Charles: Victim or villain?. Penny Junor

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СКАЧАТЬ getting away from England, mainly because of the treatment that she received at the hands of the newspapers. I don’t think she ever understood why her genuinely good intentions were sneered at by the media, why there appeared to be a permanent quest on their behalf to bring her down. It is baffling.

       ‘My own and only explanation is that genuine goodness is threatening to those at the opposite end of the moral spectrum. It is a point to remember that, of all the ironies about Diana, perhaps the greatest was this – a girl given the name of the ancient goddess of hunting was, in the end, the most hunted person of the modern age.

       ‘She would want us today to pledge ourselves to protecting her beloved boys William and Harry from a similar fate, and I do this here, Diana, on your behalf. We will not allow them to suffer the anguish that used regularly to drive you to tearful despair.

       ‘And beyond that, on behalf of your mother and sisters, I pledge that we, your blood family, will do all we can to continue the imaginative way in which you were steering these two exceptional young men so that their souls are not simply immersed by duty and tradition but can sing openly as you planned.’

      It was a deeply moving tribute, bravely delivered as the Earl struggled against his own tears. But the last sentence was a shocking kick in the teeth to the Prince of Wales; it was thoroughly insensitive of the Earl to have criticised William and Harry’s father and grandparents – indeed, one half of their relatives – in front of them on the day they buried their mother.

      What really offended the Prince, however, was being forced to sit and be lectured about parental responsibility by a man who had a disastrous marriage of his own: four young children, a wife who had been ill-treated for years, and a history of adultery – all of which became very public during a bitter divorce some months later. What is more, Spencer had the gall to bring his latest mistress, Josie Borain, to the funeral. She sat beside him in the Abbey and accompanied him – on the royal train with the Prince of Wales – to the Spencer family home in Northamptonshire, Althorp, for Diana’s interment immediately afterwards. Diana was buried on an island in the middle of a lake in the grounds, not in the family crypt as she had requested. It was thought that the small village churchyard would be unable to cope with the number of people that might come to visit her grave.

      Charles Spencer and Diana had not been particularly close in recent years. The relationship had been up and down, as it was with most of her family. She was particularly upset that after her divorce her brother told her she could not have a particular cottage she wanted to move into on the Althorp estate. Charles, who had inherited Althorp after their father’s death in 1991, said she couldn’t have the cottage she wanted because it was near the gates of the estate and he was worried about the media interest she would attract. He had offered her others to choose from but Diana had set her heart on this particular cottage and felt badly let down.

      Ironically, in burying Diana on the island, the Earl has turned the estate into a Mecca. He has created a museum in memory of his sister in the old stable block at Althorp, where all the hundreds of books of condolence, her dresses and various other bits of memorabilia are housed, and where 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.

THREE

       The Young Prince

      ‘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 СКАЧАТЬ