Game of Crowns: Elizabeth, Camilla, Kate, and the Throne (14 page)

In the end, the man who won Diana’s heart was chubby, chain-smoking Pakistani heart surgeon Hasnat “Natty” Khan. She became so obsessed with Khan that she donned scrubs to watch him
perform operations at London’s Royal Brompton Hospital. The couple also had a code name for Diana to leave whenever she called to speak to him while he was doing his rounds. “Please tell Dr. Khan,” she would tell the receptionist, “that Dr. Allegra is trying to reach him.”

“She became so devoted to Hasnat,” Symonds recalled, “that she said she at last began to understand the undying love Prince Charles shared with Camilla. She was wildly in love, totally obsessed by Dr. Khan.”

The affair with Khan was tempestuous, even by Diana’s standards. Yet Khan was, Diana told her friend Tess Rock, “everything to me—the love of my life. . . . He’s got no money, I’ll have to keep him, but I’ve got a thing about doctors.”

Neither the young princes nor the Queen, who saw no constitutional repercussions, seemed particularly rattled by stories of Diana’s extramarital exploits. Diana even kept William, whom she often referred to as a “deep thinker” and “my little wise old man,” up to date on some of the most intimate details of her love life. “Diana had both a mother-and-son relationship and a mother-and-husband relationship with William,” her friend Roberto Devorik said. Diana told Devorik she had “very private and very profound” conversations with William, and that he was “an extraordinary moral support.”

According to her friend Rosa Monckton, Diana told William “more things than most mothers would have told their children. But she had no choice. She wanted them to hear the truth . . . rather than read a distorted, exaggerated, and frequently untrue version in the tabloid press.”

Nevertheless, others who were close to the Princess wondered
if it was appropriate for her to describe her feelings—sometimes in unsettlingly graphic terms—for men other than their father. In addition to seeking dating advice from her own young son, Diana talked to William about his father’s utterly passionate devotion to Camilla, the Palace’s continued efforts to silence her, and her “spiritual journey” that embraced everything from astrology, Tarot cards, and crystals to hypnotherapy, homeotherapy, aromatherapy, herbal medicine, reflexology, and feng shui.

As she stepped up her visits to pediatric cancer wards, AIDS patients, victims of domestic abuse, substance abusers, and the homeless, the Princess of Wales found herself leaning more heavily than ever on her son. “I pay attention to people, and I remember them,” she told William. “When I cup my hands around the face of someone suffering, they are comforting me as much as I am comforting them.”

Perhaps, but the strain on William was beginning to show. “Diana often cried on Prince William’s shoulder—literally and figuratively,” said one friend. “William’s role was really more alternative husband than son. It was a heavy burden for anyone, but especially someone so young.”

For all the pressure she put on her son, the Princess nonetheless worried about William. She told her friend Richard Greene that the young Prince had “deep feelings and an understanding far beyond his years,” and that he was “an incredibly sensitive soul. He needs,” she added, “to be protected.”

Inevitably, Diana asked William if he approved of her marrying Dr. Khan, a Muslim. His succinct and oft-repeated reply: “Mummy, you have to do what makes you happy.”

The Queen did not share William’s opinion, however. Although
Diana wanted to marry Khan and have two daughters by him, she also “knew that to marry a Muslim would create enormous problems for William and Harry,” Elsa Bowker said. Accordingly, she tried to keep the Khan affair under wraps—literally—by smuggling him into Kensington Palace in the trunk of her butler’s car. Nevertheless, the Palace soon got wind of it.

When she was informed that Diana was giving serious thought to marrying Khan, the Queen consulted with the Archbishop of Canterbury and her advisors about the possible ramifications. It was highly unlikely that the Church of England would recognize any such union, and even more unlikely that the Men in Gray would tolerate a Muslim’s becoming stepfather to Britain’s future king. “The Queen seldom shows her feelings,” said one Member of Parliament who was asked to weigh in, “but in this case it was clear that she felt the Princess of Wales had finally lost her mind completely.” Either that, he continued, or “Princess Diana was determined to bring down the monarchy.” Either way, the Queen, who once felt sympathy for her daughter-in-law, now viewed Diana as “the enemy.”

