Doomed Queens (44 page)

CAUTIONARY MORAL

You can’t rule from the grave.

1997

ow can a woman steal an entire country from a queen? It’s easy: Be charismatically photogenic, do good works, and die young in a car crash. It also helps to be divorced from a crown prince and have a gay pop icon sing at your funeral.

To anyone who witnessed the mass hysteria that gripped England after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, it was clear that her mother-in-law, Elizabeth II, was no longer in charge of the home office. Diana’s posthumous coup was the culmination of a process that had begun sixteen years earlier when she, a virginal nursery school teacher of noble blood, tied the knot with Charles, the Prince of Wales, and the most eligible bachelor in the world. Their wedding was televised around the world to almost one billion people. Impressive as this was, Diana’s funeral got better ratings.

The couple’s marriage was doomed from the start. Diana was raised on a steady diet of Barbara Cartland romances; she was hungry for love to heal the wounds of her parents’ nasty divorce. Man-about-town Charles sought a brood mare who wouldn’t require too much hand-holding. He had lost his heart some years back to Camilla Shand, but diddled too long to pop the question. After Camilla married another, the prince was left scouring the social registry for a future queen whose knickers were clean of intrigue.

Nineteen-year-old Lady Diana Spencer fit the bill and seemed malleable to boot. She eagerly accepted Charles’s proposal with a demure, “Yes, please.” Diana was enthralled with Charles, but discovered that Camilla still held sway over him. When she confessed her jealousy, her sister retorted, “Your face is on the tea towels, so it’s too late to chicken out now.” Things only got worse after the wedding. Charles spent their honeymoon reading Laurens van der Post as Diana paraded in a bikini, swarmed by paparazzi.

OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES

I’d like to be a queen in people’s hearts but I don’t see myself being queen of this country.

Diana

It was soon apparent to all that this new wife of Windsor was not so merry. Perpetually surrounded by press, shy Di did not adjust well to life in a fishbowl where her every move and hair-style were photographed and dissected on Page Six. She grew dangerously thin from stress-induced bulimia. Nor did Diana win the love she pined for from her husband. Charles resented the wild adoration Diana inspired in his subjects and busied himself anew with Camilla. Still, the princess did not waste time providing the royals with an heir and a spare.

Their marriage limped along for fifteen years, each partner consoling himself or herself with various lovers, scandals, and charity work. Finally, after one of Diana’s extramarital phone conversations was illegally recorded and detonated all over the media, she went public with Charles’s infidelity in a television interview better suited to
Oprah
than the BBC. The princess told all the world, “There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.” Charles met her tit for tat. Also using the telly as his messenger, he confessed he never loved Diana.

The couple’s divorce was finalized in 1996. Though Queen Elizabeth relieved Diana of her royal title, her popularity and fame bloomed to absurd heights beyond that of all the other Windsors. To Diana’s credit, she used her celebrity to draw attention and money to campaigns against land mines and AIDS. However, her good works did not win her any reprieve from the photographers who relentlessly stalked her around the clock.

One year after her divorce, Diana was killed in a car accident in Paris. She was only thirty-six. She was fleeing the paparazzi and did not use her usual chauffeur; Henri Paul, the replacement, had a blood alcohol level three times over the French legal limit. At her funeral, Diana’s brother observed, “[O]f 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.”

CAUTIONARY MORAL

Avoid men with cameras and Camillas.

End-of-Chapter Quiz
or
What We Have Learned So Far

1. Which gave the greatest offense to Empress Joséphine’s hubby, Napoléon?

         a. An unwillingness to finance his political aspirations.

         b. A bed open to extracurricular activities.

         c. A womb unreceptive to passing on his genes.

         d. White epaulets after Labor Day.