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.