The Great Survivors

by Peter Conradi

  Despite the weather, tens of thousands of well-wishers turned out to line the streets of the Spanish capital, which was decked with flags and one million red-, yellow- and saffron-coloured flowers. The March bombings were not far from everyone’s thoughts, however: royal guards sent by the couple placed a bouquet of white roses at a grove of potted olive and cypress trees that had been positioned outside Atocha station, one of the main targets of the attack, with a note saying: “Always in our memory, Felipe and Letizia.”

  The first half of the decade saw one more wedding of an heir to the throne, which was the most extraordinary of them all: that of Britain’s Prince Charles and the great love of his life, Camilla Parker Bowles. Since the very painful and public collapse of the Prince’s marriage to Diana and their divorce in 1996, there had been speculation about whether the Prince of Wales would ever marry Camilla. In the aftermath of Diana’s death the following year, the answer was a definite “no”. Camilla was already deeply unpopular. Now she was vilified by the British tabloid press, which was in the process of turning the dead Princess into a secular saint.

  Charles was in no hurry, however, anticipating correctly that the passage of time would gradually make Camilla more acceptable to his future subjects. In June 2000, after years in which the Queen avoided meeting Camilla and pointedly did not invite her to royal functions, the two of them attended a party that Charles threw at Highgrove to celebrate the sixtieth birthday of ex-King Konstantinos of Greece, the younger brother of Queen Sofía of Spain. Their meeting, revealed the next day in the Mail on Sunday, had been kept secret until the last moment; the newspaper claimed that even Tony Blair, the prime minister, had not been told until the Queen arrived. So as not to push the matter, however, the monarch and her prospective daughter-in-law were seated far apart from each other during the lunch that followed. In a world in which protocol is everything, the choice of venue was deliberate. By meeting Camilla at Charles’s house rather than at one of the royal palaces, it was noted, the Queen was signalling a desire to end the family rift, but without formally welcoming her son’s girlfriend into the world of royalty.

  The mood was changing – but only slowly and it was not until almost five years later that the announcement finally came: the couple would marry on 8th April 2005. In deference to the memory of the late Diana, however, Camilla would be known after the marriage not as the Princess of Wales, but as the Duchess of Cornwall. By royal standards this was to be a very low-key affair: as a divorcee, Camilla was barred from marrying Charles in the Church of England. (Charles was divorced too, but since his ex-wife had since died, he could have wed in a church.) The ceremony would be held instead at Windsor Castle, which would be temporarily designated a register office; the civil service would be followed by a blessing.

  Things quickly started to go wrong – with a series of problems all eagerly seized on by the British tabloid press, who were still reluctant to accept Camilla. The first problem was the venue: examination of the small print of a law recently passed governing the use of non-standard buildings for weddings revealed that if the castle were licensed for the royal marriage it would have to be available for use by other couples for three years – which the royal family was understandably keen to avoid. The venue was quickly shifted to Windsor’s Guildhall.

  Then came the Queen’s announcement that she would not attend the ceremony and only join her son for a “religious blessing” and party to be held in the castle. As supreme governor of the Church of England, she did not think it appropriate to attend a wedding not sanctioned by the Church.

  Legal scholars also began to question whether it would be lawful for Charles and Camilla to marry in a civil ceremony, since members of the royal family were specifically excluded from the 1836 law that instituted civil marriages in England. Eventually, four unnamed legal experts ruled that the marriage would be lawful, although curiously it was later decided by the government that their advice would remain secret indefinitely because of its constitutional “sensitivity and significance”.

  The greatest blow, though, came completely out of the blue: on 2nd April, Pope John Paul II died and his funeral was set for six days later, clashing with the date chosen for Charles and Camilla’s wedding. The Prince was left with no alternative but to postpone the marriage for twenty-four hours – not only would this allow him to attend the funeral, it would also avoid forcing Blair and other important guests from having to choose which event to attend. The press was not sympathetic. “What’s the problem with waiting one more day?” demanded the Sun. “He’s been keeping Camilla waiting ‌for the past thirty-five years.”11 Souvenir sellers, meanwhile, faced a last-minute scramble to change the dates on their commemorative merchandise.

