The Royals Part 16

"Your reaction to her having a son?"

She shrugged. "I didn't know she had one."

"This morning."

"Oh, good," she said sarcastically. "Isn't that nice?"

"How are you enjoying your visit to New Mexico?"

"Keep your questions to yourself."

"Ma'am, how does it feel to be an aunt?"

"That's my business, thank you."

The sourpuss Princess skidded to the bottom of the royal popularity polls. "Naff off, Anne," screamed the Daily Mail, Daily Mail, which claimed she was envious of the fuss over Diana. Other newspapers dismissed the Queen's daughter as rude, surly, and miserable. Within ten years the pundits would change their minds. After her charity work for Save the Children, Anne would emerge as one of the most respected women in Great Britain. Some polls would show that the public thought her more worthy than Charles to ascend to the throne. But in 1982, she was one of the most reviled people in the United Kingdom. which claimed she was envious of the fuss over Diana. Other newspapers dismissed the Queen's daughter as rude, surly, and miserable. Within ten years the pundits would change their minds. After her charity work for Save the Children, Anne would emerge as one of the most respected women in Great Britain. Some polls would show that the public thought her more worthy than Charles to ascend to the throne. But in 1982, she was one of the most reviled people in the United Kingdom.

Within the royal family the relations.h.i.+p between the Princess Anne and the Princess of Wales was visceral: they loathed each other. Anne thought Diana was vain, dim-witted, and neurotic. "Too gooey about children," she said.

Diana dismissed her sister-in-law as a male impersonator. "I think she shaves."

"You forget," said a friend. "Anne was the only female compet.i.tor at Montreal Olympics [1976] not to be given a s.e.x test."

"Results would've been too embarra.s.sing," joked Diana. "She's Philip-in drag."

The Princess of Wales did not understand a woman like Anne, who appeared to be so determinedly unfeminine. She refused to wear makeup, pulled back her hair in a bun, and wore clothes that looked like thrift shop rejects. Diana had heard about Anne's adultery with a Palace guard but did not understand his s.e.xual attraction. "What do men see in her?" she asked.

Blunt as a bullet, Anne did nothing to ingratiate herself with others, especially the press, which she detested. "You are a pest by the very nature of that camera in your hand," she snapped at a photographer who was trying to take her picture.

Charles agreed that Anne could be difficult but said she was his only sister and had honored him by making him G.o.dfather to her firstborn son. So he suggested that he and Diana return the honor by making Anne one of Prince William's G.o.dmothers. Diana refused.

"Darling, please," Charles said plaintively. "Please."

Diana was unmovable, and Charles, after a halfhearted struggle to change her mind, gave up. Days later they announced their choice of G.o.dparents: Princess Alexandra; the d.u.c.h.ess of Westminster; Lady Susan Hussey; King Constantine II of the h.e.l.lenes; Lord Romsey; Sir Laurens Van der Post.

At the christening, the Archbishop of Canterbury poured water over the baby's head and handed a lighted candle to his father to signify the young Prince's admission into the church.

"The windows were open, the sun streaming in," Sir Laurens told Horoscope Horoscope magazine. "Then the sky went grey as a great storm gathered. Just as the Archbishop handed over the lighted candle, a violent gust of wind blew through the windows. The candle flickered, but did not go out." magazine. "Then the sky went grey as a great storm gathered. Just as the Archbishop handed over the lighted candle, a violent gust of wind blew through the windows. The candle flickered, but did not go out."

The sage saw that as a portent for the Prince and Princess of Wales, who both believed in mysticism. Van der Post said it was a good sign and explained that the flickering candle represented a crisis in Prince William's future, but one that he would survive.

Two years later, after the birth of their second son, Charles again suggested choosing his sister as a G.o.dmother, but again Diana refused. Instead she chose Celia, Lady Vestey; Lady Sarah Armstrong-Jones, the daughter of Princess Margaret; and Carolyn Pride Bartholomew, her former roommate from Coleherne Court. As G.o.dfathers, Charles chose his brother, Andrew, the Duke of York; artist Bryan Organ, who painted flattering royal portraits; and Gerald Ward, a rich polo player.