It was a sentiment that had been shared by most of the Queen’s relatives since the separation. Prince Philip refused to even acknowledge Diana’s presence at William’s eleventh birthday party. Princess Margaret, one of the few senior Royals who was genuinely fond of Diana and frequently spoke up in her defense at family gatherings, felt compelled to join the other Windsors in turning her back on the rebel Princess.

Now that Diana was intent on airing The Firm’s dirty linen in public and at the same time portraying the Royal Family as cold and unfeeling, Her Majesty was determined to retaliate. Knowing
that it would deeply wound Diana, the Queen hastily added the names of Andrew Parker Bowles and his wife, Camilla, to the list of those fortunate few invited inside the royal enclosure at Ascot. (Even then, the Queen refused to be introduced to Camilla.)

It was not long, however, before the Queen found herself dealing with a crisis not of Diana’s making. On June 29, 1994, the Prince of Wales inexplicably went on national television to admit to veteran broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby that he had committed adultery. He claimed he had been “faithful and honorable” to his wife until their marriage became “irretrievably broken down, us both having tried.”

The TV interview, intended to generate interest in Dimbleby’s forthcoming authorized biography of the Prince, infuriated the Queen and the public alike. The headline in the
Daily Mirror
:
NOT FIT TO REIGN
. Diana couldn’t have been more thrilled.

The same night Charles made his disastrous admission of infidelity, a radiant Diana attended a charity event at London’s Serpentine Gallery wearing a daring black chiffon cocktail dress by designer Christine Stampolian.

Fleet Street promptly dubbed it “the Revenge Dress.”

FOR A BRIEF TIME, THE
heat was off Charles after
Princess in Love
, Anna Pasternak’s book detailing James Hewitt’s affair with Diana, hit stores in September of 1994. In it, the former soldier and riding instructor shared the steamy details of his six-year affair with the Princess of Wales—leading Fleet Street to brand Hewitt “the Love Rat.”

Again worried about the impact on her sons, Diana later recalled that she “ran to them as fast as I could.” William, twelve,
greeted her with a box of chocolates. “Mummy, I think you’ve been hurt,” he said. “These will make you smile again.”

Charles was soon back in the line of fire. The release of Dimbleby’s
Prince of Wales: A Biography
in October 1994 sent more shock waves through Buckingham Palace. In it, he complained bitterly about his unhappy childhood, portraying Prince Philip as insensitive, callous, and overbearing, and his mother as cold, distant, and aloof.

The Queen and Philip were both wounded by the way Charles characterized them in the book. But nothing was so devastating to William and Harry as their father’s claim that he never loved their mother and only married her because Prince Philip forced him to do it.

“Imagine being told that your parents never loved each other,” Diana said. “How do you think poor Wills and Harry must feel?”

When William asked if it was true, his eyes “pierced my heart like a dagger,” Diana said. “I just wanted to cry.” Later, at Highgrove, William confronted his father. “Why, Papa?” he wanted to know. “Why did you do it?” Before Charles could answer, Wills bolted from the room.

In the midst of the brouhaha, Charles fled to the United States on a long-planned, ten-day U.S. goodwill tour. When he arrived in Los Angeles on October 31, 1994, it was the first time he had set foot in the City of Angels in twenty years.

Back in 1974, Charles was a twenty-six-year-old officer aboard the HMS
Jupiter
when his ship docked in San Diego. During a side trip to Los Angeles, he was offered his pick of Hollywood stars to meet but was only interested in one: Barbra Streisand. “I’m sure they thought I’d say Raquel Welch,” Charles told his valet, Stephen Barry, “but I said Barbra Streisand. I wanted to meet the
woman behind the voice.” He was no less a fan of her acting, having seen
Funny Girl
no fewer than three times.

Given the predilection of most Windsor men for leggy showgirls and buxom starlets, it may have struck the casual observer as odd that Prince Charles had for years harbored a crush on Streisand. A framed photo of Barbra had hung on the wall of his room at Cambridge University; after graduation, he relocated the photo to his private quarters in Buckingham Palace. “Barbra Streisand,” he told Barry, “is my only pinup.”

At the time, Streisand was on a Columbia sound stage dubbing dialogue for
Funny Lady,
the sequel to
Funny Girl
, and hating every minute of it. Still, the royal visit was a publicity windfall for Columbia, which roped off an area of the studio and invited fifty press photographers to snap away as the Prince and the superstar stiffly shook hands.