  The sun was shining, though, as Camilla, dressed in an oyster-silk basket-weave coat and natural-straw hat, emerged from the Rolls-Royce that carried the couple to the Guildhall. Although the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh stayed away, the other senior members of the royal family were there. Prince William and Camilla’s son Tom Parker Bowles were the witnesses.

  The contrast with Charles and Diana’s wedding in 1981 could not have been greater. Then, an estimated six hundred thousand people had lined the streets to watch the couple travel to and from St Paul’s. This time, there were just twenty thousand on the streets of Windsor. More than thirty years after their romance began, the Prince had finally married the woman he loved. According to guests, the Queen made a speech at the reception in which she told how “proud” she was of her son on his wedding day, and wished him and his new wife well.

  If Charles’s second wedding was low key, that of Prince William to Kate Middleton on 29th April 2011 was anything but; up to a million people – thousands of whom had camped out for one or more nights – lined the streets as Kate set off with her father aboard the Queen’s Rolls-Royce Phantom VI limousine for Westminster Abbey from the Goring Hotel in Belgravia, where she had spent her last night as a single woman.

  William, who had been given three new titles to mark the occasion – Duke of Cambridge, Earl of Strathearn and Baron Carrickfergus – was waiting at the altar, dressed in the red tunic of the Irish Guards infantry regiment, the uniform of his highest military rank. When the couple emerged just over an hour later, now man and wife, to more bells and cheering from the crowd in Parliament Square, Kate, the middle-class girl now to be known as Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cambridge, looked entirely composed, but William seemed a little nervous.

  For commentators in the British media, the contemporary feel to the day’s proceedings was in sharp contrast to the rather unreal, fairy-tale atmosphere of Charles and Diana’s wedding. “There was traditional pomp, pageantry and protocol aplenty, nostalgia and sentiment, but also a new and different air to this wedding – more relaxed, less reverent, more personal and natural,” wrote the Times. “Even the balcony kiss was brief and artless, followed by a princely blush. To make it seem sufficiently schmaltzy, television editors felt obliged to slow down the footage. Where Charles and Diana seemed almost overwhelmed by the sheer scale and majesty of their nuptials, Wills and Kate (to restore their ‌rightful monosyllables) seemed merely joyful.”12

  Part of the difference between the two events was attributable to the enormous changes in British society in the intervening three decades. Yet it also appeared a reflection of the determination of the couple to put their personal stamp on proceedings rather than allow themselves to be bullied by the palace establishment.

  Although the couple’s every move remained a matter of fascination to the press, Kate seem to be spared the excessive media intrusion faced by Diana three decades earlier. Matters were helped by the fact that she and William began married life in a cottage on the Welsh island of Anglesey, where he continued his posting as a search-and-rescue helicopter pilot for the Royal Air Force – which, to the fury of the Argentinian government, included a six-week stint in the Falkland Islands starting in February 2012. Even so, this did not prevent the occasional roya
l complaint against paparazzi who overstepped the mark.

  When Kate celebrated her thirtieth birthday in January 2012 – at a suitably quiet dinner for friends and family – the occasion was marked by stories in the British press praising the way she had taken to her new role. St James’s Palace announced that she had accepted honorary positions with four charities that deal with a range of issues, including tackling drug addiction and helping young people. The four, chosen out of hundreds of applicants, reflected her “personal interests in the arts, the promotion of outdoor activity, and supporting people who are in need of all ages, especially young children”. The announcement drew comparisons with Diana and her work with charities that helped AIDS victims and removed landmines from conflict zones.

