by Kitty Kelley
“At the end of the day, it became clear,” said one of Diana’s representatives, “that the lamb was going to be fleeced.” So Diana was advised to yield what was about to be snatched. Her lawyers tried to save face for her by negotiating a title that sounded like the one she had enjoyed during her fifteen-year marriage. They settled on Diana, Princess of Wales. They also inserted a clause into the final agreement that she would be “considered on occasion a member of the royal family.” One skeptic familiar with the legal document realistically assessed such an “occasion” as “when corgis fly.”
Diana said she stopped fighting for her title after talking to her fourteen-year-old son. She asked Wills if he would mind her not being called Her Royal Highness. “I don’t mind what you’re called,” said the young Prince. “You’re Mummy.”
Yet by the standards of her world, she had been shorn of what had made her most valuable. Stripped of HRH, she lost her prized standing in society. As Diana, Princess of Wales, she was socially inferior to her own children. No longer royal, she resigned her patronage of more than one hundred charities and gave up her military regiments. Her friends worried about how she would survive such a blow. “I fear for her,” wrote historian Paul Johnson, one of her staunchest defenders. “One society matron said to me yesterday: ‘If I was publicly cast off like that, I really think I’d be tempted to do away with myself.’ ”
To the outside world, the thirty-five-year-old Princess still radiated royalty. Her sparkling beauty made her as lyrical as the “glimmering girl” of Yeats’s poem who inspired the wandering aengus to pluck the “silver apples of the moon.” But within her own world she was no longer a contender: “DI KO’d in Palace Rigged Title Fight” was one newspaper appraisal. Even antiroyalists, who sneered at social precedence, recognized that she had been flattened. “Throne for a loss,” as one man put it. “She has lost something,” wrote Stephen Glover in the Daily Telegraph, “which, according to the standards by which she lives, was infinitely precious.”
The loss showed itself within days. Her once respectful press corps turned snippy. Photographers still showed up in full force to cover her because she remained the most famous woman in the world. But they started acting like hooligans, shouting in a way they would never have dared to do before. When she was royal they groveled: “Please, ma’am, one more shot.” When she was no longer royal they were less respectful. One photographer, urging her to smile in his direction, hollered, “Hey, Di, cheat it to the left a little, will ya?” Unflattering photos began popping up: one caught her getting out of a car with mussed hair; another showed her skirt hiked up to her hips. Once adoring, some photographers acted as if she had personally offended them by losing her royal status. In retaliation they subjected her to the same harsh lens they aimed at pop divas and rock stars. Without the protection of her royal nimbus, Diana had been reduced to celebrity camera fodder like Mick, Michael, and Madonna.
Another indignity was inflicted on her while she was shopping in Harvey Nichols, her favorite London department store. A security guard directed a surveillance camera at her bosom and gathered footage of her cleavage. The guard was arrested for theft and taken into court, where the tape was produced. He was accused of video rape, but his female lawyer blamed Diana: “If a member of the public, whether royal or not, is willing to go into public showing a low cleavage, it ill behooves anyone to criticize the taking of a picture.”
Weeks later a London tabloid published grainy photographs from a staged video that purported to be Diana in her bra doing a striptease for her former lover, James Hewitt, before jumping on top of him for a horsey-back ride. The photographs were published around the world. But the video was a hoax, and the newspaper apologized on page one. “We were conned by cunning fraudsters,” said the editor, “and are sorry for any hurt or offense caused.” What went unsaid was that Diana’s previous behavior had been such that editors—and readers—were prepared to accept the trick as truth.
The royal divorce became final on August 28, 1996, and the Sun headlined the news triumphantly: “Bye Bye Big Ears.” Even Mother Teresa was pleased. “I know I should preach for family love and unity,” the eighty-five-year-old nun told a reporter in India, “but nobody was happy anyhow.” Britain’s Prime Minister acted swiftly to reassure the country that Charles had no “immediate” plans to marry again. Then he briefed the Queen, warning her that remarriage, especially to Camilla Parker Bowles, would be disastrous for the monarchy. Neither the Prime Minister nor the Queen acknowledged the irony: the Church of England had been established precisely because of King Henry VIII’s desire to divorce one wife and marry another.