The announcement of the baby's G.o.dparents sparked a furious row within the royal family. Prince Philip was so angry at Charles for bypa.s.sing Anne a second time that he didn't speak to him or visit his new grandson for six weeks. At the end of the year he fired off a memo, telling Charles he was not carrying his weight as heir apparent. Philip praised Anne, his favorite child, as the hardest-working member of the royal family. "She's represented the Crown at 201 events whereas records indicate you made 93 appearances and your wife 51. Taken together, these figures [for 1984] don't add up to your sister's efforts."

Three years later the Queen rewarded her daughter's dedicated service by naming her Princess Royal, the highest honor a sovereign can bestow on a female in the royal family.

But Anne was so humiliated at being pa.s.sed over again as G.o.dmother that she declined to attend the christening of Prince Henry Charles Albert David ("Harry" to his parents). She said the date conflicted with a shooting party that she and her husband had planned. The Queen and Prince Charles moved the christening from Buckingham Palace to St. George's Chapel at Windsor so it would be closer to Anne's estate, hoping then she might change her mind. She didn't. The Queen's press secretary telephoned and begged her to reschedule her shooting party, saying that her absence would be interpreted by the press as a slight to the Princess of Wales.

"So what?" said Anne, who sent her children in her place. "Peter and Zara will be there, and that'll be quite enough."

Michael Shea pleaded, but to no avail. As he predicted, the Murdoch press buried the Queen's daughter as petulant and vengeful. They canonized the Princess of Wales, and next to the Queen Mother, she was proclaimed the most beloved figure in the kingdom.

FOURTEEN.

I'm fed up to the teeth with your b.l.o.o.d.y security," exploded the Duke of Edinburgh. "Let's get going."

"I'm sorry, sir," said the U.S. Secret Service agent, "but there's nothing I can do until the President's car moves."

The Queen and the Duke, touring California as guests of the Reagans in 1983, sat in the back of their limousine, waiting for the motorcade to move through the rainy streets of San Francisco. Philip strained with impatience.

"I said to get this car moving," he snapped.

"Sir, we're waiting for President Reagan's car."

The Queen stared straight ahead. Seconds pa.s.sed. Bristling with anger, Philip grabbed a magazine from the seat pocket, rolled it up, and smacked the driver across the back of his head.

"Move this f.u.c.king car," he screamed, "and move it now!"

The Queen sat impa.s.sively and did not say a word as her husband whacked the agent like a horse. An hour later, after they had arrived at their hotel, she sent her emba.s.sy representative to the agent's room with an invitation to join the royal couple for a nightcap.

"No, thank you," said the agent. He made no attempt to disguise his anger over the treatment he had received from the Queen's husband as she said nothing.

"Please, sir. You must accept Her Majesty's invitation."

"I said, 'No, thank you.' I will not be in their company any more than I absolutely have to."

The Queen's messenger appealed to the White House aide in the room. "Please, sir, I'm begging you. I cannot go back to Her Majesty and say her invitation was refused. I would lose my position. My tour of duty is up in six months and I can't afford to retire without my pension. I acknowledge the Duke of Edinburgh was beastly-rude beyond redemption-but I'm asking you as a personal favor to please accept this invitation."

The White House aide looked at the Secret Service agent, who stared at the anxious messenger-and reconsidered. "I want to make it clear," said the agent, "that I'm doing this for you, not for them."

The U.S. Secret Service had struggled throughout the visit to provide the highest standard of protection for the royal couple, but the Duke of Edinburgh balked at every security measure proposed. The night before, he had turned on the light inside his limousine.

"I'm sorry, sir," said the agent. "I must ask you to turn off that light. It makes you too easy a target."

"I'm d.a.m.ned if I will," snapped Philip. "Why do you think these people are out here? They want to see me, and I want to wave to them."

