Ghost of Diana at Royal Wedding?
For Prince Charles and longtime lover Camilla Parker Bowles, Princess Diana will be the ghost at their wedding feast. Could it be sweet revenge from beyond the grave?
"Diana always said her marriage was a bit crowded because there were three people in it," said Judy Wade, royal correspondent for Hello Celebrity magazine. "I think there will now be three people in Charles' second marriage."
Many feel Diana would also have been hugely amused at the problems that have dogged the wedding, ranging from a forced switch of venue to a local town hall, to a postponement at the last minute over the clash of fates with Pope John Paul's funeral.
"Diana would be laughing at the chaos and the damage it has done to the monarchy," said Wade. "She must be orchestrating it from on high -- all we need is wait for it to rain on the wedding day and we will know she is pulling the strings."
Tabloid reporters who followed every twist and turn in the tragic soap opera that was her melodramatic life believe Diana would in the end have wised Charles well for finally tying the knot with Camilla.
Daily Mail royal correspondent Richard Kay, who last talked to Diana just hours before she was killed in a Paris car crash in 1997, said: "I think she had reached a point in her life where she had come to accept that Charles would be married. But she would find it hard to accept Camilla taking her place. She had anticipated them ending up together but with Charles standing aside and letting his son William take his place in the line of accession."
Daily Mirror royal reporter James Whitaker, who broke the story of er romance with Dodi Al Fayed, said: "Funnily enough, I think Diana would be quite happy about it. She understood towards the end that Camilla was the love of Charles' life." But he felt that Diana's influence would still be all-pervasive on Charles and Camilla's big day. "Comparisons are odious but they will be made. I do think she will be the ghost at the feast."
The contrast between Charles' two weddings could not be more stark. In 1981, Charles married his blushing young bride Diana at London's St. Paul's Cathedral before a television audience of 800 million. Britain jubilantly hailed the fairytale wedding. In April 2005, Charles marries Camilla before just 30 witnesses in Windsor town hall. Television cameras have been barred. Queen Elizabeth, who has been slow to warm to Charles' 35-year romance, will not be attending the wedding of her eldest son, a decision inevitably seen as a snub.
Diana was consumed with jealousy over Charles' first love, telling Camilla in one famous confrontation: "It must be hell for both of you but I know what's going on. Don't treat me like an idiot." Even on honeymoon, Diana felt her marriage was doomed when two pictures of Camilla fell out of Charles' diary. he wore gold cufflinks with two interlinked C's that Camilla had given him.
As the world's most photograhped woman, Diana was also a mistress of manipulation, using the media to put her side of the affair in the bitter divorce battle with the heir to the British throne.
Royal biography Robert Lacey, reflecting on how Diana might have reacted to Camilla finally getting her man, concluded: "I think she would say 'good luck' in public and make sure she could wreak as much mischief in private as possible. If she had been alive, her ingenuity would have risen to the challenge and she would have made things still more difficult." |