  As far as the British press was concerned there was only one more thing that Kate needed to do: produce an heir, and what better year to do so than 2012, the year of the Queen’s jubilee? In an apparent attempt to encourage her, the February edition of Tatler even ran a cover photograph of the Duchess accompanied with the words: “Kate (What to expect when you are expecting)”. Whether she would do her royal duty remained to be seen.

  ‌Chapter 12

  ‌Playing the Waiting Game

  When Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark celebrated his fortieth birthday in May 2008, he did so in style. Some 140 guests joined the heir to the throne and his wife Mary for the party in the Orangery of Fredensborg Palace. Friends sang songs in his honour, and even Mary chipped in. When a group of five of them formed an ad-hoc boy band, the Crown Prince joined them on stage on harmonica. Later they all moved to a marquee erected in the garden behind Chancellery House, where a band played and drinks were served with ice brought specially from Greenland. It was not until five a.m. that the last guests finally left.

  It was, by all accounts, a hell of a party, and came at the end of a week of celebrations begun on Frederik’s birthday itself, when crowds braved dismal weather to gather outside the Amalienborg Palace to catch a glimpse of the Crown Prince and the rest of the family in their familiar spot on the balcony. Among them were his two-year-old son Christian and daughter Princess Isabella, who had recently turned one and was making her first appearance on the balcony wearing a pink dress and cardigan – and a somewhat bemused expression.

  Frederik had plenty to celebrate: a beautiful wife, two children and, of course, all the comforts that come from being born into a royal family. Looking back on his life, he could also boast of a highly successful few years in the military during which, through sheer grit and determination, he had qualified as a member of the elite Frømandskorpset (Frogman Corps) and took a tour of duty on the Sirius Patrol, a military dog-sled patrol servicing the northern Greenland coast under some of the most extreme weather conditions on earth.

  But now that Frederik had reached an age when his contemporaries in the world of business, banking or the law were moving to the high point of their careers, what precisely was his role in life? A passionate yachtsman, the Crown Prince travelled the world taking part in competitions, but far from bringing him kudos, it looked to some rather more like having fun than hard work. There was growing concern too at the lavishness of his lifestyle, which appeared to be confirmed by royal accounts published the following May showing that he and Mary had overspent their 16.5-million-kroner budget by 2.1 million – which would have to come out of Frederik’s “personal savings”. In the couple’s worst blowout to date, all categories of expenditure rose, from payments to staff to “court expenses” (read clothes, make-up, parties), “administrative expenses” and the cost of the upkeep of their palace. Such was the overspend that in February the pair cut five from their staff of thirty.

  It is a question that could be asked not just of Frederik but of every other heir to a European throne. What is it like to be born into a job that you know you will not be able to fulfil until your father – or, in Frederik’s case, your mother – dies? Once your formal education is out of the way, how do you prepare further? And how else do you spend the time until then, knowing that your every decision and action will be scrutinized and judged for your entire life in a way that almost no one else in your country has to endure?

  In the days when kings ruled rather than reigned there were plenty of tasks, often military in nature, to keep a crown prince busy. Long after kings ceased to lead their armies into battle, it remained acceptable for their sons and heirs to do so. Often the heir to the throne was also plotting against his father – although in Europe, at least in the past few hundred years, none have gone so far as to attempt to overthrow him. Relatively low life expectancy also meant crown princes succeeded to the throne earlier.

  There were some glorious exceptions, however, most notably in Britain, where the adult years of the future George IV – first as the Prince of Wales and then as Prince Regent – at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century passed in a haze of womanizing and extravagant spending that turned him into one of the most reviled British royals of all time, before he finally became king at the age of fifty-seven. A century later his great-nephew, the future Edward VII, followed a similarly hedonistic course, not acceding to the throne until he was fifty-nine.

  Both men, by temperament, clearly enjoyed food, drink and the company of beautiful women, and had the time and money (albeit largely borrowed) to pursue their passions. In Edward’s case, at least, there was another explanation for his dissolute behaviour: his mother Queen Victoria had never been much impressed by his intellect or application and was unwilling to give him any part in affairs of state during his long wait to succeed her. Without such a role he had nothing to do apart from pursue his own pleasure, which in turn further diminished his reputation in the eyes of his mother.

