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Text File | 1992-09-22 | 5.4 KB | 114 lines

                                                                                BRITAIN, Page 51

The Royal Rows Of Windsor


A new biography of Princess Diana may be flawed, but the picture
of an empty marriage rings true

By MARTHA DUFFY -- Reported by Helen Gibson/London


    The trouble began even before the marriage. The 1981
royal match between Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer, a
touchingly pretty aristocrat of 20, needed no hype. It really
was a picture-perfect wedding. The sheltered bride-to-be blushed
and gazed with ardor at her proud fiance. She had little to say
for herself, nothing much at all in the way of experience,
accomplishment or taste. But the press spotted its new idol.
Diana quickly became an international obsession. Before the girl
reached the altar, her distraught mother had written the Times
of London to complain with poignant naivete that fictitious
incidents were actually being concocted and quotes made up.

    It was the dawn of a major British industry: the pursuit
and glorification of the Princess of Wales. Last week it
reached its apogee with the publication in the Sunday Times of
excerpts from a forthcoming book alleging that the prince had
all but deserted his wife and that the despairing princess had
tried to kill herself. Diana: Her True Story, by royals watcher
Andrew Morton, is big business. The Sunday Times paid $462,500
for its excerpts.

    Never mind that the most sensational parts are among the
oldest information. Morton makes much of Diana's bulimia,
usually a disease of young girls who follow binge eating with
self-induced vomiting in order to stay slender. But Diana's
painfully thin phase goes back to the early '80s, after Prince
William's birth. Some of the material sounds farfetched,
including an account of her throwing herself down a flight of
steps in view of the Queen Mother.

    What was more shocking was that the Princess of Wales
tolerated the cooperation of several intimates and friends with
Morton's project. This is virtually unheard of. Anyone with a
real royal connection never speaks to reporters, simply because
doing so means instant and permanent ostracism at court. But
Diana's late father Earl Spencer, always appealingly proud of
his little girl and avid for personal attention, contributed
dozens of unpublished pictures. Her brother and a sister
apparently spoke to Morton, as did an ex-roommate, Carolyn
Bartholomew, and a couple of her buddies. Buckingham Palace at
once snapped that the princess in no way cooperated with the
book.

    If the suicidal "cries for help" did occur, they were in
the early '80s, when Diana produced two sons while emerging
from her own adolescence as the world watched. At times she
burst into tears at photographers' endless prying. They were,
of course, quick to pick up that the couple were appearing
together less and less. One reason was obvious: the ever more
glamorous princess always stole the show from her awkward
prince.

    But separation became routine. In Charles' defense it
could be said that the role of king-in-waiting to a robustly
healthy mother while acting simultaneously as consort to a
superstar formed the basis of a dour midlife crisis. The new
book makes much of the prince's relationship with Camilla
Parker-Bowles, 43, the wife of a brigadier who is himself a
courtier, with the title of Silver Stick in Waiting to the
Queen. Camilla is one of Charles' old flames, dating from his
lengthy bachelor days, when he courted classy girls
enthusiastically but did not propose.

    Some of this detail appears too good to be made up.
According to Morton, Charles and Camilla communicate in code as
Fred and Gladys, perhaps a plummy send-up of lower-class British
names. The author claims that a few weeks before her wedding,
Diana found a jewel box containing a bracelet inscribed FRED AND
GLADYS, and considered calling the whole thing off. As usual,
this yarn would probably not get past Murder, She Wrote's story
editors: it seems unlikely that the virginal fiance would
encounter such an object.

    British reaction so far has been largely friendly to the
royals. Even a few Labour stalwarts have criticized the
intrusion into private matters. (The U.S. press was cruder.
Headlined New York Newsday: THROW THE BUM OUT.) But will the
public continue to support the Queen's fractious children?
Prince Andrew's marriage to the feckless Fergie has been a
botch. The popular, hardworking Princess Anne was last seen in
the tabloids dancing the night away with a former equerry.

    In her first appearance last week after the press ruckus,
Diana wept briefly when, engulfed as usual by photographers, she
left a cancer hospice in Liverpool. Was it for the dying? For
herself? Who knows? The question remains why she broke the
unspoken code and allowed friends to speak publicly. A year ago,
it appeared that she had put private troubles behind her and
embraced her unique public role. As her country's most effective
symbol, she holds a commanding position. Charles could divorce
her, but as future head of the Church of England, he could not
remarry in church. After taking such an unpopular step, he might
have trouble even appearing in public. But it may be that
superstardom is wearing thin for Diana, that being exemplary and
even adored is not enough. Maybe the fairy-tale princess wants
romance, and is once again crying for help.