The Unofficial British Royal Family Pages

Wednesday 3 March 2004

Family Ties

My first real memories of the Prince of Wales involve two very different incidents in his life that I saw at about twelve, although each was actually years apart.

The first was the now notorious picture of him excitedly awaiting the arrival of his mother who had been on a tour overseas. Charles was not much more than a toddler when rather than being covered in hugs and kisses he had to, like thousands of other people over the previous weeks' tour, settle for a handshake from his mother, the Queen when she returned.

The second, when he was older, was watching him appear on a weekly pop-show here in Australia called "Countdown". The show's presenter Ian 'Molly' Meldrum, who obviously totally overcome by his guest, unconsciously launched into a British accent as the interview began, was completely flustered while the prince was charming but looked like a fish out of water.

Although he was in years, more or less a teenager, the target audience of Countdown, Charles looked nothing like one. His immaculate suit, unfashionable haircut and adult ways made him instead look more like a parent than the screaming groupies that clamoured around the stage during the show. He was the type of 'boy' grandmothers would go wild over.

In both instances I felt quite sorry for him. In the first because I feel the Queen took her work ethic a bit too far and in the second because I can't believe that anyone grooming a future monarch would do so in such a way that the heir would appear so different and out of touch to the generation he was going to reign over.

Today Charles comes across as one of those who have never really found their niche in life. He appears by all accounts to resent much of his childhood and his parents, particularly his father. He took years to find his soul mate and then let her go, entered a marriage that became one of the most miserable, pathetic and tragic unions in modern history and has had terrible trouble working out what it is exactly that he is supposed to do.

Royal or not, we are all faced with choices in our lives and most of us have now and again, made wrong ones. Thankfully the rest of us don't have to make them under the scrutiny of modern media. I am not excusing every wrong path he has chosen but he is one of the rare individuals today whose life has been moulded by many more people than the rest of us.

He has more or less admitted that the late Queen Mother was the one person he turned to most. She loved him unconditionally and even at the end of her life, he was innermost in her mind. We all recall the anonymous poem read out at her funeral, which I suspect, was to a greater degree aimed at her eldest grandson. With a mother who was extremely busy and at least outwardly unemotional, the lavish affections offered by the Queen Mother would have been a welcome relief to someone like Charles who craved demonstrative love.

These days we rarely see the Prince of Wales and the Queen photographed together. It would not be surprising to find that in years to come such photographs are collector's items. Some could excuse this as being due to their differing schedules and workloads but one only has to look at the Danes, the Swedes, the Norwegians, the Belgians and the Dutch to see that schedules can be moved or worked, to at least put on a united front in public.

Given the more human side of the Queen that we have seen in the years since the death of Diana I find it hard to believe that the Queen would like nothing better than a good relationship with her son as after all, all mothers do. That said, unlike just about every other mother in the world, the Queen's job depends greatly on what her public think of her, her family and especially her heir.

While she may find the relationship between Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles bothersome or even a burden, history would have us believe that she has had, in the past, an amicable relationship with the Parker Bowles'.

I wonder if the Queen refuses to publicly sanction any further development in Charles' relationship with Camilla because she feels it would damage the religious and moralistic aspect of the monarchy further or whether she simply feels the public would never approve of Camilla as his wife? Whatever the reason the Queen's hesitance to demand a resolution one way or the other only feeds detractors who will no doubt play more and more on the 'French' aspect of the situation.

With two Courts now operating, it seems unlikely that the predicament will be rectified anytime soon. Charles seems unprepared to make an official stand with regard to his relationship and probably hopes the entire drama will disappear. Of course it won't, but with his own Court in operation he has far more room to run matters as he wishes for longer than he would were there only one.

It is probably this part of Charles that baffles the Queen most. She has devoted her entire life to the monarchy and most of her adult life to being sovereign. Duty has always come first for her, perhaps, and at a cost, even before her children. To be fair, she came to the throne very early in life and has not had to play what must be a difficult role for Charles, waiting in the wings well past the prime of his life with no set job description relative to modern world.

It is also quite likely that the Diana era scared the royal family far more than anything had for over a century. The public generally adored her and pulled no punches when they felt she had been treated unfairly, albeit after her death. I can only imagine what it must have been like for Prince Charles and the Queen to appear in front of hundreds of thousands on the day of Diana's funeral, feeling not only the immense grief surrounding them but also a good bit of animosity.

Charles will live with Diana's ghost until his last breath and he is probably quite prepared for that. What I am not sure about however, is whether he feels the public want him to suffer the effects of that period of his life forever. Does he really think people would begrudge him happiness (if a rather haunted one)? And if his boys can approve of his relationship, should the public not do their best to come to terms with it as well?

It will take a strong Prince of Wales to see these questions answered and it might be that the Queen is reluctant to intervene any more than the small gestures she has offered already. What is certain is that until the two great houses in London start working together or even as one, not only will the monarchy flounder and talk of succession continue and increase but the boy and his mother at the station all those years ago will never really come to know each other.

- Gioffredo