Charles: Victim or villain?. Penny Junor
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videos of her, both as a child and a Princess, play constantly throughout the day. Visitors are taken around a small section of the house and then herded out to the lake, and to the shrine to the Princess that has been built on the water’s edge. Some of her words are inscribed on it, and some of his from his funeral tribute.
There is a rumour, however, that Diana is not there. A very select group was invited to attend the burial, and many people believe that her body is actually in the family crypt at the churchyard in the village of Great Brington, alongside the remains of her father, the eighth Earl, and the grandmother she so adored, Cynthia Spencer, who had been her guide, she always felt, in the spirit world.
‘I’ve fallen in love with all sorts of girls …’
Charles
Nothing could have been further from the truth than the Daily Mail’s claim that Charles had wept ‘bitter tears of guilt’ as he walked the lonely moors in the immediate hours after Diana’s death. He wept bitterly for the loss of the girl he had once loved, whose life had been so sad, he wept bitterly for his children, whose grief he knew would be unimaginable. He was terrified about having to break the news to them. But there was no guilt, either about Diana’s death or about his affair with Camilla Parker Bowles. He knew that he was not responsible in any way for what had happened in that Parisian tunnel. Although he had failed, he knew that he had done everything in his power to make his marriage to Diana work; and he knew that no headline writer could ever begin to understand the reasons why.
If the Prince of Wales felt at all guilty, it was because of all the emotions he felt about Diana’s death, the principal one was relief. Relief that the pain and the suffering was now over, that his children would no longer be torn in opposite directions, confused and upset by their mother’s bizarre behaviour, and that he would no longer be spied upon – she had always tried to find out what he was doing, who he was seeing, where he was going – but be free to get on with his life. He wept bitterly because of the sheer tragedy of it all. Their life together had begun with such promise and such joy, but had ended in such acrimony and anger. But mostly he wept for William and Harry, whose lives would never be the same again, who would never have the comforting arms of their mother around them and who would carry that loss for the rest of their lives. No one, he knew, would ever be able to take away their pain.
He understood. He knew the numbing, hopeless, gnawing emptiness of grief. He had known it when Lord Mountbatten was murdered. Learning to make sense of living without this mainstay in his life had seemed impossible. How much worse for William and Harry, still so young and vulnerable, to lose their mother.
So he cried for them, and he cried for his failure to help Diana. He had tried desperately, but she had been beyond any help he had been able to provide. And he cried for the failure of his marriage – as he had done many times before. He cried for all the people they had let down, and for all the lost hopes that they both had cherished in the early days, to create a secure, happy and loving home for each other and their children.
He had wanted this, just as much as she had. They had both passionately believed in the importance of family. He wanted Diana to be the person with whom he might share his life and interests, who could be friend, companion and lover. Sadly, neither he nor Diana knew what a happy home was. Neither of them had grown up with a normal loving relationship to observe, on which they might base theirs; and both were crippled by low self-esteem and lack of confidence, and a desperate need to be loved.
By 1980 the pressure on the Prince of Wales to find a wife had been intense. Guessing who it might be had been an international obsession during the seventies, which reached the height of absurdity one summer’s day when the Daily Express announced his imminent engagement to Princess Marie-Astrid of Luxembourg, whom he had never even met. Dubbed Action Man, Charles cut a very dashing figure, particularly on the polo field, and he had had a string of attractive girlfriends, some suitably aristocratic, others glamorous and highly unsuitable starlets. The press followed every romance with fascination, especially the French and German magazines, and it was they who began the long-lens paparazzi style of photography that came to make everyone’s life such a misery.
The Prince had never been short of pretty female company, but he was always handicapped because of his position. No one ever behaved normally in his company, and there was always a danger that he was attractive to women for no better reason than because they wanted to be seen with the Prince of Wales. When this was the case he was never the best person to spot it. He had always been shy and awkward and, with little opportunity to gain experience, he was ignorant about women and how to treat them. He had been to ordinary schools and university, and he had done a spell in the Navy, but most of his life had been spent in a rarefied atmosphere. With a handful of exceptions, men and women alike bowed and curtsied when they met him and called him ‘sir’. Even Diana called him ‘sir’ until they were engaged. It is as much a mark of respect for the title as it is for the individual, but it is enough to keep a very strong barrier between him and the real world.
Charles would take girlfriends to watch him play polo at Smiths Lawn, or he would take them to the opera or the ballet and bring them home to his apartment at Buckingham Palace for supper afterwards. But there was little room for spontaneity, and certainly none for privacy. He couldn’t even be alone with them in his car. Ever since a gunman ambushed Princess Anne as she was being driven down the Mall in 1974, security for all the family has been tight – and on any journey there will be a detective in the car and a backup car behind. The Prince’s staff would make the arrangements and girls were usually brought to wherever he happened to be, which understandably made encounters awkward and forced. And if the formality didn’t kill a burgeoning relationship, then the other hazard of dating the Prince of Wales – being splashed all over the gossip columns – usually did.
Lord Mountbatten had encouraged Charles to take girlfriends to his Hampshire estate – he was a great believer that the Prince should ‘sow his wild oats’ before settling down – and Broadlands afforded greater privacy (as well as the chance for Mountbatten to vet the latest conquest), but it was still an unhappy situation, and one from which most suitable girls ran a mile. Far more relaxing, Charles discovered, was the company of married women. There was no pressure on him, no expectation from them, and best of all the press left him alone. This was how he became so friendly with Camilla Parker Bowles, although she was only one of several he was close to.
He had first got to know Camilla Shand, as she then was, in 1972, when he was in the Navy. She was single at the time, but she had been going out with Andrew Parker Bowles for six years. He was a cavalry officer, nine years older than her, and hugely attractive, but hopelessly faithless. He had swept her off her feet when she was just eighteen – as he swept many girls before and since, including Princess Anne – and she hoped he would marry her, but he took her for granted, and treated her badly, knowing that she would always be there to take him back.
It was while he was stationed in Germany and their relationship was going through an off patch that Camilla and the Prince of Wales had a brief affair in the autumn of 1972. The Prince fell in love with Camilla. She was the most wonderful girl he had ever met. She was pretty and bubbly and laughed easily, and at the same sort of puerile dirty jokes he enjoyed. She loved the Goons and silly voices and put on accents that made him laugh, and she had no pretensions or guile of any sort. She loved horses and hunting, loved watching polo, loved the countryside, and was relaxed and exciting to be with.
He saw a lot of her at the end of that year and fell ever more deeply in love. He even began to think that he might have found someone he could share his life with. To his great joy she seemed to feel the same way about him, but he was only just twenty-four and too reticent to say anything to her – and certainly too reticent to discuss the possibility of any future together. Three weeks before Christmas their time together came to an enforced end. Duty called, and he went off to join the frigate