Princess Diana

[ChristineM]

Yes, NAAOTMA, that would have been the honourable thing to have done.   Imagine how he must have felt when told Camilla, the love of his life, was deemed unsuitable because she had a 'past'?   What a slap in the face... his... and hers   Of course, as we all know Camilla had another agenda running at the same time - her love for Andrew Parker Bowles.   She used Charles and used him very effectively and successfully - to capture the man she really loved.   However, Charles had decided on his course of action.   He was going 'have his cake and eat it' - must be the most expensive piece of pie ever.

In the midst of this debate there is one, perhaps conveniently, but rather important overlooked fact - this is the next King we are talking about.   Britain's 'First Family' - set apart, exalted, meant to lead by example... and he can't even get his own love life right. 

tsaria   

[Valmont]

Ouuucchh.. that hurt... but you're right. I think the same..

[helenazar]

 Of course, as we all know Camilla had another agenda running at the same time - her love for Andrew Parker Bowles.   She used Charles and used him very effectively and successfully - to capture the man she really loved.    

You think that's the way it went? I was always under the impression that Camilla really did love Charles all along, but when she saw that he would not marry her and that she would be wasting her time with him, she said to herself, "well if he [Charles] can't make up his mind [about marrying her], then I will just go on with my life", and married Parker Bowles who was willing to marry her. Well, good for her. She was not such a dishrag after all, as some are trying to make out to be ;-)

this is the next King we are talking about.   Britain's 'First Family' - set apart, exalted, meant to lead by example... and he can't even get his own love life right. 

Well, for all it's worth, most people can't really get their love lives right ;-). And luckily Charles is only a constitutional monarch! Besides, running a country and managing one's love life are two very different things... I don't think we have all that much to worry about.  :-)

[TampaBay]

If  Charles had really wanted to marry racy, unsuitable Camilla in the early days of their affair, he could have removed himself from the line of succession and married Miss Parker Bowles if she would of had him. He did not. Instead he decided to have his cake and eat it too if the two most recent books on Diana are to be believed.

SHE DIDI NOT WANT HIM AS A HUSBAND!! JMHO!!!

TampaBay

[jehan]

If  Charles had really wanted to marry racy, unsuitable Camilla in the early days of their affair, he could have removed himself from the line of succession and married Miss Parker Bowles if she would of had him. He did not. Instead he decided to have his cake and eat it too if the two most recent books on Diana are to be believed.

Why would he have had to remove himself from the succession to marry her back in the 70s?  She was single, Church of England, and  there is no constitutional reason why he could not have married her and made her Princess of Wales, except that at that point in their lives, neither one was ready for it. 

[Yseult]

You know, everyone here is probably going to hate me for saying this, but I will anyway. In a weird way, I have a certain amount of respect for Charles (even though I think that he is often an insensitive and clueless clod - like most men :-)). The reason I have a certain amount of respect for him is this: most of the time the middle aged man will leave his middle aged not-so-good-looking wife for a younger better looking woman. In his case, he left his younger, better looking wife for a middle aged not-so-good-looking woman, whom he had loved for a long time (for whatever reasons). You must admit there has to be a certain amount of unshallowness about his character. In his position, being the heir to the throne of England that is, he could have found someone else, who was younger and better looking, and who would have still done the things Camilla does for him, so you can't really tell me that it was only because Camilla "fawned" over him, or something like that. The fact that Charles was so constant to this one woman over so many years has to tell us something about his character, even if we may not like that entire situation, i.e. that it had to involve his marriage with Diana falling apart. But as far as I am concerned, Charles and Diana should not have been married in the first place, and the dumbest  thing he did during that entire scene was to agree to marry her... The rest snowballed from there.

Well, that's all, let the rotten tomatos fly! lol

I agree with you, Helen. Seeing the whole story from the distance, I find very touching the fact Charles never changed his feelings towards Camilla, the aged and not-well-looking, neither glamourous, woman. All the jokes and not fairy coments that we all, people around the world about the lack of beauty and charm of Camilla, made weren´t  not enough to broke up the ties between them. The marriage of Charles was a terrible mistake because he caused a deep hurt in his wife, Diana, but I can share your "certain amount of respect" for Charles.

