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                                                                                COVER STORY, Page 52

SEPARATE LIVES


Diana is ready to declare independence, putting in doubt the
future of the troubled House of Windsor


By MARTHA DUFFY/LONDON - With reporting by Helen Gibson/London


    The speaker, in a severe pinstripe suit, makes a plea for
the prevention and treatment of drug abuse by young people. Her
speech is well reasoned and delivered with confidence. But
toward the end, she turns a merry, mischievous eye on her
audience of more than 800 media heavyweights. ``Like it or not,"
she said, "I have been quite a provider for the media, and now
I'm asking for your help." Of course the line gets a laugh, for
the public obsession with the Princess of Wales and her
troubled marriage to Prince Charles has provided a windfall for
London's 11 dailies all year.

    Diana's speech, her longest and most ambitious yet, made
all the TV news broadcasts and all the papers. Her message was
simple: the child who has been hugged and kissed and shown
affection is less likely to demand attention by resorting to
self-destructive behavior. But the tabloid press, always
searching for subtext, heard the princess's remarks as a
personal statement about her childhood, scarred by her parents'
broken marriage, and her own marriage, marred by the rigid,
distinctly unhuggy codes of royal behavior.

    As a sorrowing Queen and her family watched the flames
consume the halls and treasures of Windsor Castle last week, it
seemed a cruel metaphor for the events of this past year.
Britain's House of Windsor is under fire in 1992 as it has not
been since 1936, the year Edward VIII abdicated the throne. The
notion of the family monarchy, a Victorian-era invention that
accorded a symbolic and public role to royal offspring and
consorts as well as to the crown, is on the brink of collapse.
None of the four children of Queen Elizabeth II has been able
to sustain a stable marriage. Princess Anne has divorced and may
remarry, Prince Andrew is separated from his cavorting Duchess,
and Prince Edward has not approached the altar or shown signs
that he ever will. The scandal over Diana's secretly taped phone
coos to a friend has been overshadowed by reports of a steamy
conversation between Prince Charles and a longtime companion.
And now, in what may be the severest blow of all, Diana and
Charles seem ready to resign themselves to living separate
lives, maintaining their marriage in name only.

    Speculation about adultery, love affairs, "Dianagate,"
"Camillagate" -- the headlines are hurricanes buffeting a
fragile, archaic institution that may not be able to withstand
the impact. Each new revelation elicits more serious calls for
the monarchy to be taxed, for a cut in its numbers who are paid
a government stipend, and -- to entertain the unthinkable -- for
the whole institution to be abolished. Even knowledgeable
observers are writing off Charles and Diana as the next King and
Queen. How could they take coronation vows, given their farce
of a marriage, she possibly too high-strung to be Queen Consort,
he exposed as quintessential neo-bachelor living the life of his
choice and ignoring his marriage?

    The most plausible alternative is for the Windsors to skip
over their dysfunctional generation. The scenario goes this
way. The Queen, whose performance during a 40-year tenure in a
demanding job has been irreproachable, values above all the
stability of the monarchy. Assuming she has inherited her
mother's longevity genes -- the Queen Mother is going strong at
92 -- Elizabeth, now 66, could reign another decade or two. By
that time she could skip a generation and name Prince William,
now 10, to the throne. There has even been speculation in the
tabloids that Prince Charles has already asked his mother to be
permitted to step aside, though Buckingham Palace strongly
denies this.

    The turmoil of '92 began when Sarah Ferguson, or Fergie,
the notorious Duchess of York, decided that a cramped,
duty-bound life-style was not for her and bolted, leaving a
trail of dubious liaisons, outsize bills and scandalous tabloid
shots of her cavorting topless with a boyfriend in front of her
two children. Then Diana went public with her marriage troubles,
allowing her brother and close friends to talk to Andrew Morton,
whose best-selling book, Diana: Her True Story, detailed her
depression, bulimia, suicide attempts and estrangement from her
prince. By royal standards of conduct, in which silence is not
only golden but iron too, that was bad enough. Then a tape
surfaced purporting to be a conversation between her and a
too-close friend, James Gilbey, usually described as a
man-about-town, and the tabloids began howling.

    For a time it appeared that royal scruple still counted
for something. While the women made the scandals, their
husbands steadfastly said absolutely nothing. But the cellular
phone, easy to pick up by ham operators, should be withdrawn
from all in court circles. Two weeks ago, the newspapers got
hold of a second tape, this time allegedly of an intimate chat
between a lonely Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles, a
married woman with whom he has been linked since well before his
marriage to Diana. Thus began Camillagate. John Casey of the
Evening Standard wrote last week that he had learned that part
of the tape included a discussion of the transmigration of
souls. "In the next life," he quotes Charles as saying, "I
should like to come back as your trousers."

