The first verse has a reference to "His uniting". Since this is capitalized, I take it this is a reference to God or Christ; but you need to be specific. Otherwise "His" has no antecedent. And even after you clear up the antecedent, what does "with His uniting/with God's uniting/with Christ's uniting" mean here?

Also, the verse is not consistent in its use of the antique "thou" style. At first the verb "ruled" is modern, which implies you are addressing Charles as "you". The same goes for "bore". To correspond with the "thou" pronoun, they would be "ruledst" and "borest".

So this needs work. Still, like the curate's egg: parts of it are excellent.

I have an icon of him, and he is often referred to as Blessed Emperor Charles of Austria. Karl is also good. Some are also working for the beatification of Empress Zita, his wife. She resolved to spend her time after the death of her husband praying for the people of their former lands. She was a very devout Catholic.

... not Charles

There are enough of us already.

I think the hymn has some wonderful imagery.

The idea in the second verse of the saints as God’s courtiers is lovely. Is it original?

There are also some very fine turns of phrase but, in other places, the language is a bit “wooden”.

For example, in the first verse, the people singing have “several” walks of life. I imagine this means that they have one each (and that, like Bl. Charles, everyone should till whatever part of the field has been allotted to him – even if it is quite unlike the part that was allotted to Bl. Charles) but the word sounds as if it has been lifted from a legal document. The extended metaphor of treading Christ’s footsteps in my own walk of life, however, is a good one.

I also can’t imagine singing the word “politicians”, though they no doubt need our prayers. (Is it lèse-majesté to pray for the Queen in the same line as the politicians?) I suspect “statesmen” would better suit the register of this hymn but I suppose that word would fall foul of inclusive language. By the way, I support your t-v choice for this hymn (and the verb forms that go with it): it sounds right for an Edwardian Emperor to be a “thou” rather than a “you”.

Referencing the Empress Zita, Bl. Charles’ own words to her and his feast day on their wedding anniversary was a great idea for a verse on marriage. Talk about needing our prayers!

Out of curiosity, do the holy souls break off their writhing to rejoice when someone else enters into the beatific vision?

bumped for his birthday

A revision/rewrite of Stanzas 1-3:

King rejected by thy people,
Emp'ror banished from thy throne:
Noble heart that was unbroken
by the treason of thine own,
Like thy King, whose path thou troddest,
Thou once laid thy glory by,
And through thy humiliation
reign'st with Him above the sky.

Blessed Charles thou attendest
at the Paschal Victim's side.
Be our friend at court; obtain us
ever with Him to abide.
In this great communion aid us,
suppliants to His Heart commend,
help the prayers entrusted to thee
in His presence to ascend.

Who for peace hast lonely striven
As the world was rent by strife,
Help us calmly face with virtue
Those who hunger for our life.
Pray for those who rule and guide us,
For our Queen now intercede;
May their striving be God's goodness,
Their reliance be God's speed.

NihilNominis, can you check through the verbs in stanza 1? They should all be thou-forms, but a few aren't: "was unbroken", "laid".

In this case, switching to the modern "you" might make for a cleaner text, without having to resort to apostrophes and truncated syllables.

In v2., the first line doesn't correspond to the meter yet, so that's a detail to check.

"Char-les" is two syllables in my book!

Not sure what book your reading/learning from, but it's "Chahlz" in my book. I doubt that "Char-ley" or "Chu-cky" would do. Perhaps "Bless'd King Charles"?

Well, he wasn't French or Charles but Karl (Franz Joseph Ludwig Hubert Georg Otto Marie) or Károly (Ferenc József Lajos Hubert György Mária).

The historiographical trend in the past century has been away from automatic Anglicization of European regnal names to a shift to using the actual usage except where it would be more confusing. There's a *practical* reason for this trend (and in the age of word processing, abetted by the fact that type is easier to manipulate, as it were), more so than ideological: it allows quicker distinction between Philippe II (of France) versus Felipe II (of Castile-Aragon (who was also Filipe I of Portugal, et cet.))

It's not like English has ever been consistent about Anglicization anyway: when was the last time the first name of the late decapitated Queen of France was referred to as Mary? (Don't even get me started on the pronunciation of "Maria" in English- Mah-REE-ah vs Mah-RYE-ah (the latter used to be more common), then there's MAH-ree-ah...)

Then there's American:

Chip/Chuck (Frank Joe Lou Bert...)

In Amurkan, it will be Tchar-earls.

I thought Charles and Karl were interchangeable in the original with one syllable each.
I like how "Blessed Charles (or Karl)" starts each verse. (If he gets an upgrade it will be a metrical problem.)
I am not allergic to thou/thee/thy as some hymnal editors seem to be. I think it sounds natural in the original but wert and troddest sound a bit affected. I agree with Chonak that a you/your rewrite might work provided the result doesn't sound Bowdlerised.
I think the idea in the first original verse that Charles (or Karl) displayed heroic sanctity by ruling as a Christian and uniting his sufferings to the sufferings of Christ gets a bit lost in NihilNominis' rewrite which makes it seem that being overthrown was what mattered. (The Bible Society has put out a little book for The Queen's 90th birthday called The Servant Queen: and the King she serves. They must have pinched Cliens_Caroli's idea.)
I think the identification of throne, altar and cross in the original verse 2 is genius.

He was overthrown and deposed; murder is not needed for that to be true. A republic was declared in both Austria and Hungary (a kingdom was later set up in the latter, of course, but there was a gap in continuity, and the successor entity had a fictional relationship to the former kingdom as a legal organism).

OK, Chip.

Maybe it would be useful, for the purpose of organizing thoughts, to write down *in prose* the points of Bl. Karl's life you want to highlight, and what intercessions you want the hymn to make. What is most important? What theological messages are you trying to convey? In what order do you want to deal with the various aspects?

As for this draft, this verse shifts from "we"-speech to "I"-speech, so that's not consistent with what goes before.

"This chalice" would make sense if the previous stanzas were about some impending threat of death, but they aren't, so I can't see a justification for the term. Come to think of it, the idea of using "this chalice" to refer to one's own sufferings at all is shocking to me.