Rocks on The Royal Road
By Martha Duffy
WHO: PRINCESS DIANA
WHAT: THE LATEST IN THE WORLD'S GREATEST SOAP OPERA
THE BOTTOM LINE: Three best-selling bios, all claiming that the Waleses are at war, contend the marriage is over.
Books on the Prince and Princess of Wales have been a quiet cottage industry since the couple married with fanfare and romance in 1981. Last year, their 10th anniversary, saw a spate of them, prettily illustrated and saying roughly the same thing: it may be an odd marriage, but it works for them. What a difference a year can make. Now there are three new biographies of Diana, all claiming the union is dead, a disaster, a sham. And as usual, woe is what sells. Andrew Morton's Diana: Her True Story (Simon & Schuster; $22) tops the best-seller lists; Lady Colin Campbell's Diana in Private: The Princess Nobody Knows (St. Martin's Press; $19.95) and Nicholas Davies' Diana: A Princess and Her Troubled Marriage (Birch Lane Press; $21.95) are on the charts too.
Morton's is the headliner because his sources include Diana's brother Charles and Carolyn Bartholomew, a close friend. It may be that the impetuous princess, despairing of the prince's love, got sick of all those saccharine tomes and decided to get her real story out. The result is avidly pro-Diana. But was it worth it -- publicizing the distasteful bouts with bulimia, the pitiful suicidal gestures, the shouting matches in which she shows up as a fishwife?
There is no evidence that the princess or her intimates had anything to do with the other biographies. For admirers of Prince Charles, Campbell's is the choice. Her sources are something of a mystery, but the citations are unintentionally hilarious: "an aristocrat whose brother-in-law is a senior courtier," "a titled schoolmate of Diana's," "a famous socialite." Davies' is the most balanced account but also the vaguest. The books read as if written in haste, and they contain many discrepancies.
But the outlines are clear enough. Neither the prince nor the princess got much parental love. The best part of Morton's book is the simple, affecting account by Diana's brother of their childhood, ruptured when their mother ran off with another man. Prince Charles saw his mother an hour a day -- 30 minutes in the morning, 30 minutes at night. If she was around.
Charles dithered his way through a lengthy list of girls, some suitable, some not. But Camilla Parker-Bowles, one that got away early and married another, has remained his very dear friend -- and Diana's nemesis. In Morton's book she is depicted as a schemer, vetting the prince's girls, not for their potential as royals but "to see how much a threat they posed to her own relationship." When the naive Diana said she didn't enjoy hunting, Camilla, a horsewoman, brightened at once. Then there was the discovery of Fred and Gladys -- the pet code names by which Charles and Camilla communicated -- gifts, flowers, notes.
In Campbell's book Diana is the schemer and Charles the hapless one: "She knew he wasn't a scrap interested in her, but she also saw that he was vulnerable." Diana got herself invited to royal occasions by making friends with Lady Sarah Armstrong-Jones, Princess Margaret's daughter. Whatever the reality was, Diana expected that when they were married, her husband would devote a great deal of time to her. She was cruelly disappointed. Charles was chilly, his routine masculine and inflexible.
The birth of Prince William in 1982 brought the couple closer together; Prince Harry's arrival in 1984 did not. Charles wanted a girl and, according to Morton, even objected to the infant's "rusty hair," a Spencer family trait. The couple were now battling constantly. Drama came naturally to Diana. Charles loathed confrontation, and his retreat to a virtually separate life in Gloucestershire, not far from Parker-Bowles, began.
For a while Diana pined and battled weight loss. Then around 1986 she got effective treatment for her disease and, through Fergie and Prince Andrew, consulted an astrologer. The celestial message was simple: Do something positive with your sufferings. She did and, as Campbell says, "the Royal Family's answer to Mother Teresa . . .Diana the Good was born." Always magic in public, Diana turned much of her attention to charities involving the suffering, the dying. Her work has transformed her image from a lovely clotheshorse to a unique figure: a woman who uses her glamour and power to help others.
The public worldwide is smitten. Poll after poll puts her on top of most- admired, most-beautiful and most-popular royal lists. Closer to home, that is not the case. If her husband admires her efforts for AIDS victims and drug addicts, he keeps it to himself. By her in-laws, she is watched "in doubtful and often jealous silence," writes Morton. "The world judges that she has dusted off the dowdy image of the House of Windsor." But inside it, "she is seen as an outsider and a problem. She is tactile, emotional, gently irreverent and spontaneous." Adds Davies: "Basically separated from her husband and most of her royal in-laws, she has yet managed to carve out an empire for herself."
What empire? Diana is the dominant partner in what is left of the marriage. In avoiding her, Charles has to a degree withdrawn from his sons. The boys palpably adore their mother, who lavishes time and affection on them. Was the Morton book not the impetuous blowout it seems to be but a prelude to divorce? In her more florid moments, Diana has said she may never be Queen. (A current story around London is that if Elizabeth II lives another 20 years, Charles may stand aside in favor of William.) But Diana has reportedly told the Queen she would never let her down, and her mother-in-law's commands are the only ones she follows unfailingly. The late Earl Mountbatten, one of Charles' many mentors, once said nothing guarantees the monarchy's survival; it is only as strong as any given King. So the drama plays like any good soap opera: you simply have to stay tuned.