King Charles III will be officially crowned on May 6, 2023, in a coronation ceremony at Westminster Abbey in London.
Here's a look at the major events in the life of the man who was the longest monarch in waiting in British history.
Charles Philip Arthur George Windsor was born on November 14, 1948, at Buckingham Palace in London.
He was the first child of Princess Elizabeth, Duchess of Edinburgh (later Queen Elizabeth II), and Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.
Three-year-old Charles becomes the heir apparent on February 6, 1952, when his grandfather, King George VI, dies and his mother ascends the throne.
Charles becomes a student at Hill House prep school in west London, the first royal heir ever to attend school.
He later attends Cheam, his father's prep school.
For years after being named Prince of Wales by his mother, the 13-year-old Charles starts the Gordonstoun school in Scotland.
His father's old school, it has a reputation for rigorous outdoors activities and stern discipline.
Charles spent two terms at Geelong Grammar's Timbertops campus in Australia during the late 1960s
He later said his time spent there as a 17-year-old student was the best part of his entire education.
In July 1969, Queen Elizabeth II crowned her son Charles, Prince of Wales, during an investiture ceremony at Caernarvon Castle.
The ceremony was the first to be broadcast on television.
Charles begins a long association with the principality of Wales, including studying and learning the Welsh language.
He also became the Colonel in Chief of the Royal Regiment of Wales, a unit of the British army.
In 1971, Charles meets and begins dating the then Camilla Shand.
They reportedly split when she married Andrew Parker Bowles in 1973.
In the early 1970s, Prince Charles completed six months training as a pilot in the UK's Royal Air Force.
He later qualified as a helicopter pilot and joined the naval air service.
In 1976, Charles completed his military service, becoming a Royal Navy officer.
He took command of a coastal minehunter, the HMS Bronington.
During a visit by Charles to Australia in the late 1970s, Australian model Jane Priest ran up to the royal and kissed him on Cottesloe Beach in Perth.
The incident made headlines across the world.
Charles is devastated when his beloved great-uncle and confidant, Lord Louis Mountbatten, was killed by an IRA bomb in August 1979.
The World War II hero and senior royal family was killed during a sailing trip in Ireland.
Charles met his future first wife Lady Diana Spencer in 1979.
Her friends described the young aristocrat as "a sort of wonderful English schoolgirl".
Charles and Diana announced their engagement in February 1981. He is aged 31 and she is 19.
Asked are the couple in love, he replies, "Whatever 'in love' means".
Charles and Diana marry at St Paul's cathedral in London on July 29, 1981, in a ceremony watched by millions of people across the world.
The royal couple famously kissed on the balcony of Buckingham Palace.
During the 1980s, Charles takes an active interest in social and environmental issues..
He used his military pension to found the Prince's Trust aimed at helping young people in Britain and the Commonwealth.
Prince William was born in June 1982, followed by Prince Harry two years later.
But the royal marriage is already in acute difficulty.
On January 26, 1994, as Prince Charles stepped up to the podium at Sydney's Darling Harbour to give a speech, the sound of two shots rang out, and chaos ensued.
The gunman David Kang who fired blank rounds was quickly wrestled to the ground.
In December, 1992, UK Prime Minister John Major announces the separation of Charles and Diana.
The following year his affair with Camilla Parker-Bowles becomes public when the transcript of a 1989 intimate phone conversation between the two is made public.
Charles becomes a single parent following the death of Lady Diana in a car crash in France in August 1997.
Charles accompanies her body of from Paris to London and during the funeral procession walks behind her coffin with his father, sons and Diana's brother, the Earl of Spencer.