The U.S. Chief of Protocol, Selwa Roosevelt, interceded. "Sir, these men are only doing their job," she said. "If anything happens to you, it would be due to their negligence. Please do not take it out on them. They have their orders." As he got out of the car, Philip slammed the door in her face. Hours later, at a dinner, he apologized.

From San Diego to San Francisco to the Reagan ranch in Santa Barbara, the Duke fumed about the security. "They're b.l.o.o.d.y baboons," he groused to the Queen, who also chafed at extreme protection. Privately she agreed with her husband. Publicly she said nothing. She was on a goodwill trip-her fifth to the United States-and she was visiting at the express request of her government to solidify what the two countries now called their special relations.h.i.+p. The British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, a political soulmate of Ronald Reagan, needed U.S. aid, so she fed the American appet.i.te for British royalty by sending the Queen on tour.

Reagan had backed Thatcher when British troops landed in the Falkland Islands in 1982 to reclaim them from Argentina. The cost: 237 British servicemen and $3.7 billion. Most people had a.s.sumed Britain was too poor and too pa.s.sive to mount such an attack, so the invasion boosted the country's prestige. Argentina's surrender in June 1982 allowed the forceful Prime Minister to emerge with a newfound respect as the Iron Lady. Prince Andrew, the Queen's favorite child, flew a navy helicopter in the war and returned home a hero.

The "special relations.h.i.+p" between London and Was.h.i.+ngton became strained after the United States invaded Grenada, a former British colony in the Caribbean, which had remained part of the Commonwealth. As Queen of England, Elizabeth II was also Queen of Grenada and not receptive to invaders, especially allies. "She is immensely displeased with President Reagan over this matter," said a Labor Party spokesman. The Queen summoned Margaret Thatcher to the Palace to explain why Her Majesty had had to hear the news of the invasion from the BBC and not from the Prime Minister herself. Mrs. Thatcher said she hadn't known about it until she called the President minutes before. "It's a benign invasion," Reagan had told her, a.s.serting that one thousand Americans had to be evacuated from the island after a communist takeover. Mrs. Thatcher told the Queen that she, too, was upset, but Britain would not condemn the invasion. "We stand by the United States and will continue to do so in the larger alliances," said the Prime Minister. "The United States is the final guarantor of freedom in Europe."

The Queen showed her displeasure during that meeting by not offering the Prime Minister a seat. Afterward she reported Thatcher's reaction: "Only two curtsies today." The exaggerated deference of the Prime Minister, who referred to herself as "we," amused the royal family. Prince Philip dismissed her as "the greengrocer's daughter" because she was born in a flat above her family's grocery in Grantham. The Queen, known for her wicked mimicry, relished telling Margaret Thatcher jokes. Her favorite was about the Prime Minister's visiting an old age home.

"Do you know who I am?" said the Queen, imitating Thatcher's grandiose accent as she shook the hand of an elderly resident.

"No," replied the befuddled resident, "but if you ask Matron, she'll tell you."

Once, however, a joke backfired. There is a story, probably true, about a Commonwealth diplomat who went to Buckingham Palace to present his credentials. When the Queen thought he had gone, she began to mimic him, then saw, to her distress, that he was still in the room. "Not bad, ma'am," he said courteously as he bowed himself out, "not bad."

The Queen's press secretary tries to humanize the monarch by emphasizing her sense of humor, which frequently lurks behind a stern facade. He disclosed that the royal family called the Queen "Miss Piggyface" when she looked bored or displeased. She, too, made fun of herself that way. Watching a video of the royal wedding, she called to her husband, "Philip, come here and look. I've got my Miss Piggyface on."

"Sometimes, certainly not always, Her Majesty enjoyed watching her puppet on Spitting Image, Spitting Image," said her press secretary, referring to the satirical television show that used rubberized puppets to make fun of the royal family and other establishment figures. One sketch that amused the Queen featured a rubber caricature of the Prime Minister-heavily rouged cheeks, pointed nose, and hair plastered in place-talking to the Queen's puppet, dressed in a dowdy sweater set with a babushka tied over her crown.

