A thread on another website about Charles and Camilla got me thinking. Someone posted something to the effect that Chuck and Cam are the real deal, love that lasts etc. citing his being forced by royal convention to marry Diana as some kind of mitigation for him treating her like shit.
My thoughts on Diana are mixed, but largely she strikes me as someone with some pretty formidable in-laws in a grim situation who by and large made the best of it. While she was clearly ‘privileged’, she also did more for charity, and more to publicly raise awareness about certain issues that just about any other royal ever (homelessness and HIV being two of her main causes.)
Anyway, the thought about being ‘trapped by convention’ got me thinking about Edward VIII, who abdicated the throne to marry Wallace Simpson – here’s his abdication speech – what a class act. He carried himself with dignity, chose to follow love over some bogus duty to an archaic institution, and – apparently – lived for decades with his wife. That site says he died in 1972 – I had no idea he lived that long. I wonder how often the Queen rang to see how he was doing? Wallace lived til 1986.
So, Charles, instead of treating Diana like crap could have chosen the road less travelled – his great uncle had been there before, so it’s not like it was completely unprecedented, and chosen not to marry Diana, but instead married Camilla in the first place.
But no, he didn’t, he messed up Di’s life instead.
[EDIT]OK, I guess it was too good to be true that we had a royal with genuine conviction… aparently Edward and Wallace had Nazi sympathies and the whole deal was considerably more sordid that I thought 10 minutes ago – time to buy a book on the history of the monarchy![/EDIT]
So, I do wish he and Cam all the best, I honestly do (like they give a shit), but if they think we’re all going to forget the story of his first wife, he’s even more stupid that the rest of his hideously inbred family.
Soundtrack – Joni Mitchell, ‘Turbulent Indigo’.