Game of Crowns: Elizabeth, Camilla, Kate, and the Throne by Christopher Andersen Page B
Authors: Christopher Andersen
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gray, veiled pillbox hat, saw it all, her son Tom standing on a chair . . .”
Another guest, Charles’s Canadian paramour Janet Jenkins, watched Camilla closely as well. For years, their shared lover had always talked to Jenkins about “how wonderful Camilla was—he never spoke of Diana.” Jenkins knew that Charles “was in love with only one woman and that was Camilla. She was pulling the strings and the levers, definitely.”
At the wedding, Jenkins was “fascinated to get a look at this woman he preferred to his gorgeous young bride. Camilla had this cool, Cheshire cat grin as she watched them march down the aisle. She just seemed so delighted with the whole arrangement.”
From the very start, Diana later said, “there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.” Yet when she looked at Camilla on her wedding day, something “clicked” inside her. “I desperately wanted it to work. I desperately loved my husband, and I wanted to share everything together. . . . Here was a fairy story that everyone wanted to work.”
As far as Camilla was concerned, the fairy story was working splendidly—just as she planned it. Both she and Kanga Tryon were convinced that in Diana they had a pretty, guileless, malleable child who would bend to the ways of her elders. “Diana is a very sweet girl,” Camilla told Harold Brooks-Baker, “and she willgive Charles beautiful children.” Diana’s friend Lady Elsa Bowker even recalled Camilla, whose passion for horses was surpassed only by the Queen’s, favorably comparing the Princess of Wales to a “beautiful brood mare.”
Willingly, even eagerly casting herself in the role of royal mistress, Camilla had already proven herself adept at maneuvering courtiers, courtesans, and even members of the Royal Family like so many pieces on a chessboard. Everyone was right where she wanted them—or so Camilla believed. “Diana moved into Kensington Palace like she was supposed to,” Elsa Bowker recalled, “and they told her to do what they said, what the Queen wanted.”
Diana had other plans. “They thought of me as a blank slate,” Diana told Lady Bowker, “and they didn’t expect someone like me could possibly have a mind of her own. They were wrong.”
“YOU’RE CRYING WOLF,” CHARLES SHOUTED as he stormed through the main hall and out the front door of Sandringham in his riding clothes. “I’m not going to listen. You’re always doing this to me.” His wife of two years, now three months pregnant with their first child, stood on the second-floor landing and was vowing to throw herself down the main staircase. “I am so desperate, Charles,” she pleaded. “Please listen to me!”
Over the years, Diana’s unhappiness over Charles’s affair with Camilla would drive her to slash her wrists with a razor, stab herself in the chest with a pocketknife, and hurl herself against a glass display case, cutting herself badly in the process. This, however, was arguably the most spectacular—and dangerous—action she had ever taken to get her husband’s attention.
The Queen and Princess Margaret were on the main floor, overhearing everything as the bitter quarrel that started in the couple’s upstairs rooms spilled into Sandringham’s entrance hall. A blood-chilling scream, followed by the sound of a tumbling body, and the Queen came running to find her daughter-in-law in a heap at the foot of the stairs.
The Queen was, Diana later said, “absolutely horrified. She was so frightened.” Before any footmen arrived, Princess Margaret comforted Diana while the Queen, trembling, called for medical help. Incredibly, Charles just kept right on walking—out the front door and twelve minutes down the road to the stables of the Royal Stud. He would eventually learn that, although the bruises on Diana’s lower abdomen were of concern to her gynecologist, tests showed the fetus had not been harmed.
To the outside world, all appeared well in
Another guest, Charles’s Canadian paramour Janet Jenkins, watched Camilla closely as well. For years, their shared lover had always talked to Jenkins about “how wonderful Camilla was—he never spoke of Diana.” Jenkins knew that Charles “was in love with only one woman and that was Camilla. She was pulling the strings and the levers, definitely.”
At the wedding, Jenkins was “fascinated to get a look at this woman he preferred to his gorgeous young bride. Camilla had this cool, Cheshire cat grin as she watched them march down the aisle. She just seemed so delighted with the whole arrangement.”
From the very start, Diana later said, “there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.” Yet when she looked at Camilla on her wedding day, something “clicked” inside her. “I desperately wanted it to work. I desperately loved my husband, and I wanted to share everything together. . . . Here was a fairy story that everyone wanted to work.”
As far as Camilla was concerned, the fairy story was working splendidly—just as she planned it. Both she and Kanga Tryon were convinced that in Diana they had a pretty, guileless, malleable child who would bend to the ways of her elders. “Diana is a very sweet girl,” Camilla told Harold Brooks-Baker, “and she willgive Charles beautiful children.” Diana’s friend Lady Elsa Bowker even recalled Camilla, whose passion for horses was surpassed only by the Queen’s, favorably comparing the Princess of Wales to a “beautiful brood mare.”
Willingly, even eagerly casting herself in the role of royal mistress, Camilla had already proven herself adept at maneuvering courtiers, courtesans, and even members of the Royal Family like so many pieces on a chessboard. Everyone was right where she wanted them—or so Camilla believed. “Diana moved into Kensington Palace like she was supposed to,” Elsa Bowker recalled, “and they told her to do what they said, what the Queen wanted.”
Diana had other plans. “They thought of me as a blank slate,” Diana told Lady Bowker, “and they didn’t expect someone like me could possibly have a mind of her own. They were wrong.”
“YOU’RE CRYING WOLF,” CHARLES SHOUTED as he stormed through the main hall and out the front door of Sandringham in his riding clothes. “I’m not going to listen. You’re always doing this to me.” His wife of two years, now three months pregnant with their first child, stood on the second-floor landing and was vowing to throw herself down the main staircase. “I am so desperate, Charles,” she pleaded. “Please listen to me!”
Over the years, Diana’s unhappiness over Charles’s affair with Camilla would drive her to slash her wrists with a razor, stab herself in the chest with a pocketknife, and hurl herself against a glass display case, cutting herself badly in the process. This, however, was arguably the most spectacular—and dangerous—action she had ever taken to get her husband’s attention.
The Queen and Princess Margaret were on the main floor, overhearing everything as the bitter quarrel that started in the couple’s upstairs rooms spilled into Sandringham’s entrance hall. A blood-chilling scream, followed by the sound of a tumbling body, and the Queen came running to find her daughter-in-law in a heap at the foot of the stairs.
The Queen was, Diana later said, “absolutely horrified. She was so frightened.” Before any footmen arrived, Princess Margaret comforted Diana while the Queen, trembling, called for medical help. Incredibly, Charles just kept right on walking—out the front door and twelve minutes down the road to the stables of the Royal Stud. He would eventually learn that, although the bruises on Diana’s lower abdomen were of concern to her gynecologist, tests showed the fetus had not been harmed.
To the outside world, all appeared well in
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