Insights into the real King Charles: 'I don't think he takes anything for granted'

King Charles has grown up on a world stage, after his mum, then- Princess Elizabeth, became Queen when he was just four years old.

While his younger sister, Princess Anne, said in an interview this week that "you know what you're getting" with her 74-year-old brother, few really know the real man behind the monarch.

Royal reporters and authors have provided some insight over the years, many of them surprised by the person they meet.

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Camilla Tominey, associate editor of Telegraph UK, said recently in London that the transition following Queen Elizabeth's death in September was "a lot smoother than I had anticipated" after expecting "there'd be this kind of collective national nervous breakdown".

It's something she puts firmly down to King Charles being a trusted hand in the public's eye but also someone who is "much more emotional than his parents".

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"We could see in the first address he's a man who sometimes wears his heart on his sleeve - the grief was etched into his face, wasn't it?," Tominey said.

"You look at him and see what he's feeling on any given day."

However, she notes, "his first address did sum up the sadness and the grief of an entire nation".

"I mean, he did start well ... [but] being a royal's a marathon, not a sprint.

"It's not like you're a politician, and you're in for four years and out the next, everything's taken at a pace.

"So I think they'd be pretty happy with this first stage of the marathon but we're only on mile one."

Another thing Tominey said showed during the transition period was the King's humble nature, after being the world's longest-serving heir-apparent.

He was Prince of Wales for 64 years and 44 days before, at 73, he became the oldest person in history to accede to the British throne.

"I was told at the time he was taken aback by the warmth of the reception," Tominey told Foreign Press Association journalists about his first visit to Buckingham Palace after the Queen's passing in Scotland.

"He didn't expect people to spontaneously start shouting, 'God save the King', because I don't think he takes anything for granted in terms of support."

In her experience, Tominey says she's found the King to be "thoughtful, introspective, quite jolly, quite smiley, quite fun and quite funny" but adds he can be a "worrier" and often looks like "he's got the weight of the world on [his] shoulders".

However she believes the public know the man who will be crowned King on Saturday quite well because he's been an open-book for so many decades.

"He's been a feature of royal life, one step behind his mother, for 70 years so you couldn't say that there's a lack of familiarity - I mean, we know so much about him, we know, frankly, far too many intimate details," she adds with a laugh.

"Charles has given loads of interviews and loads of speeches where we kind of know far more about him as a monarch than we ever knew about Queen Elizabeth II."

Watch 9News' special coverage of King Charles' coronation for free on 9Now.