by Kitty Kelley
“Devilishly cunning,” said a government minister who showed the respect of a pickpocket for a bank robber. He figured the arithmetic (more than $100 million) as a break for the public and a boon for the royal family. “This would spare taxpayers while manifoldly enriching the monarchy; at the same time, it removes the Crown from public scrutiny, which legitimately keeps the press at bay…. How can the media justify invading their privacy when they are no longer supported by public dollars? Doubtful it would pass Parliament, but the proposal is admirable in its audacity.”
Equally creative was the royal family’s proposal to end the eleventh-century rule of primogeniture and allow women equal rights to succeed to the throne. They also committed themselves to downsizing: no more HRH aunts, uncles, or cousins. Upon the deaths of certain members of the royal family, the Firm would consist solely of the monarch, the consort, their children, and those grandchildren who are direct heirs to the throne.
The vote around the table at Balmoral was unanimous: Ditch the minor royals like HRH Prince Michael of Kent and his wife. The Kents had contributed their share of bad publicity to the royal family. She had been caught leaving her American lover’s house disguised in a wig and sunglasses. He had cashed in on being the Queen’s cousin; he appeared on television to hawk the House of Windsor Collection, a mail-order catalog selling ersatz royal trinkets. Within months the marketing scheme became a financial disaster, which caused further embarrassment. “We’ve got Ali Baba,” joked one member of the royal family. “We don’t need the Forty Thieves.”
Charles recognized that an act of Parliament could deprive him of the throne, especially after he said that he did not want to be Defender of the Faith. Under the Bill of Rights and the Act of Settlement, the sovereign must swear to uphold the established Church of England and Church of Scotland. Charles was not in communion with either church. So the Way Ahead Group proposed separating the monarchy from the strictures of religion and dissolving the bonds of church and state.
As sovereign, Charles would have to commit himself to uphold the Protestant succession, which also troubled him. He did not understand why Roman Catholics had to be specifically excluded from succeeding to the throne. He said the rule, which also precluded a sovereign from marrying a Roman Catholic, was inherently unfair and discriminated against the 10 percent of Britain’s 60 million people who were Roman Catholic. So he proposed eliminating the 295-year-old ban.
The heir was determined to acquire the throne. Although he had disappointed his future subjects by discarding a young wife and taking up with a weatherbeaten mistress, he would not step aside. Despite growing objections, he soldiered on. “I have dedicated myself to putting the great back into Britain,” he said, “and that’s what I intend to do.” Yet even those who recalled the empire of Great Britain did not think he would become King.
Throughout the country people continued to stand for the loyal toast at formal black-tie dinners. They raised their glasses to salute the sovereign: “To the Queen,” they would say in unison before sitting down. Even respectful republicans stood for the tribute. “No one is recommending a revolution,” said Professor Stephen Haseler, chairman of Britain’s Republican Society. “For most of us heading into the twenty-first century, the sentiment is: ‘God save the Queen,’ and then, ‘Save us from her heirs.’ ”
To the professor, the monarchy looked as if it were ready to be walked to the wall for one last cigarette. He predicted dissension throughout the land if the Prince of Wales ascended to the throne. “King Charles III will split the nation down the middle,” he said. “The only solution, short of anarchy, which no one advocates, is an act of Parliament, agreed to by the Queen, that upon her death or abdication, the monarchy would end and a new head of state would be elected.”
The republicans were asking the Queen to dissolve her dynasty. The royalists were spluttering. They warned that abandoning the monarchy would traumatize the country and cause great upheaval. They said it would require restructuring the entire system of government and creating a written constitution. And they predicted that the class system would disappear and the House of Lords would collapse. The republicans agreed and approved. They argued that the structural moves were necessary to revitalize the country. The national debate had begun, and words once considered treasonous were uttered without rebuke.
