The Prince Proposes

By Josh Tyrangiel

Anyone who has seen a Merchant Ivory film knows that the British follow any flash of emotion with a long spasm of ritual. So it was that around Christmas, Prince Charles got down on one knee and proposed to Camilla Parker Bowles. She accepted. Then the Prince asked his mother Queen Elizabeth for official consent. The Queen, in accordance with the centuries-old Royal Marriages Act, asked Prime Minister Tony Blair for the government's approval. The PM consulted with the attorney general. Meanwhile, the Church of England chewed over the religious significance of a middle-aged, divorced prince trading vows with his middle-aged, divorced live-in girlfriend. Any reasonable couple would have been on the first flight to Vegas.

Yet in its own tortured way, the British monarchy stepped into the 21st century last week when it granted Charles permission to become the first heir to the throne to marry a divorce. Never mind that the heavily negotiated solution to the joint problem of royal divorce and succession arrived 70 years too late for poor Edward VIII and nearly 500 years too late for Anne Boleyn. The living parties all felt like celebrating. In their first betrothed public appearance, the Prince of Wales, 56, smiled and blushed while Parker Bowles, 57, showed off her ring and giddily declared, "I'm just coming down to earth." The Queen issued a statement saying "The Duke of Edinburgh and I are very happy that the Prince of Wales and Mrs. Parker Bowles are to marry." For the Queen, "very happy" is gushing.

And she's got good reason to gush. The Queen, 78, has probably averted a crisis of succession. Church leaders were not thrilled with the possibility that Charles might ascend to the throne and assume the title Defender of the Faith while living in sin with his lady. Now Charles gets to rule Britain with the frumpy consort of his dreams.

The timing has little to do with Valentine's Day and much to do with the distance between now and the signal royal event of the past 50 years: the death of you-know-who. In the convulsion of grief after Princess Diana's 1997 car accident, Parker Bowles--whom Diana outed as Prince Charles' extramarital lover in a 1994 television interview--became the most hated person in Britain; in one infamous incident, she was chased from her local grocery store by shoppers pelting her with bread rolls. For two years after Diana's death, Charles and Camilla were too radioactive to be seen together publicly. Slowly, though, they progressed from appearing at the same event to standing on the same dais to sharing a chaste public kiss. To make sure she remained anodyne, Parker Bowles rarely spoke in public and thus, unlike many of her future in-laws, avoided making a fool of herself.

All that calculated inoffensiveness has finally paid off. A poll taken by London's Daily Telegraph showed about two-thirds of Brits accepting the impending nuptials, which are scheduled for April 8. If the couple can survive scandal, scorn and Lord knows how many unflattering photographs, perhaps their love is true. If not, they can always get divorced.