Last week Queen Elizabeth II was doing the sort of thing a 20th century monarch is supposed to do: moving gracefully through a state visit to Russia, the first ever by a British sovereign. At her side was her consort, the Duke of Edinburgh, elegantly performing his task, which is simply to support her. Custom and ceremony incarnate, they were national symbols to be proud of.
Back on home turf, another royal couple was doing what the world has become all too familiar with: the Waleses were slugging it out in the headlines. Bitterly estranged for nearly two years, both Prince Charles and the Princess of Wales have used the press to court public sympathy and approval. In the meantime, Squidgygate and Camillagate have become part of trendy patois; front-page dramas have been cranked up over crank phone calls; and James Hewitt's confessional has redefined the word cad. Last week the battle reached what may be the climactic point. The Sunday Times printed excerpts from Jonathan Dimbleby's approved biography of the prince, to be published Nov. 3. The author, a distinguished broadcaster and journalist, produced the documentary on Charles shown last summer in which the prince admitted to adultery. In addition to conducting long interviews with his subject, Dimbleby had access to diaries, letters and other records. The portrait he presents is shocking.
* Charles, it appears, was never in love with Diana. He claims to have entered the marriage under severe pressure from his father Prince Philip, who is depicted as a bully with a scathing tongue, easily capable, when Charles was a child, of reducing him to tears. In having a bride thrust upon him, Charles felt "ill used and impotent." His mother was remote and passive, usually leaving family matters to her husband. Along the way, institutions come in for criticism: Gordonstoun School -- picked, of course, by Philip -- was for Charles a hell of hazing and teasing. And the media never knew their place.
In fact the prince seems eager to blame anyone at all for his problems. It is bad enough to reveal to the world -- including his sons -- accounts of his wife's mood swings and depressions. It is now clear that Charles somehow thinks if he besmirches Diana enough, he will be rinsed in the process. He and his advisers seem genuinely surprised that the public hasn't turned on her as her emotional storms are revealed. It seems lost on them that the princess's popularity is genuine, not something he can bestow or withdraw.
But Charles' resentment of his wife's success is familiar now. What is new is his willingness to disparage his parents. Prince Philip had a ready retort, sheathed in a brusque politesse of understatement that is totally beyond Charles: "I've never discussed private matters, and I don't think the Queen has. Very few members of the family have." So there.