    Whatever rules of taste and fairness once governed even
tabloid coverage of the royals have been consumed by the present
feeding frenzy. The family has become fodder for London's fierce
circulation wars, now particularly hot between the Daily Mirror
and the Sun, two working-class tabs. Competition to move the
story forward often means making up whatever elements are
missing. On the much anticipated royal reunion trip to South
Korea two weeks ago, the couple hit the front pages looking sad
and sour, under headlines like TORTURED and THE GLUMS. But
palace aides deny this, and the conservative Daily Telegraph
came to their support by showing some of the tightly cropped
pictures beside the full originals. Many grim shots were taken
at a war memorial. Others came when the pair were trying to read
a detail map as intricacies of the Korean War fighting were
being explained to them. Says a photographer who covered the
trip: "What are you going to do when the editor says he wants
sad pictures?"

    So ardent is the press in its pursuit of new rumors that
reporters have become targets of charges that they have crossed
the line. Last week Lord McGregor of Durris, the chairman of the
British Press Complaints Commission, defended the notion that
the royals were public property, but nonetheless called some of
the stories "prurient reporting." He added, "The most recent
intrusive and speculative treatment by sections of the press
(and indeed by broadcasters) of the marriage of the Prince and
Princess of Wales is an odious exhibition of journalists
dabbling their fingers in the stuff of other people's souls."

    William Rees-Mogg, chairman of the Broadcasting Standards
Council and former editor of the Times of London, also made an
unusual, almost romantic appeal for some sympathy for the
beleaguered couple. Writing in the Independent, a dead-serious
newspaper that makes a point of ignoring the royals when at all
possible, he noted, "The Prince of Wales is not a tiresome cad,
the Princess of Wales is not a crazy witch."

    The author has a persuasive notion about why Charles, who
often seems obtuse, is so elusive. He places the responsibility
largely on gruff Prince Philip, whose military deportment may
have terrified the little boy. Philip thought it took a hard
education to make a strong prince, and packed the sensitive
Charles off to Gordonstoun in Scotland -- a place that was as
much marine boot camp as school. He hated it. Of Diana,
Rees-Mogg said that "she knows herself to be a remarkable
person, and remarkable people usually need to be admired. It is
no good asking a star to accept the role of a glowworm."

    Their marriage was doomed from the start, he wrote,
because each had slogged through a hard childhood and needed an
exceptional amount of emotional support that the other was
unable to give. He portrays Diana as the more robust personality
of the two, a born leader who will only grow stronger. In the
end he fancifully envisioned them both in the 15th century. She
would be another Joan of Arc, commanding armies in battle.
Charles would be Archbishop Henry Chichele, founder of All Souls
College, Oxford. In the 20th century, says the author, "we must
be compassionate to them." At the palace, the article was a hit.

    But the Windsors still remain uneasy with their St. Joan.
After all, she does their job better than they do, and she is
fully aware of her power. Many people think she holds the future
of the monarchy in her hands, both as the mother of Prince
William, the future King, and as the most popular and successful
royal now active. If she were to leave, the country would not
suddenly turn into a republic, but the burden on the institution
would be heavy.

    Even if she forever remains legally a part of the family,
Diana has made it clear in recent weeks that she relishes the
prospect of going her own way. On the weekend of Nov. 14, while
Charles was home celebrating his 44th birthday, Diana made a
high-profile trip to Paris that turned into a triumph. Looking
relaxed and radiant, she spent nearly two hours with the
Mitterrands, much of it with the President himself. She appears
confident discussing humanitarian and social issues in such
powerful surroundings and invariably wins the rapt attention of
Presidents and ministers with a distinctly honest way of
speaking and asking questions -- a far cry from her earlier
repertoire of girlish smiles and playing dumb.

    Diana relishes being her own woman, playing the role to
the hilt. She has become an ardent patron of many causes,
especially involving AIDS patients, the infirm and deprived
children. "I doubt if anyone in the British Isles is better at
going into a ward filled with people with cancer or AIDS," says
biographer Philip Ziegler. Those close to her say the princess
is very savvy and streetwise and, when not in the grip of
frustration or rage, well able to size up her position. "She
recognizes what people want from her," says someone who has
worked with her, "and she just goes and works along. And she
gives as good as she gets." She is said to live very intensely
and put her all into anything she undertakes.

    She expects others to do the same. She is a warm,
demonstrative mother to her boys, but they know who's boss.
Never try to put anything past her, says an ex-employee who
wishes her well. "She has remarkable recall, incredible
peripheral vision. Never try to do anything behind her back,
because she has eyes there too. She is a fair but exacting
person to work for. And she can spot bull a mile off."