[NAAOTMA]

Jehan, Camilla was not considered a suitable wife for Charles back in the 1970s because she had "a past" and while upper class, was not considered high born enough to be a Princess of Wales. Thirty years later, that all seems quaint, but that is how it was back in those ancient times.

Tampa, my post said "if she would have had him" (Camilla)---in the early days of their romance, based on the Bradford and Brown books, it doesn't seem that Camilla was interested in Charles in that way. She was in love with Andrew Parker Bowles.

Tsaria's point is excellent but painful in terms of the muddle that Charles has made over the years of his personal life and its unavoidable reflection on his official role.

[jehan]

Jehan, Camilla was not considered a suitable wife for Charles back in the 1970s because she had "a past" and while upper class, was not considered high born enough to be a Princess of Wales. Thirty years later, that all seems quaint, but that is how it was back in those ancient times.

Tampa, my post said "if she would have had him" (Camilla)---in the early days of their romance, based on the Bradford and Brown books, it doesn't seem that Camilla was interested in Charles in that way. She was in love with Andrew Parker Bowles.

Tsaria's point is excellent but painful in terms of the muddle that Charles has made over the years of his personal life and its unavoidable reflection on his official role.

I know about Camilla's "past", but I don't think that there was any serious talk about marriage at that time, was there?

 But if there had been, Charles still could  have married her- there might have been some disapproval, especially from the press, a but I hardly think it would have sparked an "abdication crisis".  And her lack of a title was no bar either, even then.  Princess Anne had just married a commoner, as had Margaret more than a decade earlier. Diana being from the aristocracy was a bonus, but the precedent had been set by various continental monarchs, and any fuss about a "commoners" would have been seen as being out of touch with modern times.  I remember discussions in the press about the various women Charles might marry at the time, and several untitled ladies were discussed without their lack of title being a barrier.

[TampaBay]

Tampa, my post said "if she would have had him" (Camilla)---in the early days of their romance, based on the Bradford and Brown books, it doesn't seem that Camilla was interested in Charles in that way. She was in love with Andrew Parker Bowles.

I agree 100%!

TampaBay

[ChristineM]

Charles was not allowed to marry Camilla for the reasons already explained.   He went off to sea on his naval command only to discover that Camilla had managed to capture and marry her real love - Andrew Parker Bowles - during the prince's absence.   She had been crazy about this man before her chance meeting with Charles.   However, she failed to pin him down.   Andrew enjoyed playing the field.   Camilla's romance with Charles captured Andrew Parker Bowles vanity - and he was to be the victor.   

It was when Andrew Parker Bowles began playing away from home, that Camilla turned again to Charles for 'comfort', but even before, from the outset of their marriage, Charles had been a constant visitor to Bolehyde Manor and, it is said, he bought Highgrove because of its proximity.   

One wonders if the impediments had been removed to a Charles/Camilla marriage in the first instance, if that marriage would have survived.

As for who 'looks' better, this is superficial nonsense.   There is nothing wrong with the way Camilla looks.   The problem - if it can be termed such - is that Diana was so incredibly beautiful - and that does not just refer to her face and figure.   Camilla presents herself very well and looks amazing for a lady of 'a certain age'

Your argument, Helen plays right into the hands of aspiring republicans.   The whole idea of a royal family is that of a family set apart - exemplary.   Not of a family whose lifestyle and morals are lower than the majority of their 'subjects'.   To condone this negates the necessity for a ruling family - constitutional or otherwise. 

Monarchy will only survive if the window isn't opened so wide that the magic flies away.

tsaria

[NAAOTMA]

Jehan, Camilla was a girl who had not "kept herself tidy" and was not bothering to hid it in the circles she moved in. The Palace would not vet her as a suitable wife for the Prince of Wales on that basis alone.  The "not quite high enough" was a secondary "add on" to what the Palace at the time felt was the unsurmountable obstacle of Camilla "having a past." As a young man going into a first marriage, Charles as Heir To The Throne did not have the freedom to marry that his sister or some other family members did. 

