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Time - Man of the Year
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1993-04-08
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REVIEWS, Page 65BOOKSRocks on the Royal Road
By MARTHA DUFFY
WHO: PRINCESS DIANA
WHAT: The Latest in the World's Greatest Soap Opera
THE BOTTOM LINE: Three best-selling bios, all claiming
that the Waleses are at war, contend the marriage is over.
Books on the Prince and Princess of Wales have been a
quiet cottage industry since the couple married with fanfare and
romance in 1981. Last year, their 10th anniversary, saw a spate
of them, prettily illustrated and saying roughly the same thing:
it may be an odd marriage, but it works for them. What a
difference a year can make. Now there are three new biographies
of Diana, all claiming the union is dead, a disaster, a sham.
And as usual, woe is what sells. Andrew Morton's Diana: Her True
Story (Simon & Schuster; $22) tops the best-seller lists; Lady
Colin Campbell's Diana in Private: The Princess Nobody Knows
(St. Martin's Press; $19.95) and Nicholas Davies' Diana: A
Princess and Her Troubled Marriage (Birch Lane Press; $21.95)
are on the charts too.
Morton's is the headliner because his sources include
Diana's brother Charles and Carolyn Bartholomew, a close friend.
It may be that the impetuous princess, despairing of the
prince's love, got sick of all those saccharine tomes and
decided to get her real story out. The result is avidly
pro-Diana. But was it worth it -- publicizing the distasteful
bouts with bulimia, the pitiful suicidal gestures, the shouting
matches in which she shows up as a fishwife?
There is no evidence that the princess or her intimates
had anything to do with the other biographies. For admirers of
Prince Charles, Campbell's is the choice. Her sources are
something of a mystery, but the citations are unintentionally
hilarious: "an aristocrat whose brother-in-law is a senior
courtier," "a titled schoolmate of Diana's," "a famous
socialite." Davies' is the most balanced account but also the
vaguest. The books read as if written in haste, and they contain
many discrepancies.
But the outlines are clear enough. Neither the prince nor
the princess got much parental love. The best part of Morton's
book is the simple, affecting account by Diana's brother of
their childhood, ruptured when their mother ran off with another
man. Prince Charles saw his mother an hour a day -- 30 minutes
in the morning, 30 minutes at night. If she was around.
Charles dithered his way through a lengthy list of girls,
some suitable, some not. But Camilla Parker-Bowles, one that
got away early and married another, has remained his very dear
friend -- and Diana's nemesis. In Morton's book she is depicted
as a schemer, vetting the prince's girls, not for their
potential as royals but "to see how much a threat they posed to
her own relationship." When the naive Diana said she didn't
enjoy hunting, Camilla, a horsewoman, brightened at once. Then
there was the discovery of Fred and Gladys -- the pet code names
by which Charles and Camilla communicated -- gifts, flowers,
notes.
In Campbell's book Diana is the schemer and Charles the
hapless one: "She knew he wasn't a scrap interested in her, but
she also saw that he was vulnerable." Diana got herself invited
to royal occasions by making friends with Lady Sarah
Armstrong-Jones, Princess Margaret's daughter. Whatever the
reality was, Diana expected that when they were married, her
husband would devote a great deal of time to her. She was
cruelly disappointed. Charles was chilly, his routine masculine
and inflexible.
The birth of Prince William in 1982 brought the couple
closer together; Prince Harry's arrival in 1984 did not. Charles
wanted a girl and, according to Morton, even objected to the
infant's "rusty hair," a Spencer family trait. The couple were
now battling constantly. Drama came naturally to Diana. Charles
loathed confrontation, and his retreat to a virtually separate
life in Gloucestershire, not far from Parker-Bowles, began.
For a while Diana pined and battled weight loss. Then
around 1986 she got effective treatment for her disease and,
through Fergie and Prince Andrew, consulted an astrologer. The
celestial message was simple: Do something positive with your
sufferings. She did and, as Campbell says, "the Royal Family's
answer to Mother Teresa . . .Diana the Good was born." Always
magic in public, Diana turned much of her attention to charities
involving the suffering, the dying. Her work has transformed her
image from a lovely clotheshorse to a unique figure: a woman who
uses her glamour and power to help others.
The public worldwide is smitten. Poll after poll puts her
on top of most-admired, most-beautiful and most-popular royal
lists. Closer to home, that is not the case. If her husband
admires her efforts for AIDS victims and drug addicts, he keeps
it to himself. By her in-laws, she is watched "in doubtful and
often jealous silence," writes Morton. "The world judges that
she has dusted off the dowdy image of the House of Windsor."
But inside it, "she is seen as an outsider and a problem. She
is tactile, emotional, gently irreverent and spontaneous." Adds
Davies: "Basically separated from her husband and most of her
royal in-laws, she has yet managed to carve out an empire for
herself."
What empire? Diana is the dominant partner in what is left
of the marriage. In avoiding her, Charles has to a degree
withdrawn from his sons. The boys palpably adore their mother,
who lavishes time and affection on them. Was the Morton book not
the impetuous blowout it seems to be but a prelude to divorce?
In her more florid moments, Diana has said she may never be
Queen. (A current story around London is that if Elizabeth II
lives another 20 years, Charles may stand aside in favor of
William.) But Diana has reportedly told the Queen she would
never let her down, and her mother-in-law's commands are the
only ones she follows unfailingly. The late Earl Mountbatten,
one of Charles' many mentors, once said nothing guarantees the
monarchy's survival; it is only as strong as any given King. So
the drama plays like any good soap opera: you simply have to
stay tuned.