Crowded between republicans and royalists, though, was the majority. They wanted to retain the monarchy but bypass the future monarch. “It’s as simple as ABC—Anybody But Charles,” said one MP, recommending that the Queen move to make Princess Anne the next monarch. Polls in 1996 showed great support for the idea. Others suggested skipping Charles and going directly to his older son, as Diana had proposed.
“The best hope is to jump a generation and appoint Prince William as the Queen’s successor,” wrote Paul Johnson in the Spectator. “That solution would eliminate the foolish and unpopular Charles and might prove a winner with the public.”
Americans agreed. For their youth-crazed, celebrity-driven culture, the solution was ideal. People magazine described the young prince as “a looker just like his mom.” Time put him on the cover and asked: “Can This Boy Save the Monarchy?” British commentator Julie Burchill expressed doubts. “I hope for the best for Wills,” she said, “but I would be very surprised if he turns out to be normal, because that’s the maddest family since the Munsters…. We wouldn’t be shocked if he turned out to be a cross-dresser who wanted to marry a corgi….”
Bookmakers began taking bets on whether the monarchy would survive into the next century. The odds soared to one hundred to one in 1994 but tumbled the next year to five to one. Assessing the imponderables in 1996, one London bookmaker from the William Hill firm predicted: “The smart money says Her Majesty steps aside at the age of seventy-five and turns the crown over to Charles. Right now, that’s the only way she can ensure her heir succeeds her to the throne. Within the next five years, she works out a deal with the Prime Minister. Whether the government is Tory or Labor makes no difference because both parties have committed to supporting the monarchy. If the Queen makes the request, she won’t be refused.”
The “if” is operative. Some bookmakers are hedging their bets because they question the maternal instincts of the dutiful monarch. At best they see her as an inattentive parent, who is no longer inclined to give up her crown for her middle-aged son. “She is dedicated to her duty,” said one London bookmaker. “She has described her job as a job for life. She’ll never abdicate. Based on that, I’d give long odds on the Queen stepping aside before she goes to the angels.”
Few criticize the Queen as a monarch. It’s the mother who has failed. She has produced three children who are divorced and one who is still floundering. That’s a sorry score for people whose only job in life is to live happily ever after. They are not evil, just venal. But being hapless and unheroic, they rubbed the luster off the House of Windsor and left it looking shopworn.
Many years ago, Farouk, the last King of Egypt, had predicted that most monarchies would disappear by the turn of the century. “By then there will be only five kings left in the world,” he said. “The king of hearts, clubs, diamonds, spades—and the King of England.” He, too, had been beguiled by the mystique of the British monarchy.
“In its mystery is its life,” wrote historian Walter Bagehot more than a hundred years ago. “We must not let daylight in upon magic.”
Since then the magic has been harshly exposed. Yet the weight of history favors survival of an institution that continues to reinvigorate itself. Even as Britain reassesses its monarchy, the monarchy retains its genius for adaptability and compromise, almost defying destruction. Rooted mystically in religion and patriotism, it cannot be removed without leaving a gaping hole in the psyche of the country. As durable as the White Cliffs of Dover, the institution has existed for 1,200 years among people who have cherished pageantry and treasured mythology. The magic is not completely understood, even by devoted monarchists, w
ho acknowledge that not all kings and queens have been good and noble and wise. But they have survived because their subjects had a need to believe in them. That yearning to look up to someone or something grand, even grandiose, still exists. Although the godlike luster has eroded and the institution has been diminished, even disgraced, the need for enchantment endures and the hope for renewal remains.
Epilogue
The death of Diana knocked the wind out of the Windsors. Her death also shook the head of the house, the Queen herself. She was awakened at 3:30 A.M. on August 31, 1997, at Balmoral by a telephone call from her private secretary. She admitted her first reaction was to think: “At this time of the morning it had better be important.”
Diana met death in Paris. Chased by paparazzi on motorcycles and in cars, the limousine in which she was riding crashed into the side of a roadway tunnel.
Seconds before the crash, French police say, the speedometer froze at 121 miles an hour—triple the speed limit. They also say the driver was drunk and under the influence of prescription drugs for depression and alcoholism. He died instantly.