    One less tangible function of the royal family is to act
as a sort of projection for people's emotions or aspirations.
Diana's contemporaries, especially women, see her as a kind of
feminist heroine, a fighter who knows her own worth, what she
wants out of life and how to flout traditional protocol to get
it. Even Camille Paglia, the American feminist movement's holy
terror, got the message and has jumped on the bandwagon. Writing
in the New Republic, she argued that "Diana may have become the
most powerful image in world popular culture today."

    The revelations of Morton's book and the Dianagate tape
have done nothing to diminish her enormous public appeal. Some
recent polls rank her as the family's most popular member. No
wonder then that she is not at all daunted by a solo life if
that is to be her fate. "After all," says broadcaster and
veteran royal biographer Penny Junor, "she's been orchestrating
events." Her confidence is such that on her Paris trip, though
she has only patchy, schoolgirl French, she did not hesitate to
use it -- no mean attainment, since the French have a way of
intimidating foreign speakers considerably more fluent than
Diana. People who have worked with her on various causes and
charities are convinced that her secret lies not in her looks
or her title but in her directness. It is hard not to respond
to it.

    But her directness and warmth, so charming to outsiders,
may be the qualities that alienated the remote Prince Charles.
Prince Andrew may have erred by marrying a lively girl with no
visible sense of responsibility, but Charles' downfall was
marrying a superstar, a charismatic beauty, perhaps the world's
most photogenic woman. Thirteen years his junior and barely out
of her teens when they married in 1981, Diana quickly
discovered her extraordinary hold on the public. Her residences
are London and the limelight. Especially in the past few years,
as her two sons have been in school, she has defined her own
life and goals with scant reference to his.

    More and more Charles prefers the country and working
behind the scenes. And, his many supporters say, work he does.
He has adopted environmental issues as his principal focus and
prides himself on his unique ability to bring together at a
quiet conference experts who would not ordinarily meet or sit
down for a serious session. Last week the prince flew to
Strasbourg, France, to learn more about the workings of the
European Community, then to Brussels to address a joint British
and European environmental group.

    Charles' second front is architecture, and in this field
he has won his most popular success. He inherited many of his
father's gadfly, curmudgeonly qualities, and when he started
railing against the ugliness of London's skyline and new
buildings that looked like carbuncles, he struck a chord in the
common man. This month he opened his own Institute for
Architecture near London's Regent's Park, which will offer
courses toward a degree in the field and will serve as a
gathering point for conferences.

    The prince is often pictured sketching in Scotland or
communing with plants at his country house, Highgrove. It is
true that he enjoys the pastimes typical of the English upper
class: polo, hunting, shooting. But his schedule, much of it off
camera, is busy. Last week he also took time to talk at some
length with 22 recipients of loans or grants from the Prince's
Youth Business Trust, which launches young would-be
entrepreneurs, many of them unemployed, in realistic businesses.
In this crowd he is perfectly at home, welcoming them by saying
that the whole event is blatant advertising for himself and
listening to both their problems and their boasts. Some of the
photographers who cover his wife diligently sympathize with
Charles, but as one of them says, "editors won't print pictures
of a man in a suit unless he's a head of state."

    In a way that sums up the hard side of Charles'
predicament. Without a domain of his own, he tends to be defined
by his botched marriage. Says his biographer Anthony Holden:
"All the speeches on the rain forests and the buildings pale
when you're two-timing the most popular woman in England."

    For her part, Diana appears to have expected "a meaningful
relationship," to use her generation's argot. Not royal at all.
Like his father and many noble males, Charles is mulishly set
in his ways, loath to show any feelings, not to speak of the
emotional give-and-take involved in an ordinary marriage.

    The transcript of Diana's conversation with Gilbey makes
embarrassing yet poignant reading. Gilbey burbles "darling"
repeatedly. He wants to talk about "us." She, however, is very
cautious, diverting any intimacy by changing the subject. What
she wants is praise, appreciation for her sufferings and a
chance to complain (she feels -- with some justification -- that
her in-laws are against her and that the Queen Mother is giving
her funny looks).

    The palace has not denied the authenticity of the tapes,
but others do, including veteran royal biographer Brian Hoey.
His chief point is that the conversation is supposed to have
taken place around 11 p.m. on New Year's Eve, when the Queen
Mother's annual party, from which no one is excused, is in full
swing.

    Gossips thrive on a kind of conspiracy theory that has
Charles and Diana each surrounded by cadres of supporters who
leak material damaging to the other. In the case of Charles,
even palace professionals and police have been rumored to be
fueling the family feud. In Diana's, it is friends like Gilbey
and her brother Charles, the new Earl Spencer. If true, she may
not be getting very good advice. Last year Spencer decided to
head off a rumor about an affair that continued after his
marriage by announcing himself that it was true. Perhaps not the
sagest fellow to counsel the future Queen.

