The King’s speech was a damp squib – but for that we should blame Rishi Sunak rather than Charles III. Most of the announcements – from tougher prison sentences to cracking down on smoking – were already known about. But while the Prime Minister’s agenda was far from inspiring, today’s pomp and ceremony did give some cause for optimism: Charles’s speech showed that Britain’s monarch is doing a good job in his role.

Even before he said a single word today, Charles looked thoroughly at home in the surroundings. It’s hard to believe that this was the first speech that Charles has delivered as ruler, so established does he now seem in the role of monarch.

There was a personal note struck at the beginning, when Charles said that ‘it is mindful of the legacy of service and devotion to this country set by my beloved mother, the late queen, that I deliver this, the first king’s speech, in over seven decades.’ It was a reminder that the ghost of Elizabeth II still hangs over the royals, and is likely to do so at least for all of Charles’s reign, and probably well into that of William’s, assuming, of course, that his son ever takes the throne. Not since Victoria did Britain have so consequential a monarch, and arguably not until Elizabeth was there a ruler to match her. Last year, of course, the king delivered the speech on behalf of his ailing mother, but it was still the Queen’s Speech, read out by the Prince of Wales. This was to be his first solo performance, with history breathing down his neck.

There were, as usual, the not-so-massed ranks of the Republic protesters, holding up their signs of ‘Not my king’

We are perhaps fortunate, in the case of the king, that we have a far better idea what these views are than we ever did with the late queen, whose political stances were opaque. (The diarist Chips Channon called her ‘openly, assuredly, dangerously Tory’, but he might be forgiven for projecting his own hopes onto her.) Above all things, the king’s interest in the environment, and his warnings against the perils of climate change, have come to define him as both a man and, potentially, as a monarch; would he deliver the passage today about how legislation will be brought in to ‘support the future licensing of new oil and gas fields’ through ‘gritted teeth’, as some commentators suggested, or would he keep as much of a poker face about the topic as he does everything else?

In the end, although his facial expressions and delivery will no doubt be minutely scrutinised after the event, there seemed no particular giveaway that this section of the speech was any more (or less) difficult for Charles to deliver than discussing any of the other fifteen bills. Perhaps, as a former serviceman, he spoke with marginally more enthusiasm about ‘our gallant Armed Forces’ than he did his discussion of Brexit freedoms, and certainly, when he spoke of how the new oil and gas fields would ‘reduce reliance on volatile international energy markets and hostile foreign regimes’ there may have been just a hint of the quizzical in his tone, but Charles is, above all things, a pro at delivery, a legacy of his acting days while a student at Cambridge.

It was a short speech, not even lasting a quarter of an hour, but still ran to 1,223 words: the longest at a state opening of Parliament since 2005. As pundits and commentators begin to dissect the political meat of it, Charles and Queen Camilla had already left the House of Lords, bound for Buckingham Palace in the Diamond Jubilee State Coach. There were, as usual, the not-so-massed ranks of the Republic protesters, holding up their signs of ‘Not my king’, but Charles presumably takes such matters in his stride by now.

After concluding his speech with the words ‘I pray that the blessing of Almighty God may rest upon your counsels’, he can reflect that, once again, he has fulfilled a difficult ceremonial demand with all the skill that such a task requires, without giving anything other than the faintest hint of his own beliefs or ideas.