Diana’s companion, Dodi Fayed, riding with her in the back seat, was also killed on impact.
His bodyguard, riding in the front of the black Mercedes-Benz, was the only person wearing a seatbelt. He was severely injured, but he was the only one who survived.
The BBC announcement of the Princess’s death punched a hole in people’s hearts. “I feel as if the brightest star has been yanked from the sky,” said a London woman upon hearing the news. “We’re plunged into an awful darkness.” The British flag was lowered to half-staff and the national anthem, “God Save the Queen,” was played in Diana’s memory. Ironically, Queen Elizabeth had taken that honor from her months before when she stripped the Princess of her royal title after her divorce.
Fighting back tears, Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair tried to comfort a nation convulsed by grief. “She was the people’s princess,” he said, “and that’s how she will stay, how she will remain, in our hearts and in our memories forever.”
Sobbing in the streets, people gathered to mourn Diana. In London, they prayed in churches, stood outside her gym, left flowers in front of her favorite restaurants. They thronged the grounds of Kensington Palace, where she had lived, and heaped bouquets in front of the wrought-iron gates. “Born a lady, became a princess, died a saint,” read one card. A hand-lettered sign said: “She now reigns as the Queen of broken hearts.”
The President of the United States expressed his country’s condolences, as did South Africa’s President Nelson Mandela and Mother Teresa of Calcutta. (The aged nun, in failing health at the time, died a few days later in India. Her death was treated as little more than a media footnote compared to that of Diana.) In Washington, D.C., Americans treated the departed princess like a queen. Hundreds gathered outside the British embassy to pay their last respects, standing in line for hours to sign the condolences book. At the U.S. Open in New York City, the tennis star Andre Agassi wore a black ribbon on his shoulder. And in Geneva, the International Red Cross lowered its flag to half-staff in memory of the Princess whose last humanitarian mission had been to Bosnia to campaign against land mines.
Only weeks earlier, British opinion polls showed for the first time that a majority of the country no longer supported the royal family. Disappointment with the badly behaved House of Windsor was widespread, especially among eighteen- to twenty-four-year-olds, who believed the country would be better off without them. “A hand full of gimme and a pocket full of much obliged,” was one assessment. Within the horde of mourners gathering in front of Buckingham Palace to pay homage to Diana, there was muted criticism of the Queen, who remained secluded in her castle at Balmoral.
“Just once,” sobbed a woman kneeling in prayer, “couldn’t Her Majesty step down to confront her subjects? It wouldn’t impair her dignity…. Just a word, a tear, some kind of gesture—just once—to show she cares.” For five days after the tragedy, the Queen remained silent. The media criticized her for failing to appear in public and join in the outpouring of sorrow sweeping the country. “Show Us You Care,” shouted a headline in the Daily Express. “Where Is Our Queen? Where Is Her Flag?” cried The Sun. Over large photos of stricken mourners, The Mirror pleaded, “Your People Are Suffering. Speak to Us, Ma’am.”
Concerned, the Prime Minister suggested to the Palace that a few words of sympathy from the Queen might help mollify the animosity. The Queen’s courtiers resisted. They felt it was not the monarch’s responsibility to minister to mourners. But the politically astute Prime Minister disagreed. He got in touch with the Prince of Wales, who interceded with his mother, telling her that it was “mandatory” the royal family appear responsive. So she agreed to allow the Union Jack to be flown at half-staff over Buckingham Palace on the day of the funeral. This was a historic concession on the Queen’s part because the honor is accorded only to monarchs who have died. She later disclosed through a spokesman that she had been “hurt” by the suggestion that she was indifferent to her subjects’ sense of loss.
