The Unofficial British Royal Family Pages

Sunday 13 August 2006

The Merry Wives of Windsor

Last month marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the marriage of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer as well as the twentieth anniversary of the marriage of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson. The addition of these two lively young women to the royal family, previously considered rather dull, sparked a renewed interest in the royal family as a whole. At the same time, excitement and speculation about Diana and Fergie�s lives came to dominate media coverage of the royal family, often overshadowing other members of the family, including their husbands. Their fabulous weddings came to be seen as emblematic of the over-the-top style of the 1980s. It was an age of excess, and no one did excess like Diana and Fergie. This seems like a good moment to look back on an era that has now passed into history.

Diana may have been the Queen of Hearts, but she was definitely a drama queen. The understated, even repressed, Windsors had no idea what to do with her. Her husband was appalled by her demands for attention, for sex, for anger, for something other than puttering in the bloody garden again. Meanwhile, she was dressing the part of the diva she was, becoming a major fashion icon. The Prince of Wales, in his twenty-year-old tailored suits, could not compete for the attention of the world�s cameras. The world was fascinated by Diana without her saying a word. Then she spoke up and we were riveted. Her life was not a fairy tale after all, and she finally refused to pretend that it was. The royal family considered her cooperation with the book Diana, Her True Story to be a total betrayal. She was cast out, and on the whole she was relieved to be free. In the giddiness of her first summer as a single woman, she had a glamorous romance with a jet-set playboy, and raced away into a summer night in Paris, never to return.

If Diana�s story was a Greek tragedy, Fergie�s was a French farce. At first her directness and enthusiasm were charming, especially in comparison to Diana�s sulky moods. But, unlike Diana, she never quite managed to act like a princess. Her weight gain and questionable taste in clothes made for unflattering press photos. Then the press revealed her affairs, two of them in tabloid photo spreads. The news that she was millions of pounds in debt didn�t help. After only six years and two children, the Yorks separated in 1992. Their divorce became final just before their tenth wedding anniversary in 1996, but they didn�t let that detail stop them from having an anniversary dinner party. Once out of the royal family, Sarah turned out to be just as dynamic at business as she was at everything else. She paid off her debts, lost the weight, raised her daughters, and generally grew up. And it turned out (or at least it was very strongly implied) that the Yorks had had an open marriage all along � Andrew didn�t really mind about the other men in her life, nor did she mind his extramarital activities.

Their divorce has been just as unconventional as their marriage. Twenty years after their marriage and ten years after their divorce, they still spend considerable time together, frequently under the same roof. They hosted an 18^th birthday party for their daughter Princess Beatrice together, with the invitations coming from �The Duke and Duchess of York.� The photo they took before the ball looked like a happy family, as indeed they seem to be. I would like to think that someday (perhaps after Prince Philip dies) they could get married again � if Camilla Parker-Bowles is going to be a king�s consort, I don�t see why not � but that�s just a romantic fancy. If Fergie would rather not be royal, more power to her.

During the last decade the royal family has returned to the normality of the first three decades of the Queen�s reign. Her children and now grandchildren are around, but none of them are the object of media frenzy. The Queen and Prince Philip have recaptured a larger share of the attention given to the royal family, and the deaths of the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret reminded us that the late Princess of Wales was not the only star the royal family had ever had. The Prince of Wales has remarried happily, and without the public hostility that was expected in the 1990s, when his estranged wife convinced the world that he was a heartless adulterer and then died tragically and dramatically. Times are good for the royal family, but I still miss the Queen of Hearts.

- Margaret Weatherford

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