Charles had a talent for shooting himself in the foot. He let the press know that he had sent a letter to forty stores where Diana regularly shopped: “With effect from 2 September 1996, any expenditure incurred by or on behalf of Her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales, on or after that date should be invoiced directly to the Princess of Wales’s Office, Apartment 7, Kensington Palace, London.” Then he announced that he planned “to celebrate” his divorce at Highgrove—with a Champagne party.
The country’s sentiment was best expressed by the cartoonist who showed a huckster outside Buckingham Palace hawking royal playing cards. Chomping a cigar, the hustler pushed a deck of cards on a hapless young man who looked perplexed. “It’s just like an ordinary pack, son, without the Queen of Hearts.”
The monarchy had lost its brightest star, but the Queen was determined that the show go on without her. She instructed the souvenir shops of Balmoral, Windsor Castle, and Buckingham Palace to remove all memorabilia with Diana’s likeness—ashtrays, mugs, postcards. She also struck the Princess’s name from the official prayers said for the royal family in Parliament. The move appeared “comically vindictive” to Tory MP Jerry Hayes. “To most people,” he said, “it looks like they are trying to airbrush the Princess from the establishment in a Stalinist manner.”
The Sunday Mail agreed. “Diana should still be in our prayers,” stated an editorial that chastised Parliament for its “mean and vengeful” decision. “They should recall that forgiveness is the first Christian virtue.”
The final humiliation came when the Queen ordered the London Gazette to publish the Letters Patent: this was Her Majesty’s official notice to her government, her embassies, and her diplomatic missions that both her former daughters-in-law were toast.
“It’s Wallis all over again, isn’t it?” said the Queen Mother, shaking her head. She had received an advance copy of the notice that deprived Sarah Ferguson and Diana Spencer of their royal status without ever mentioning them by name. The Queen Mother had supported the move to strip “the troublesome girls” of their titles and was as complicit in the purge as she had been in depriving the Duchess of Windsor of her royal status. Now as then, the courtiers were as slick as seals. They dismissed the dry announcement as a routine matter of protocol: to inform people of the correct form of social address. But most everyone else saw the announcement as tactless and vengeful. They saw the monarch once again using the Letters Patent as a broom.
“First, you cauterize,” said one of the Queen’s advisers, “and then you heal.” The scholarly adviser had written to the Queen, quoting the wisdom of England’s sixteenth-century philosopher Francis Bacon, who said, “[He] that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils, for time is the greatest innovator.”
But the seventy-year-old Queen did not feel she needed the advice. After forty-five years on the throne, she had developed her own endgame. Without a shrewd Prime Minister such as Queen Victoria had in Disraeli, Elizabeth relied on her courtiers. They believed, as she did, that she was anointed by God. With her position divinely ordained, she did not feel a need to respond to the whims of public opinion like a politician. She viewed the monarchy as a sacred destiny, not a popularity contest.
But when her authority was challenged, she showed that she understood the past was prologue. Her grandfather had built the House of Wind
sor on an act of expediency, which enabled the monarchy to survive during the First World War. By camouflaging his German ancestry and reinventing himself as English, King George V had appeased his Hun-hating subjects. “He knew and understood his people, and the age in which they lived,” said former prime minister Clement Atlee, “and progressed with them.” The Bavarian nobleman Count Albrecht von Montgelas saw it differently. “The true royal tradition died on that day in 1917, when for a mere war, King George V changed his name.”
The Queen understood the price her grandfather had paid to save the monarchy, and she intended to protect his investment. She made her initial concession to survival when she became the first British monarch of the twentieth century to pay taxes. Then she removed most of her family from the Civil List. When her subjects would not pay to finance the restoration of Windsor Castle, she opened Buckingham Palace to the public and charged admission. She even made a gesture toward the largest religious denomination in her country by visiting a Roman Catholic church. This was the first time in four hundred years that a reigning British monarch had done so. By 1996 the Church of England represented only 2 percent of the population, while Roman Catholics represented 43 percent of churchgoing Britons.