"At least we we don't strut around in ludicrous little hats," said the Margaret Thatcher puppet. don't strut around in ludicrous little hats," said the Margaret Thatcher puppet.

"But you'd love to, wouldn't you," retorted the Queen's puppet.

The Queen's relations.h.i.+p with Margaret Thatcher was always proper and cordial, but never as warm and cozy as the rapport the Queen had enjoyed with Winston Churchill and Harold Wilson. Part of the problem was her preference for men. "She regards female inferiority as the natural order of things," said British historian David Cannadine. "The other part of the problem was Margaret Thatcher herself," Prince Charles told his biographer. "She was too formidable." The Prince described the Prime Minister to the editor of the Sunday Express Sunday Express as "a bit like a school ma'am." Charles eventually became so disenchanted with Thatcher's conservative policies that he sent a memo to the Queen, imploring her to do something before the Prime Minister ruined the country. The Queen, who came to agree with her son, could do nothing, but she occasionally shared her displeasure with Commonwealth leaders. as "a bit like a school ma'am." Charles eventually became so disenchanted with Thatcher's conservative policies that he sent a memo to the Queen, imploring her to do something before the Prime Minister ruined the country. The Queen, who came to agree with her son, could do nothing, but she occasionally shared her displeasure with Commonwealth leaders.

"Her Majesty was not at ease with Margaret Thatcher's policies," said Robert Hawke, the former Prime Minister of Australia. "She saw her as dangerous." During a dinner with Lord Shawcross, the Queen expressed anger toward her Prime Minister because Margaret Thatcher had reneged on granting the Shah of Iran asylum in England. "Once you give your word," the Queen said, "that's it."

Despite her negative feelings, the Queen did not withhold the Order of the Garter from her Prime Minister after Margaret Thatcher left office. Limited to twenty-four citizens, the Garter, the highest order of chivalry, is usually bestowed by the monarch on a retired prime minister who has not been defeated in a general election. Thatcher resigned in 1990.

The Queen was just as politically suspect to Margaret Thatcher, who told conservative aides that Her Majesty was not "one of us." The Iron Lady clashed with the Queen over a Commonwealth statement opposing apartheid. She did not share the monarch's fervor for the Commonwealth; she cared more about Britain's stature in Europe. In fact, she dismissed the Commonwealth as a bunch of greedy beggars.

The Queen confided in Anthony Benn, a Labor MP, that she loathed the Common Market and considered its leaders rude, cynical, and disillusioned. In his diary Benn suggested that the Queen's negative att.i.tude came from seeing there was no role for her in a European union. Benn, a republican, also derided the Queen, saying she was incapable of saying "Good morning" without a courtier's script.

Yet the Queen, despite her Prime Minister, remained devoted to her dominions. And she did everything possible to sh.o.r.e up the creaky concept of monarchy, especially in Canada and Australia, where republican sentiments ran high. By 1982 she had made twelve royal tours of Canada and nine of Australia. And she maintained the Crown's presence in both countries by regularly dispatching members of her family to visit. In 1983 she sent the Prince and Princess of Wales to Australia for six weeks, although the Princess at first refused to go. After considerable wrangling, she agreed, but she insisted on taking their nine-month-old baby and his nanny.

"You know how you felt," Diana told Charles. "You were miserable when your mother left you for months at a time, and you were older than Wills." She reminded her husband of what he had told her about his lonely childhood. Diana felt that he had been emotionally damaged by his parents, who were too busy for him because they were constantly traveling. "I will not do that to Wills," she said in front of her staff. She cited books she'd read about the first two years of a child's life being the time when a sense of self-esteem and security are implanted. "I know he's just a baby," she said, "but he still needs our attention."