That first encounter was awkward, even by Charles’s standards. “She appeared to be rather nervous,” he said, “and kept asking me endless questions in a rather tight-lipped fashion.” The photo session lasted a few minutes, and afterward the couple drifted off to a corner to chat privately over coffee.

The Prince wanted to stay and “really get to know her,” but Streisand begged off, saying she had to get back to work. “I think I caught her on a bad day,” said Charles, who was unaccustomed to being treated so curtly by a member of the opposite sex. “She had very little time and appeared very busy.”

Years later, Streisand learned that Charles had felt slighted during their first meeting. “Who knows?” she cracked. “If I’d been nicer to him, I might have been the first
real
Jewish princess.”

No matter. If anything, their first brief meeting under the klieg lights fanned his interest. “People look at me in amazement when
I say she is devastatingly attractive and with a great appeal,” the Prince of Wales wrote in his journal. “But I
still
contend she has great sex appeal after meeting her.”

On April 25, 1994, Charles attended a Streisand concert at Wembley Arena in London, and she sang “Someday My Prince Will Come” in his honor. Just six months later Barbra, fresh off a string of high-profile love affairs, was among the scores of A-List Hollywood stars who showed up for a gala honoring the Prince of Wales on November 2, 1994. Not long after the gala, Streisand had a secret rendezvous with Charles at his suite in the secluded Bel-Air Hotel. When word of the meeting got out, the official explanation was that Barbra Streisand and Prince Charles enjoyed “a private tea.” Harold Brooks-Baker noted that Charles had had “private teas” with “a long procession of women over the years. From what I understand, he was absolutely besotted with Barbra Streisand. Did anyone ever turn Charles down? Not to my knowledge.”

The Prince and the Superstar would hook up again ten months later, this time after Streisand flew to London to attend a dinner for Charles’s favorite preservationist organization, the Foundation for Architecture. Fresh off a scorching affair with Angelina Jolie’s father, Academy Award–winning actor Jon Voight, Barbra somehow managed to remain under the radar in England. When Elton John arrived at Highgrove for a private dinner, he was “surprised” to find Streisand there—and neither Diana nor Camilla anywhere in sight.

“The Prince and Miss Streisand were very affectionate toward each other,” a Highgrove staff member recalled. Another housekeeper described Charles and Barbra as acting “quite flustered” when she surprised them in Charles’s study.

According to Lady Elsa Bowker, Diana “knew that Charles was infatuated with Miss Streisand. She would not have been surprised if they had an affair.” As for Camilla: “She would have been absolutely
thrilled
—that would have excited her, I think.”

In March 1995, Camilla quietly divorced Andrew Parker Bowles after twenty-two years of marriage. By that time, of course, she had been carrying on her affair with the Prince of Wales off and on for twenty-three years.

RUMORS WERE NOW RAMPANT THAT
another, significantly more historic divorce was imminent, but the Queen was still convinced that reconciliation of some kind might be possible. “The Prince and Princess have no plans to divorce,” a Palace spokesman said. “That remains the position.”

In the meantime the Queen, fearing that the avalanche of scandals was seriously undermining the monarchy in the eyes of her people, gave serious thought to a future without King Charles. “Divorce seemed more and more likely,” a courtier said, “and a divorced man had never been crowned king.”

The picture became even murkier if a divorced Prince of Wales insisted on marrying a divorced Camilla Parker Bowles. “It would have been easy if their spouses were dead,” James Whitaker said, “because then Charles and Camilla could be considered widower and widow in the eyes of the Church of England.” But Diana and Andrew Parker Bowles were, at least for the moment, still very much alive.

All of which made the role William was destined to play all the more important. Now that he was enrolled at one of the world’s
most elite prep schools, Eton, William was that much closer to Granny. From wherever he stood at Eton, William could look up and see the medieval cluster of turrets, granite keeps, Gothic arches, and granite battlements that jutted up on a hill just across the Thames—Windsor Castle.

By the time William enrolled in Eton in the autumn of 1995, there were few traces of the damage done by the fire that had ripped through Windsor three years earlier. Even as artisans put the finishing touches on the renovation, the splendor of Windsor was undeniable. From St. George’s Chapel, where Knights of the Garter are installed with much ceremony and pomp, to the Grand Vestibule showcasing hundreds of antique firearms, the castle’s interior is as opulent as its exterior is forbidding.