Game of Crowns: Elizabeth, Camilla, Kate, and the Throne by Christopher Andersen Page A
Authors: Christopher Andersen
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handled the press.
Charles was about to ask Diana to be his wife in late Februarywhen his prized racehorse Alibar suddenly collapsed while being exercised and died. Diana immediately drove to the stables to commiserate with Charles, only to discover that he had already turned to Camilla for comfort.
Several days later, Charles summoned Diana to the Parker Bowles estate. There, in the gardens of Bolehyde Manor with Camilla peering from behind a curtain on the second floor, Charles asked Diana to marry him. “Yes, please,” she answered, and in a spontaneous burst of enthusiasm that left Charles taken aback, threw her arms around him.
The Queen threw a dinner party at Windsor to celebrate, and two days later the happy couple showed off her eighteen-carat sapphire and diamond engagement ring to the press.
“Are you in love?” a reporter asked them.
“Of course,” Diana replied indignantly. But even now, Camilla was never far from Charles’s mind, and he weighed his words carefully. “Whatever ‘in love’ is,” he snickered. Charles conceded to one friend that he was definitely not in love, but that he was going to marry Diana anyway because she had “all the right qualities.”
Soon Charles was preparing to depart on a five-week solo tour of Australia, New Zealand, Venezuela, and the United States. Camilla had offered to keep an eye on Diana while he was gone, and toward that end invited her to dinner at Bolehyde Manor. Diana noticed the invitation, written in longhand by Camilla and referencing the pending wedding. The invitation was dated prior to the day Charles proposed—clear evidence that Camilla was in on the planning.
Charles, unhappy that he was being forced into a marriage he clearly had no enthusiasm for, wasted no time whittling away at his fiancée’s self-confidence. Slipping his arm around her waist,he pinched some skin and cracked, “Oh, a bit chubby here, aren’t we?”—a remark that sent Diana into a downward spiral of depression and bulimia. Forcing herself to vomit five or six times a day, Diana’s waist eventually shrank from twenty-nine to twenty-two inches.
At one event, he chastised her for wearing a chic black dress to a charity event in London. “Only mourners wear black,” he sniffed. The remark was heard by Monaco’s Princess Grace, who ushered her into the ladies room, bolted the door, praised her fashion sense, and then listened patiently to Diana’s misgivings about becoming Princess of Wales. “Don’t worry,” Princess Grace said, laughing. “It will get a lot worse!”
Around the same time, before he left for Australia, a playful Diana was sitting on Charles’s lap in his Buckingham Palace office when a call came through from Camilla, who wanted to say goodbye. Diana instinctively left the room so that Charles and Camilla could have a private conversation. Later, Diana said that moment left her “heartbroken,” for it was then that she realized she had a serious rival in Camilla.
As the wedding drew near, Diana—who had always been “Duch” (short for “Duchess”) to family and friends—grew increasingly desperate. Two days before the wedding, she discovered a diamond bracelet Charles had made for Camilla with the intertwined initials F and G, for Fred and Gladys.
“I can’t marry him, I can’t do this,” she told her sisters on the eve of the wedding.
“Well, bad luck, Duch,” they said, pointing out that tens of millions of dollars’ worth of souvenirs bearing the likeness of the newlyweds had already been sold. “Your face is on the tea towels so you’re too late to chicken out.”
..........
THE WEDDING OF THE TWENTIETH Century took place on July 29, 1981, at St. Paul’s Cathedral and was witnessed by a worldwide television audience of 750 million people. Feeling like “a lamb to the slaughter,” Diana walked down the aisle knowing all eyes were on her. But as she approached the altar, her eyes were trained on Camilla—“pale
Charles was about to ask Diana to be his wife in late Februarywhen his prized racehorse Alibar suddenly collapsed while being exercised and died. Diana immediately drove to the stables to commiserate with Charles, only to discover that he had already turned to Camilla for comfort.
Several days later, Charles summoned Diana to the Parker Bowles estate. There, in the gardens of Bolehyde Manor with Camilla peering from behind a curtain on the second floor, Charles asked Diana to marry him. “Yes, please,” she answered, and in a spontaneous burst of enthusiasm that left Charles taken aback, threw her arms around him.
The Queen threw a dinner party at Windsor to celebrate, and two days later the happy couple showed off her eighteen-carat sapphire and diamond engagement ring to the press.
“Are you in love?” a reporter asked them.
“Of course,” Diana replied indignantly. But even now, Camilla was never far from Charles’s mind, and he weighed his words carefully. “Whatever ‘in love’ is,” he snickered. Charles conceded to one friend that he was definitely not in love, but that he was going to marry Diana anyway because she had “all the right qualities.”
Soon Charles was preparing to depart on a five-week solo tour of Australia, New Zealand, Venezuela, and the United States. Camilla had offered to keep an eye on Diana while he was gone, and toward that end invited her to dinner at Bolehyde Manor. Diana noticed the invitation, written in longhand by Camilla and referencing the pending wedding. The invitation was dated prior to the day Charles proposed—clear evidence that Camilla was in on the planning.
Charles, unhappy that he was being forced into a marriage he clearly had no enthusiasm for, wasted no time whittling away at his fiancée’s self-confidence. Slipping his arm around her waist,he pinched some skin and cracked, “Oh, a bit chubby here, aren’t we?”—a remark that sent Diana into a downward spiral of depression and bulimia. Forcing herself to vomit five or six times a day, Diana’s waist eventually shrank from twenty-nine to twenty-two inches.
At one event, he chastised her for wearing a chic black dress to a charity event in London. “Only mourners wear black,” he sniffed. The remark was heard by Monaco’s Princess Grace, who ushered her into the ladies room, bolted the door, praised her fashion sense, and then listened patiently to Diana’s misgivings about becoming Princess of Wales. “Don’t worry,” Princess Grace said, laughing. “It will get a lot worse!”
Around the same time, before he left for Australia, a playful Diana was sitting on Charles’s lap in his Buckingham Palace office when a call came through from Camilla, who wanted to say goodbye. Diana instinctively left the room so that Charles and Camilla could have a private conversation. Later, Diana said that moment left her “heartbroken,” for it was then that she realized she had a serious rival in Camilla.
As the wedding drew near, Diana—who had always been “Duch” (short for “Duchess”) to family and friends—grew increasingly desperate. Two days before the wedding, she discovered a diamond bracelet Charles had made for Camilla with the intertwined initials F and G, for Fred and Gladys.
“I can’t marry him, I can’t do this,” she told her sisters on the eve of the wedding.
“Well, bad luck, Duch,” they said, pointing out that tens of millions of dollars’ worth of souvenirs bearing the likeness of the newlyweds had already been sold. “Your face is on the tea towels so you’re too late to chicken out.”
..........
THE WEDDING OF THE TWENTIETH Century took place on July 29, 1981, at St. Paul’s Cathedral and was witnessed by a worldwide television audience of 750 million people. Feeling like “a lamb to the slaughter,” Diana walked down the aisle knowing all eyes were on her. But as she approached the altar, her eyes were trained on Camilla—“pale
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