Diana believed in tactile mothering or, as she defined it, "lots of hugs and cuddles." Frequently she startled the nanny, Barbara Barnes, by das.h.i.+ng into the nursery at odd hours when the baby was sleeping. "I just came to kiss him," Diana said, reaching for Wills and waking him up. An anxious mother, she hovered over his ba.s.sinet and worried about his crying. "Are you sure he's all right?" The nanny, whom Wills called "Baba," became exasperated with the Princess, who worried about being displaced. A few years later Diana felt that her child was having trouble distinguis.h.i.+ng between "Baba" and "Mama," so she fired the nanny.

When Charles suggested taking the baby on the 1983 tour, the Queen was dubious. But he explained that Diana did not want to be separated from their child for six weeks. The Queen listened patiently and agreed to make the necessary arrangements with the Foreign Office so the couple could travel with their baby. Even so, she was concerned.

Diana's behavior had been worrying the Queen, especially since Diana's ski trip to Austria months before. The Prince and Princess had attracted throngs of paparazzi, who crowded the slopes, shops, and restaurants, causing pandemonium. Pus.h.i.+ng and shouting to get closer to the royal couple, the press jostled a crush of tourists gathered to gawk. The resort town looked as if it had been invaded by lunatics, all carrying cameras and microphones. Photographers, desperate to get a picture of Diana, crashed through doors and broke shop windows as they chased after her. It took the police to restore order.

Once charming and cooperative with the media, Diana now refused to pose. She resented being followed every time she appeared in public. She hid her face in her coat collar, jammed her hands in her pockets, and lowered her head. She pulled her ski cap over her eyes, wore large goggles, and refused to smile.

On the slopes, Prince Charles begged her to cooperate. "Please, darling, please," he said. "Give them a smile and we'll get on with it." Diana stared at the ground.

"Please don't hide like that," he implored, leaning toward her. She stiffened and pulled away, keeping her head down.

"Diana, you're just being stupid," he said, irritated. "Please, darling, you've got to cooperate." She would not look up.

"Your Royal Highness," begged one photographer, "just a little smile. Like the old days." Diana buried her face in her hands and held her head for a full five minutes, further frustrating Charles and the cameraman.

Photographs of the sulking Princess and her forlorn husband appeared in the British press with daily stories about the commotion she was causing: there were reports of one-hundred-mile-an-hour car chases of the Princess trying to dodge photographers and blond decoys she sent out to distract photographers; barricades thrown up and borders closed to the press; reporters roughed up and photographers driven off the road. When the Queen read about a British cameraman bloodied by a royal security guard, she sent a member of her staff to calm the disturbance.

Victor Chapman, a Canadian diplomat with a merry sense of humor, flew to Liechtenstein that afternoon with Francis Cornish of Charles's staff to deal with the Princess. During their meeting with the royal couple, Cornish began by reciting to Diana her obligations as royalty. He told her sternly that she owed it to Her Majesty to cooperate with the press people. Diana, who could no longer abide the courtiers, ignored Cornish, but she responded to the gentle flirtation of Chapman, who winked during the stern lecture.

"Vic was a lovely man," recalled one of his friends. "He'd been married twice and had five daughters. He loved women and knew just how to handle Diana. He flattered and cajoled and teased her."

At the time, the Princess of Wales was a psychological mess. But she looked stunning, having starved off the weight (fifty-three pounds) she had gained during pregnancy. She had shopped every day to keep her mind off her hunger, and the results were remarkable. Diana knew that style was the first priority of a princess, and she was determined to become the best-dressed Princess of Wales in history. She would show substance beneath the surface later; right now all she cared about was creating a lip-smacking first impression. She studied her photographs in the newspapers and read every word of commentary about her clothes. She consulted fas.h.i.+on editors and designers. She let them know that she intended to bring style and glamour to her role and distance herself from the rest of the Windsor women in their white purses, garden party hats, and st.u.r.dy platform shoes. With glistening blond hair and a year-round tan, she looked as bewitching as any movie star. "Gorgeous is the only word for her," sighed Vogue Vogue magazine. "Heart-stoppingly gorgeous." magazine. "Heart-stoppingly gorgeous."