On the eve of the funeral, the Queen agreed to leave Balmoral, return to London, and address the public on television. But even in a scripted speech, which she delivered live against a backdrop of mourners milling around Buckingham Palace, the seventy-one-year-old monarch could not bring herself to say that she had loved Diana. Rather, she praised the Princess as “an exceptional and gifted human being.” She said she admired and respected her former daughter-in-law “for her energy and commitment to others, and especially for her devotion to her two boys.” She thanked people who had brought flowers, sent messages, and paid their respects by signing the book of condolences. Before addressing the nation, she had resolved to mix with her subjects. But she looked as unyielding as a stiff upper lip.
Dressed in a black dress, hat, and gloves, and carrying a big black purse, she appeared with Prince Philip and moved haltingly among the crowds gathered outside of St. James’s Palace. She maintained a certain distance from people in the lines but, despite her discomfort with small talk, those nearby seemed to appreciate her effort.
Obviously affected by his former wife’s death, Prince Charles had flown to Paris with her two sisters to bring Diana’s body home. Charles looked forlorn at the London airport as he stood next to her coffin, which had been regally draped with the royal family’s standard. An honor guard of the Royal Air Force hoisted the box and carried it into the chapel at St. James’s Palace, the Prince’s private residence in London. Charles left immediately to return to Balmoral to be with his sons, William, fifteen, and twelve-year-old Harry.
Diana’s brother, the Earl Spencer, read an impassioned statement from his home in Capetown, South Africa, and accused the press of killing his sister. He said editors who fed off her image were bounty hunters with blood on their hands.
“I always believed that the press would kill her in the end,” he said, “but not even I could imagine that they would take such a direct hand in the death, as seems to be the case.”
No public reaction came from Diana’s mother, Frances Shand Kydd, who lived alone in Scotland. Sadly, she and Diana had not been speaking. Their fragile relationship had fallen apart months before when Mrs. Shand Kydd, sixty-one years old, gave an interview to Hello! magazine. She had talked about Diana’s childhood, her eating disorders, and her relationship with Prince Charles. Although she criticized both the Prince and Princess of Wales for their television confessionals, Diana’s mother would not take her daughter’s side in the breakup of her marriage. Nor would she speak out against the Prince of Wales. In fact, she seemed oddly pleased that Diana had been stripped of her royal title in the divorce, saying that liberation from the exalted status was “absolutely wonderful.”
Diana complained to a friend that she felt betrayed by her mother and expressed “complete shock” to another friend, Richard Kay, the Daily Mail reporter, about the private details revealed. Diana also told him she was “bitte
rly disappointed and let down” by Hello! magazine, which had not given her advance notice about the story. She said she felt she had a special relationship with the publication since 1994, after it bought—but never published—topless photos of her in Spain. But after the interview with her mother, Diana banned Hello! photographers from covering her next charity appearance. The Daily Mail capsulized her reaction to Hello!’s how-do-you-do with this front-page headline on May 28, 1997: “DIANA FURY AT MOTHER’S STORY.”
Several weeks later, the Princess again talked to Richard Kay. This time she confided her disgust with the Duchess of York, and on August 2, 1997, the Daily Mail dutifully ran a full-page feature: “THE REAL REASON WHY DIANA REFUSES TO TALK TO FERGIE.” The off-and-on friendship between the two women had finally foundered when Fergie claimed in her autobiography that she had contracted foot warts after borrowing a pair of Diana’s shoes.
“But there is much more than this tasteless revelation behind Diana’s animosity,” said the newspaper. “Sadly, it has spread to Diana’s children, especially fifteen-year-old Prince William.” Apparently, the young man felt increasingly uneasy that the Duchess was trying to use his mother’s much greater international celebrity for her own ambitions. Diana agreed, and stopped speaking to her former sister-in-law.
A black man mourning Diana’s death reflected on her ruptured relationships with her family as he stood in front of Kensington Palace. “She was let down by everyone around her,” he said. “Her husband, her lovers, her mother, her sister-in-law—her real family and the royal family…. I think we were the only ones—commoners like me—who truly valued her because she valued us.” From a deck of playing cards, he had plucked out the queen of hearts and placed it atop the carpet of flowers.