Despite the Queen’s concessions, the monarchy looked vulnerable as it tottered toward the year 2000. Viewed as a golden coach, the institution that represented Britain to the world was tarnished and absurdly grandiose. The chassis wobbled and the wheels creaked. Shorn of its majesty, it barely limped along.
The Queen knew there would be a resurgence of fervor when the Queen Mother died. But she recognized the ardor would fade soon after the period of national mourning. As pragmatic as she was, she did not want to examine the elaborate plans for her mother’s funeral.
“I don’t need to address this now, do I?” she said, pushing aside the folder that contained the memorandum code-named Operation Lion. Its five pages outlined the procedures to be followed by the media after the Queen Mother’s death. The Queen had determined that her mother would be accorded the grandest funeral since Winston Churchill’s. She would lie in state for three days before being eulogized in Westminster Abbey. As a mark of respect, the broadcast networks had planned to suspend commercials. Their coverage of the funeral was to be solemn and stirring, featuring documentaries of the royal family during World War II. Historical footage would show King George VI and Queen Elizabeth waving from the balcony of Buckingham Palace with the two little Princesses—“Us Four,” as the King had called them.
The services were designed to remind Britain of its glorious past when the country withstood Nazi bombs and the monarchy responded admirably. With full military honors, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother would be laid to rest with the extravagant title she had styled for herself after her husband died.
Ordinarily unsentimental, the Queen resisted dealing with the harsh reality of her mother’s eventual death, even after the Queen Mother reached her nineties. “My worst fear,” the Queen told a friend, “is that Mummy will die, and then Margaret. And I’ll be left alone.”
Her subjects’ worst fear was that the Queen might die and leave them alone with Charles. Resistance to her heir had grown increasingly vocal since his divorce. Polls showed that he did not have the support of his prospective subjects. Most said they did not want him to become King, and the Members of Parliament who represented them did not want to sacrifice their offices for an unpopular heir.
“Charles is unfit to be King,” declared the Labor MP Ron Davies on television. “He’s an adulterer who does not practice the precepts of the church…. He spends time talking to trees, flowers, and vegetables and… he encourages his young sons to go out into the countryside to kill wild animals and birds just for fun….”
The leader of the Labor Party, Tony Blair, who became Prime Minister in 1997, demanded the MP retract his remarks. So the MP reluctantly apologized for calling the future King a fornicating environmentalist who hugged trees and indulged in blood sports. Throughout his campaign, Blair had reiterated his party’s support for continuing the monarchy. He could not afford to jeopardize his lead by threatening the country’s natural conservatism with radical proposals. But his party, once firmly monarchist, was no longer unified. And a few rogue MPs, refusing to be silent, suggested eliminating the monarchy by an act of Parliament.
“The view that Charles is not fit to be King is shared by three-quarters of the people in the country,” said Paul Flynn, a left-wing MP. “Forget the sycophantic drivel that the royals are somehow superior beings who have stepped out of a fairy tale. That has gone forever.”
It looked as though the buzzards were circling the monarchy. Calling it an anachronism, another Labor MP demanded a referendum at the end of the Queen’s reign on whether Britain should continue to have a hereditary head of state. The Press Association conducted a straw vote of the Labor Party and reported a majority favored an open debate on the future of the monarchy.
“I was threatened with assassination when I made that suggestion twenty years ago,” said former Labor MP Willie Hamilton, reflecting on the dramatic change in attitude. “I was called a crank and a communist. It was easier to criticize God in this country than to criticize the monarchy. But no more.”
“At such a turning point,” asked the Guardian newspaper in 1996, “is it not also time seriously to consider the mechanisms for constructing the British Republic?”
The question seemed preposterous to those who judged the royal family by its entertainment value. “The American answer is simple,” said a New York Times editorial, recommending that Britain retain its monarchy. “Of course they should keep it—for our amusement.”