Certainly few suspected that the Princess was bulimic or that she was suffering from postnatal depression. The Palace a.s.sumption was that she was merely acting spoiled and temperamental. She later confided to Chapman that she was bored with performing her royal duties and intended to get pregnant again as soon as she could. "I'd rather eat and have babies* than collect bouquets," she said. than collect bouquets," she said.

"I quite agree, ma'am," he said, "but please let's not share that information with Francis [Cornish] just yet." Chapman achieved such a warm rapport with Diana that the Queen sent him on the royal tour of Australia in 1983.

"That's where he revolutionized Diana," said a woman also on the trip. "Vic showed her how to be a princess. He coached her: 'It would be lovely if you did a dance for the cameras with your husband,' he said before the night of the charity dance at the Southern Cross Hotel in Melbourne. Diana pulled a face, but he encouraged her. 'Have fun with it. Show them your style.' He flattered her, said that Diana was the best dancer he'd ever seen.

" 'The best?' she asked.

"Vic laughed. 'The best-after Dame Margot Fonteyn. And that's only because she's got Nureyev.' Diana said she was stuck with Charles, who had admitted to all of us how much he dreaded having to get up at formal dinners and start the dancing. 'I a.s.sure you,' he had said, 'it makes my heart sink to have to make an awful exhibition of ourselves.'

"Vic was playful with Diana. He relaxed her. She mugged at him as her lady-in-waiting fussed with her jewelry that evening. Diana took the necklace and put it over her head rather than wait to have it clasped around her neck. She couldn't get it over the bridge of her nose. 'My honker's too big,' she said. Vic roared. 'Leave it there,' he said. 'It's young and fun, like you. Just be your wonderful self. They want nothing more than a beautiful princess. They'll love you.' "

And they did. The photograph of Charles and Diana dancing relieved Britons, who had begun to worry about their less-than-perfect Princess. With Queen Mary's emeralds wrapped around her head, Disco Di was a triumph.

When the tour was over, Diana gave her lady-in-waiting Anne Beckwith-Smith an expensive pair of earrings. The card read: "I couldn't have done it without you."

The problem of the Princess had been solved, but the solution upset the Prince. "We've got trouble," Chapman told his friend Carolyn Townshend when he returned to England. "She's too too popular, and he doesn't like it a bit." popular, and he doesn't like it a bit."

The Prince did not understand his wife's appeal. He expected his intelligence to be prized over her beauty and resented the adulation she stirred in crowds, who wanted to see her and not him. He smarted when people crossed the street to be on her side, not his. Because Diana looked like an angel and carried the aura of a royal princess, she fulfilled people's dreams in a way that he never could. And he was envious. She tapped into emotions that were deeply rooted in fantasy and nourished by fairy tales as an image of perfection, worthy of adoration. The t.i.tle of Her Royal Highness, conferred by marriage, elevated her in people's eyes. Like a saint, she was automatically revered and considered deserving of wors.h.i.+p. She packaged herself exquisitely, and her beauty, combined with natural warmth, made her magnetic. Charles, for all his worthy causes, looked dull, whereas Diana dazzled.

"One of the world's few true generalizations," wrote Simon Sebag Montefiore in Psychology Today, Psychology Today, "is that all nations, including the British and the Americans, fight the boredom of everyday life by admiring and despising the flaws and glamour of their dynasties." "is that all nations, including the British and the Americans, fight the boredom of everyday life by admiring and despising the flaws and glamour of their dynasties."

So, like Jacqueline Kennedy Ona.s.sis and Princess Grace of Monaco before her, the Princess of Wales became a decorative focus for the ma.s.ses. Treated as a natural phenomenon, she became an object of ma.s.s hysteria. People lined up for hours to see her pa.s.s by. They reached out to touch her and felt blessed if she smiled in their direction. Unlike her earnest husband, she excited people. She possessed the incandescence of a movie star, and he couldn't stand it.

