MARRIAGE wrecker, femme fatale, a blonde Venus flytrap who consumes
men like insects -- Princess Diana can do nothing right these days. Once
the darling of the tabloid press, fashion role model, devoted mother,
saintly visitor to the Aids ward, innocent victim of an arrogant husband
besotted with his ageing, plain (the worst sin of all, given a bride the
world found desirable), married mistress, she has now been recast.
The fairy princess, the virgin bride plucked from the obscurity of the
Belgravia kindergarten has been transformed into a sexual predator, a
woman thrashing around trying to devise a role for herself, forever
upstaging her estranged husband and damaging the royal family's image by
her wanton, selfish behaviour. She has become a twentieth-century
Catherine the Great laying sexual waste wherever she goes.
It is an astonishing transformation, but is it the true picture? Or is
she a woman maligned? She may well be the victim of dirty tricks by an
Establishment out to restore the battered reputation of the Man who Must
be King.
The present brouhaha surrounding the princess's actions and the way
she is being depicted should, therefore, be seen in the context of the
remarkably successful whitewash job that has been done on the Prince of
Wales since those dark days when he turned to Jonathan Dimbleby as a
surrogate father confesssor and spilled the beans. That there is a
dirty-tricks campaign against the princess has been frequently alleged
and is, like all such alleged campaigns, almost impossible to prove or
disprove.
But friends in high places on either side have talked. It is
interesting to speculate who it was that told the media about footballer
Will Carling's visit to Kensington Palace with those presents for the
princes? Nobody drops in on the royals, least of all their lovers. Even
Diana's father made an appointment. Did she talk? Or did somebody
wishing to blacken her character talk?
Not that the Princess's behaviour has been entirely blameless. She has
shown herself to be an adept manipulator of the media, skilled at using
a frock to speak volumes like the little black strapless number she wore
to that art show at the Serpentine Gallery.
During her 14 years of marriage she has learned how to present herself
to the world. The shy, 20-year-old, pudding-faced, ring-twisting Sloane
of those famous engagement pictures has disappeared entirely. In her
place is a svelte 34-year-old could-be Hollywood wife well able to
orchestrate things like Andrew Morton's book giving her side of the
marriage.
The Carling affair is but the icing on an already fruit-rich media
cake. That the princess is said to have found him attractive is
understandable. He is undeniably a handsome man and the fact that he is
married would be neither here nor there for a lady with her background.
The princess comes from a long line of bolters straight out of the
pages of a Nancy Mitford novel. Long before the suburbs started swapping
car keys and wives, the British aristocracy, to which she belongs, were
sneaking down the corridors of their stately homes after lights out at
the weekend into the bedrooms of other well-bred people's partners.
Carling is also a sportsman. He keeps fit. So does she. The princess
is obsessed with her appearance. She spends hours perspiring in the
sauna, strains endlessly on weight-training machines, and sweats and
toils in the gymnasium to achieve a body refined to perfection. By all
accounts he is her kind of man in many other respects -- not one of the
world's talkers, and not exactly an intellectual, being blessed with
roughly the brains a Rugby player requires, and every bit into keeping
fit as she is.
Judging by his behaviour -- the ''old farts'' remark alone suggests
naivety bordering on the clueless -- he is somebody who has never
learned how to cope with exposure to the tabloids. His wife Julia, a
professional media manipulator, is another matter and if there is black
propaganda about she would know how to spread it.
The Carlings' decision for a trial separation after 15months of, for
the most part, unusually well-publicised marital bliss, may end the
current media interest in his relationship with the princess, such as it
is.
The media circus would not be there had it not been for his links with
the princess. Should he and Julia get back together the world will
possibly forget them, as it has forgotten James Hewitt, James Gilbey,
and Oliver Hoare, past men in the princess's life. If not, the beady
eyes of the paparazzi will still be fixed on the Carlings.
While their home in Putney was besieged with newsmen and television
crews yesterday, in spite of the fact that neither was there, it was
training as usual at the Chelsea Harbour Club gym for the Princess of
Wales. But it has been business as usual all week for her, including a
rare display of royal wit when she recited that limerick at Auberon
Waugh's literary lunch telling the tabloids where to put it:
'The Princess was heard to declare,
Let gossips poke fun if they dare.
My real inspiration Is Bron's invitation.
Put that in your tabloids, so there!'
The question is whether she really is a wrecker of homes. Her past
friendships have not ended up with couples in the divorce court as
happened with Camilla Parker Bowles -- not that the prince had anything
to do with that divorce, of course. Her male friends have almost all
been single men about society and given that her marriage is in ruins
she is as entitled to friendships as is her husband.
As for Mr Carling, it is flattering to be offered the hand of
friendship by a princess with film-star allure, especially when you have
interests in common. If one of you is a sporting hero and the other has
two small boys there is no reason why the sporting hero should not
oblige the friend's small boys with his favours. But that is not to say
it must end willy-nilly in sexual intercourse. If it is not an
adulterous liaison, and there is nothing to suggest it is, then it may
be unwise, but that is as far as it goes, and in this day and age we
have surely learned that a woman can have men as friends without having
them as lovers also.
Maybe, as was suggested in a rare leader in The Daily Telegraph, which
on occasions is the voice of the Establishment, it is time for the
Prince and Princess of Wales to divorce. Nothing will remove the
spotlight from the princess, but as an ex-Princess of Wales she would
attract less attention and as a divorced single parent her friendships
would arouse less interest than do those of an estranged wife.
The princess appears to be a female Jekyll and Hyde. There is the
caring public figure on the one hand who visits the sick, is accessible
to people and always looks like a princess, although one with a
high-fashion dress sense. On the other there is the private person
notorious as a monstrously selfish, demanding employer, as a woman who
hones in on susceptible men seeking adulation, and someone who knows how
to be found doing things if she wants that to happen.
The eyes of the paparazzi are not everywhere. Sometimes they have to
be told where to look. She may not always do the telling.
Manipulator or victim? The answer is surely that she is both. She has
manipulated situations to suit herself, but she has been victim of
manipulation in turn. She is the victim of an unsuccessful marriage,
although the prince has his case, and everything she does, no matter how
innocent, which involves a man gets interpreted to her detriment.
But she is not a nun, just as her estranged husband is not a monk. As
long as she is married to Prince Charles she will end up in the
headlines. She clearly enjoys her royal status so let her become a
latter-day Anne of Cleves, live her own life and she will have the
status and income to carry on doing her good works. If that solution was
good enough for Henry VIII it should be good enough for Prince Charles.
The prince must find the alimony, the state must support the mother of a
future king, who should be allowed to lead her private life as she
wishes while performing public duties, which she does perfectly.
As for the Carlings, they should get on with their lives in as much
privacy as any sporting hero with a media wife is accorded.
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