To add to this general discussion:
Camilla in the 1970s embodied the classic "girl to have fun with, not bring home to Mother"...And in the case of Charles, she seemed quite content in that niche in his life. Her sights were set on Andrew Parker Bowles. Mountbatten encouraged the relationship between Charles and Camilla as a fling that would run its course, part of his "sow your wild oats" advice to Charles. (Edwardian advice given to a young man in the 1970s that turned out to be not only hugely anachronistic but also really really bad advice.)

Was part of Charles's fixation on Camilla due to her being one of the rare things in his life that was not handed to him on a silver platter when he expressed the smallest wish for it in she would never pass the Palace test and she was not chasing him with marriage in mind and had no interest in being Princess of Wales? If the Palace had given its permission, would that have cooled his interest in her? I tend to believe that if Camilla had been vetted (miraculously) as suitable, she might have lost a large part of her strong hold on a spoiled Prince. She might have been just another girlfriend along the way to finding the woman he would eventually choose to become his wife and the future Queen. Would that woman have been Diana? Maybe, maybe not.

[dmitri]

It's really very simple. No marriage can work out if 3 are involved. Without Camilla the chances of Charles and Diana working things out were fairly high considering they would have been with one another without her interference. Remember royals work together. Charles and Diana put on a very good act for a very long time. Without Camilla they would have learned to get on with one another, perhaps not always in love, but they would have had a far greater chance of success. There were plenty of royal marriages where no mistress existed and succes occurred. George V and Queen Mary were hardly in love when they first married but grew to appreciate one another. After all what couple is always in love? 

[Romanov_fan]

Like most questions associated with the whole marriage of Prince Charles, and Diana, this is certainly a volatile topic. All the books I have read state that Camillia wasn't acceptable back in 1970s because of what people stated here. He could not have married her, although I find it interesting reading the opinions of others if he would have if he could have. I am not sure, but although I think part of the thing is, that Prince Charles and Camilla had the kind of love that perhaps was only deepened by him having a marriage like he had with Princess Diana. If he had never married, and the whole thing hadn't happened, I find it hard to believe Camilla would ever have been more than a mistress, although she seems to have been always more important than just that.

 Diana certainly loved Prince Charles, and maybe it was youthful, naive love, but that's all she could have given at the age she was, with the expectations and circumstances and experiences that surrounded the whole thing.. She believed they were in love, she said I believe, or at least I read somewhere, that she was quoted as saying, sometime after her marriage went wrong in answer to the question whether she and Prince Charles were ever in love, that if someone could see their letters from the early days of their marriage they wouldn't doubt they had been in love. If anyone has the source for that quote, give it.  But, in the end, whether they ever really were in love, it ended, in a mess. I think if there had been no Camila, the marriage falling apart would have happened anyway, but maybe less dramatically and publicly than it did. Diana, Princess of Wales  never wanted to be an old fashioned princess who put up with a marriage of convenience, which is what the Wales marriage would have ended up being anyway, if much less dramatically. As for Prince Charles and Camilla, I have always thought it ended right for them in getting married, even though I am a huge Diana, Princess of Wales fan.

[dmitri]

Well Camilla and Charles deserve one another. Whether the hard working British public deserve them is another question.

[Robert_Hall]

I think that marriage was doomed from the start.  The best they could have come to would have been "an agreement" once Diana got the message that Charles was not going to be the husband she had hoped, or perhaps have expected, she came into her own. There is no question that she loved her sons and would have probably  stayed with him for their sake, but once it became a media circus- it was over. Diana hated "country lfe", blood sports and polo. She was used and abused, in my opinion. She fought back and won the people's hearts. [as if she had ever lost them]. The story had an extremely tragic and sad ending, of course. But I doubt very much we shall seem the same mourning at the demise of either Charles or Camilla.