  Recent years have provided fewer role models, whether positive or negative, for the current generation of crown princes and princesses. The problem for Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II – just twenty-five when King George VI died – and Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden, who was twenty-seven when he succeeded his grandfather, was a lack rather than a surfeit of time to prepare for the job. Juan Carlos of Spain was thirty-seven when he came to the throne, but his apprenticeship during Franco’s dictatorship was a very specific one and of little relevance to his son, who came of age in a democratic Spain. Albert II of Belgium, by contrast, at fifty-nine was far older when he succeeded his childless brother, Baudouin – but it would be wrong to say he had spent his life preparing for the role. Once it became clear his brother was not going to have children, it was expected that the throne would pass directly to Albert’s son, Philippe.

  Margrethe and Beatrix, who became queens in their early thirties and early forties respectively, had more time to prepare – although young children also provided something of a sense of purpose to their lives. The most relevant example perhaps is that of King Harald of Norway, who did not accede to the throne until he was fifty-three. In September 1957, when he was twenty, he started attending meetings of the Council of State, and the following year served as regent in his father’s absence for the first time. Like many royals, he had a passion for yachting – which he was able to pursue at the highest level – representing Norway at the Olympics in 1964 and 1968 and continuing to take part in many international competitions.

  There is general acceptance these days that members of the royal family should earn – or at least be seen to be earning – their keep. For that reason, in most countries, when the monarch-to-be is deemed to have come of age, he will become a member of a council or other advisory body and also be prepared to act as a regent in case of the monarch’s ill health – as Norway’s Crown Prince Haakon did, for example, for more than four months starting in November 2003, while King Harald was being treated for cancer, and again for another two months from March 2005 when his father was recovering from heart surgery. And then there are all the ceremonial duties that the king or queen doesn’t have the time or inclination to undertake and other representational functions to perform.<
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  This alone is unlikely to satisfy the demands of the young monarch-in-waiting who wishes actually to do something with his or her life. Yet choosing an appropriate activity can be difficult, and they will be driven by different motives from any other young person setting out onto the job market. For a start, it is not about money: the heirs to Europe’s thrones all receive generous allowances. Nor do they have to worry about where they live: their families each have several palaces at their disposal.

  So what would be the ideal royal job? Ideally, the crown prince or princess should be involved in activities that benefit the nation as a whole rather than serve their own self-interest or that of a narrow group of society. It must also not be something that could be considered political. For that reason, staying on in the armed forces beyond the initial couple of years or so deemed de rigueur can be the ideal solution. Spells in the diplomatic service, involvement in overseas aid projects or perhaps working for the European Union can be useful – except in the case of Britain, where it would be doubtless be greeted with outrage by the more ‌Eurosceptic wing of the media.1

  As the oldest of the Europe’s monarchs-in-waiting, Prince Charles’s experience is instructive. He has had four decades of adult life to try to define what it means to be heir to the throne – and also in which to face controversy when he is perceived to have overstepped the mark. It has been a mixed picture.

  Concern for the natural world has long loomed large in his thinking; he had already embraced environmentalism and sustainability when his fellow European heirs to the throne were all still at school. He has also long since progressed from merely expressing concern to concrete action. In 1986 – the year that saw him mocked after telling a television interviewer he talked to his plants – his Duchy Home Farm went organic, at a time when few people even knew what that meant, and in the early 1990s he began to warn of the dangers of global warming. The Prince brought his ideas together in the autumn of 2010 with the publication of Harmony, a book and film project expounding his vision of life, which drew comparisons with Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. He has also rightfully won praise for his charity work, especially with the Prince’s Trust, which has worked with more than six hundred thousand people aged thirteen to thirty since he founded it in 1976.