This week, King Charles III accepted a surprising new honor that harkens back to his secondary school days. On the occasion of the anniversary of his coronation, the BBC reports that the king will now be the new patron of the Gordonstoun Association, the organization that runs the small boarding school in north-east Scotland where the king was a student from 1962 to 1967.
The school’s principal Lisa Kerr praised the king in a statement. “As our most prominent former student, His Majesty exemplifies so many of the qualities we seek to instill in our students, notably a lifelong commitment to service,” she said. “That His Majesty has chosen a patronage of our alumni body is a great honor both for the school and all members of the Gordonstoun Association.”
The patronage is the king’s first official link to the school since his graduation. For the last few years, Charles’s sister Princess Anne has been the family’s primary liaison with the remote Scottish boarding school, serving as the patron for the Campaign for Gordonstoun, a fundraising drive. Anne was not a student there herself as it did not admit girls, but her children Peter Phillips and Zara Tindall attended in the 1990s.
The royal association with the school in Moray stretches back to its 1934 founding, when Prince Philip became one of its earliest students, and Philip previously served as its patron. Though Gordonstoun says it is “immensely proud to be the first senior school to educate a king” on its website, the king wasn’t its most enthusiastic student. Charles was more interested in music and drama than outdoorsmanship, and in his letters home, he complained about his classmates. “The people in my dormitory are foul,” he wrote in a letter home, according to biographer Christopher Andersen. “Goodness, they are horrid. I don’t see how anybody could be so foul.”
By the time the king reached his late 20s, his opinion about the school had started to soften. “It was only tough in the sense that it demanded more of you as an individual than most other schools did—mentally or physically,” he said in a 1975 speech to the House of Lords. “I am lucky in that I believe it taught me a great deal about myself and my own abilities and disabilities. It taught me to accept challenges and take the initiative.”