely to be in even greater evidence in the days ahead as she lies in state, and is buried, in central London.

He has also shown signs of having learned from her example during his own decades as heir-in-waiting. He has made a point of getting out in public, interacting with mourners and well-wishers. Critically, given his past record of outspoken comments on a range of political and social issues, he has made it clear that he knows those days are over. “I’m not stupid,” he told a recent interviewer. “I realize that it is a separate exercise being sovereign.”

Britain’s politicians, across the spectrum, have made it equally clear they’re hoping he succeeds in his new role. This isn’t just a matter of goodwill: They recognize how essential that role has proved, under his mother, to keeping the country broadly united.

And rarely have there been so many political and economic forces pulling in the other direction.

Britain’s economy is facing double-digit inflation, and a tumbling currency, as the twin result of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. The country remains divided over Brexit – the withdrawal from decades-long membership in the European Union.

In non-English parts of the United Kingdom – Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland – local political leaders have shown growing alienation from London over a range of issues, as well as a desire for greater autonomy and, in Scotland’s case, independence.

King Charles III can’t address any of this directly. He knows it would be “stupid” to pretend otherwise.

His task will be different, but no less important: to provide space for – a reminder, and an expression of – what ultimately unites.