"Vic had seen the conflict developing in Australia," recalled Townshend, "so he tried to set things right for Charles. Vic suggested some jocular comments for the Prince to make at the farewell banquet in Auckland a la President Kennedy's wonderful line about being the man who had accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris and enjoying every minute. But Charles was not John F. Kennedy."

Whenever the Prince tried to be self-deprecating, he sounded strained and unnatural. Seeing someone wave a bouquet in Diana's direction, he offered to give it to her. "I'm just a collector of flowers these days," he said. His delivery suggested a sinner who sees redemption in self-inflicted humor but can't make the leap of faith. Although distinctly uncomfortable poking fun at himself, he made an effort. "I have come to the conclusion that it really would have been easier to have had two wives," he said. "Then they could cover both sides of the street and I could walk down the middle, directing operations."

Because he was the Prince of Wales, everyone laughed. But Chapman knew how hard it was for Charles to step aside and let his wife be the star.

"Vic stayed with us in the country," said Townshend, "and the calls came in late at night from the Prince of Wales, who was worried about some negative article that had appeared. 'There's nothing you can do about it,' Vic would say. The rest of the people around Charles would shuffle and shamble: 'Oh, yes, Your Royal Highness, you are absolutely right, sir. Such rubbish. It's an outrage. Indeed. Yes, sir. Yes sir. Three bags full, sir.' But not Vic. He shot straight and told Charles exactly like it was.

"Diana bit her fingernails to the quick because she worried about the tabloid stories displeasing the Palace. She once appeared in a new hairstyle that, unfortunately, upstaged the Queen, who was opening Parliament. Princess Margaret was furious and said something to Charles, who gave Diana uns.h.i.+rted h.e.l.l. Poor thing, she quaked in those days. Her nails were the giveaway: if they were short and chewed, there was trouble."

The British press reported that for the first three years of her marriage, Diana said only five hundred words in public. She was too intimidated to make a speech or appear without her husband. Her first solo appearance was in France, not England, when she attended the funeral of Princess Grace of Monaco. On the strength of their one meeting, Diana had considered the Princess to be a close friend. "We were psychically connected," she told Grace's daughter Caroline. Diana, who believed in astrology and numerology, felt that she and the Princess of Monaco were born under the same star and shared mystical characteristics. In fact, both came from dysfunctional families. Both were third children. Both had married royal princes. Both became more famous than their husbands. Both paid a heavy price.

This was confirmed for Diana several years later, when Robert Lacey published a biography ent.i.tled Grace, Grace, which disclosed her excessive drinking, her fraying marriage, and her extramarital love affairs. Diana said the book substantiated her psychic intuitions. When Grace died in 1982, Diana had to fight to attend her funeral. The Palace did not want her to go, although no one else in the British royal family had volunteered. Diana said the glowing press coverage she received for going to the funeral had rea.s.sured her that she had done the right thing. which disclosed her excessive drinking, her fraying marriage, and her extramarital love affairs. Diana said the book substantiated her psychic intuitions. When Grace died in 1982, Diana had to fight to attend her funeral. The Palace did not want her to go, although no one else in the British royal family had volunteered. Diana said the glowing press coverage she received for going to the funeral had rea.s.sured her that she had done the right thing.

Charles was more concerned about receiving credit for his own good works. He said he had been the first member of the royal family to give blood, but no one paid attention. "I did this to rea.s.sure the country after the AIDS scare caused a drop in blood bank donations, but all the press cared about was Diana's frock," he complained to his equerry. "Journalists are creeps-b.l.o.o.d.y hacks, all of them."

His equerry realized how much the Prince of Wales longed to be appreciated as a humanitarian. "I wish I were Bob Geldof," Charles said after the Irish rocker was honored for raising millions for famine relief in Ethiopia.

Eager to please his master, the equerry phoned a reporter and mentioned that the Prince carried a donor card authorizing doctors to use his organs in a lifesaving operation. The reporter wrote the story, but it was barely noticed because Diana had appeared at a benefit the night before wearing a one-shouldered silver-spangled sheath, and her photographs dominated the news coverage.