Charles: Victim or villain?. Penny Junor

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СКАЧАТЬ of Wales, William and Harry climbed out of their cars to look at the flowers and tributes. The only sound to be heard, apart from the clicking of the camera shutters, were the voices of the royal party. Five days after their mother’s death, the country had its first view of the boys, and it was a touching scene. All three Princes, father and sons, were visibly moved by what they saw and taken aback by the messages attached to most bouquets.

      ‘Look at this one, Papa,’ said Harry, grabbing hold of his father’s hand and pulling him down. ‘Read this one.’

      Captured on film, the gesture sent shock waves around the world. The Prince of Wales did seem to have a heart after all. He actually held his son’s hand, something no one could ever have imagined before. He also seemed to have aged.

      Of all the criticism Diana threw at the Prince during their bitter war of words and television, that he was unfeeling and cold was the one that hurt him most. It was demonstrably untrue, as anyone who has seen Charles with his children knows very well. Diana knew it too, and later regretted her words.

      The sight of the Prince of Wales and his sons did much to soften the public mood, and when the Queen made a surprising live television broadcast that Friday evening before the funeral, the mood softened further. The fact that it was only the second time during her reign that she had broadcast to the nation other than at Christmas – the first being during the Gulf War – made it an additionally impressive gesture.

       ‘Since last Sunday’s dreadful news we have seen, throughout Britain and around the world, an overwhelming expression of sadness at Diana’s death.

       ‘We have all been trying in our different ways to cope. It is not easy to express a sense of loss, since the initial shock is often succeeded by a mixture of other feelings: disbelief, incomprehension, anger – and concern for all who remain.

       ‘We have all felt those emotions in these last few days. So what I say to you now, as your Queen and as a grandmother, I say from my heart.

       ‘First, I want to pay tribute to Diana myself. She was an exceptional and gifted human being. In good times and bad, she never lost her capacity to smile and laugh, nor to inspire others with her warmth and kindness.

       ‘I admired and respected her – for her energy and commitment to others, and especially for her devotion to her two boys.

       ‘This week at Balmoral, we have all been trying to help William and Harry come to terms with the devastating loss that they and the rest of us have suffered.

       ‘No one who knew Diana will ever forget her. Millions of others who never met her, but felt they knew her, will remember her.

       ‘I for one believe that there are lessons to be drawn from her life and from the extraordinary and moving reaction to her death.’

      The Queen’s words were delivered in the nick of time.

      The decision about who should walk behind the cortège was not made until the very last moment. The Prince of Wales wanted to walk as a mark of respect to the Princess, who despite everything had been his wife for fifteen years, and he wanted his sons to walk too. He felt intuitively that this was something they should do for their mother and that it would aid the grieving process. Earl Spencer, backed by Sir Robert Fellowes, had been against it. He had wanted to walk behind his sister’s cortège on his own. There was a bitter exchange on the telephone between the Prince and the Earl in which Earl Spencer hung up on the Prince of Wales. Over dinner on the Friday night, when the whole Royal Family was together at Buckingham Palace, the Duke of Edinburgh put an end to the argument by saying that he would walk too. The next morning Earl Spencer was told what was going to happen, and the three men and two boys all walked together.

      It was a long walk from St James’s Palace, where they joined the cortège, to Westminster Abbey, with every bite of the lip and tremble of the chin exposed to the world’s media and the millions of people lining the route. Some threw flowers, some cried, some wailed. It was an ordeal that called for huge courage from the boys, and they did their mother – and their nation – proud. They walked slowly and steadily, struggling at times to hold back tears, but their composure never wavered, until they were inside the Abbey, when at times the music, the poetry and the oratory were too much for them. But by then the cameras were off them, forbidden to focus on the family. The boys displayed maturity beyond their years, which touched everyone. It was an ordeal for the Prince too, worrying as he was about whether the boys would be all right, but at the same time knowing that so many of the people weeping for Diana blamed him for her death. Fears that he might have been booed by the crowd were unfounded.

      There were millions of people in London that Saturday and many millions more watching all over the world. Many of those in the capital had walked the streets for much of the night, or held candle-lit vigils in the park – even Diana’s mother had been walking quietly amongst the mourners. Some had brought sleeping bags and had been soaked through by torrential rain the afternoon before. They did not care. United in their grief, strangers talked to strangers, as they had seventeen years before, when the Royal Wedding united them in joy.

      Earlier in the week, around the royal parks and palaces the atmosphere had not been so good humoured, and felt almost intimidating at times, but by the morning of the funeral, the sun shone gloriously and although emotions were still very raw, there were tears but there was laughter too.

      The funeral itself was immensely moving, and a masterpiece of organisation – the British doing what they do best: the precision timing, the military professionalism, the ceremonial pageantry, but mixed with a refreshingly human touch so perfect for Diana. Tony Blair gave a rather ham reading of 1 Corinthians 13, and Elton John sang a specially re-written version of ‘Candle in the Wind’ which left not a dry eye. An American film cameraman outside Kensington Palace, watching on a television monitor, said that in the silence before Elton John began to play, a sudden gust of wind, in an otherwise perfectly still morning, whipped through the millions of flowers laid at the gates, rustling the cellophane wrappings. It then disappeared just as suddenly as it had come, at the very moment Elton hit the opening chords. At the same time a small grey cloud hung over Buckingham Palace, leaving this hardened cameraman distinctly unnerved.

      The denouement of the service, which no tabloid editor had been allowed to attend, was Earl Spencer’s tribute to his sister. Grievously insulting to the Royal Family sitting just feet away from him, it was applauded by those within the Abbey and cheered loudly by the thousands listening on the sound relay outside.

       ‘Diana was the very essence of compassion, of duty, of style, of beauty. All over the world she was a symbol of selfless humanity. All over the world she was the standard bearer for the rights of the truly downtrodden, a very British girl who transcended nationality. Someone with a natural nobility who was classless and who proved in the last year that she needed no royal title to continue to generate her particular brand of magic.

       ‘There is a rush to canonise your memory; there is no need to do so. You stand tall enough as a human being of unique qualities not to need to be seen as a saint. Indeed to sanctify your memory would be to miss out on the very core of your being, your wonderfully mischievous sense of humour with a laugh that bent you double.

       ‘Diana explained to me once that it was her innermost feelings of suffering that made it possible for her to connect with her constituency of the rejected.

       ‘And here we come to another truth about her. For all the status, the glamour, the applause, Diana remained throughout a very insecure person at heart, almost childlike in her desire to do good for others so she could release herself from deep feelings of unworthiness, of which her eating disorders were merely a symptom.

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