There were no more seasoned actors than the British royal family. Like an old vaudeville troupe, they filed on stage to go through their practiced routines. Looking like rouged curiosities, they performed at weddings and funerals. In costume, they still drew a few regular spectators, but they lost their biggest crowds with the departure of their ingenue Princess. They knew that they were viewed best from afar; up close, their imperfections showed.
They had learned the hard way, and perhaps too late, the wisdom of the eighteenth-century revolutionary Thomas Paine. “Monarchy is something kept behind a curtain,” he wrote, “about which there is a great deal of bustle and fuss, and a wonderful air of seeming solemnity. But when, by any accident, the curtain happens to be open, and the company see what it is, they burst into laughter.”
The colorful cast was ridiculed when Fergie starred as its vixen. But when she bowed out, she had left behind a prince who finally became charming. Through his failed marriage Andrew had learned to behave with dignity in the face of disgrace. No matter what his former wife did to humiliate him and provoke criticism, he remained blessedly silent, discreet, and steadfast.
His father continued playing his role of leading man, although he had faded slightly as a matinee idol. His handsomeness had disappeared beneath age spots, which emphasized his sharp features under taut skin and made him look like a hawk. Still, at the age of seventy-five, he managed to stir a few hearts when he marched alongside the elderly veterans of World War II. Instead of standing with the royal family during a Remembrance Day ceremony, Philip stood with his shipmates. His noble gesture brought tears to the eyes of many who remembered the dashing naval officer, kneeling before a young queen at her coronation and promising to be her liegeman for life. After fifty years of marriage (give or take a few mistresses), he was still at her side with his elbow crooked, ready to receive her hand.
Because of his constancy to the Queen, most people tried to overlook his gaffes. But it was difficult, especially when his boorish remarks caused international incidents. In France he infuriated half his wife’s subjects by saying, “British women can’t cook.” During a trip to Holland he observed crossly, “The Dutch are so po’faced.” In Canada he snapped at officials, “We don’t come here for our health.” In Egypt he complained about Cairo’s traffic. “The troub
le with you Egyptians is that you breed too much,” he said. In Peru he was presented with a history of the town of Lima, which he thrust into the hands of an aide, saying: “Here, take this. I’ll never read it.” In Scotland he asked a driving instructor, “How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to get them to pass the test?” In Hungary he spotted a British tourist in Budapest. “You can’t have been here long,” he observed. “You haven’t got a pot belly.” He warned British students in China, “If you stay here much longer, you’ll get slitty eyes.”
An avid hunter, Philip publicly criticized England’s proposed legislation to crack down on handguns. During a discussion of the massacre of sixteen schoolchildren in Dunblane, Scotland, the Duke said guns were no more dangerous than cricket bats. Parents of the slain children were shocked by the comment, and the Queen’s husband was taken to task by the nation’s press. “Wrong again, Prince Philip,” was the headline of the Manchester Evening News editorial that criticized him “for shooting his mouth off without regard to the feelings of others.” The next day the Palace issued an apology.
But the Queen appeared unruffled by her husband’s diplomatic pratfalls. She tolerated his curmudgeonly manner and made no excuses for his off-the-cuff humor. Charles was the one who cringed. He worried most about the family’s declining popularity, and he accused the press of making them look like lumpen royalty. He urged his parents to address the future—his future—and consider ways the monarchy could prepare for the twenty-first century.
From the shadows of Balmoral, he let it be known that the royal family was looking ahead. He indicated that he and his parents, his brothers, his sister, and his advisers were meeting twice a year. Their committee was called the Way Ahead Group, and their goal was to renovate the dilapidated House of Windsor. Under discussion were ideas that would radically reform the Crown. The most immediate was the family’s intention to get off the public payroll. They agreed to end the annual Civil List payments (approximately $14 million from taxpayers) and suggested restoring to the Crown payments from the Crown Estates. These consist of three hundred thousand acres of prime real estate, whose rents and revenues produce more than $100 million a year. They were surrendered to Parliament by King George III in 1760.