    In a chapter written for the newly released paperback of
his book on Diana, Andrew Morton states that the couple made a
friendly agreement between themselves to separate. That pact did
not survive stormy sessions with Charles' parents, who
supposedly would love to see Diana go but resist any
concessions. For instance, if a divorce were to occur, they
would want her to give up her public work, which is genuinely
dear to her. If she were to remarry, the royal family would want
her to leave the country and her boys. It is doubtful that
either the mother or the reputation of the monarchy would
survive that gambit.

    Despite the common impression, a divorce would not
interfere with Charles' future position as head of the Church
of England -- even if the church's critics accuse it of "moving
the goalposts" to keep the monarchy and its own traditions
alive. The deterrents, however, are formidable. Philip Ziegler
observes that if the couple were to divorce, "it would be
damaging, and a great asset to the royal family would be lost
or eliminated." For the moment there remains some effort at
peacemaking. After her return from South Korea, Diana released
a statement aimed at Morton's new chapter, saying that the Queen
and Prince Philip had always supported her -- which was read as
confirmation that the circumstances of her marriage required
some support.

    Whatever accommodation the prince and princess reach,
their travails have raised concerns that touch the rest of the
family, and the image of the monarchy itself. Most serious is
the new focus on what is coming to be considered as the royals'
free ride. The Queen pays no tax on her personal fortune. The
active members of her family receive nearly $15 million
annually, which is used to support their public duties. As
palace spokesmen point out, most of this goes for employee
salaries, as does 75% of the Queen's annual $12 million.

    That is not all the crown costs. The government maintains
royal buildings and grounds, the yacht Britannia with its crew
of 256, the train and the various planes and helicopters that
the family use. It all adds up to more than $100 million a
year. Commentators like to bring up Scandinavian monarchies,
which cost a fraction of that, but Britons revel in pageantry,
elaborate parades and huge royal weddings -- and no one in the
world puts on a better show.

    Such explanations, however, have failed to quiet the
protests over the costs of the whole enterprise. As recently as
1990, Parliament voted against taxing the Queen, though polls
now show that about 80% of the population think the Queen
should pay something. She is listening, and some sort of plans
are on the drawing board. It is more likely that the next
monarch will be faced with paying the bill. Even such
pro-monarchy stalwarts as constitutional scholar Lord St. John
(pronounced Sin-gin) of Fawlsey say that "in this day and age,
the income-tax exemption is pretty hard to defend." But he
deplores any further changes. "The monarchy is the symbol of our
national unity."

    Does Britain need a monarch at all, or could the nation do
just as well without? There are a few obvious advantages. The
country profits from an enormous tourist trade, an $11.5 billion
industry in 1990. London is one of the top destinations for
traveling Americans, and the quaint ceremonies that surround
royal life are a major part of its appeal. Then there is the
less easily measured factor of the tradition and continuity that
the crown represents, something to be proud of in the post-World
War II decades when Britain has had to settle for considerably
less wealth and power. Finally, many Britons regard a threat to
the monarchy as an abrogation of their constitution, the spine
of their country. It is not just a matter of conservatism or
liberalism. Says Peter Hennessy, professor of contemporary
history at the University of London: "I am a man of the center
left, but I know a blue-ribbon institution when I see one."

    There is a hardy opposition, however, and its best-known
mouthpiece is fire-breathing Labour M.P. Tony Benn. "We are
still a feudal society, trying to live off whiskey, tweed and
the royal family," he sputters. "The fact is that a Prime
Minister's powers are derived from crown powers, and they are
greater than a President's. A Prime Minister, on his or her own,
can create judges, bishops, lords, send troops to the Falklands.
Beside this, Di and Fergie are absolute froth."

    The reason why even the most enthusiastic republicans do
not see the end of the crown is the Queen herself. The most
common comment about her is that "she has not put a foot wrong"
in four decades. When she succeeded her father in 1952, she
found that he had left the institution in very strong condition,
largely because of the family's performance in World War II.
Elizabeth's parents stayed in London while the bombs dropped.
As her mother famously declared when asked whether she or her
children would flee the country, "The children will not leave
unless I do. I shall not leave unless their father does, and the
King will not leave the country in any circumstances whatever."
After the bombing sorties the King and Queen were out in the
fields of rubble, consoling and encouraging the wounded and the
homeless. The monarchy still draws on those reserves of love and
loyalty. When the Queen Mother dies, the nation will come
together as it may not for any occasion thereafter.

    The Queen inherited little of her mother's charm or her
publicity smarts (to this day when the old lady travels in the
ceremonial horse-drawn coach, tiny, hidden bulbs highlight her
face). The present Queen's props have become national jokes --
the pack of corgis, the kerchief, the ever present purse with
nothing in it, least of all cash. Like her father, she is shy.
A recent TV show detailing her routines, Elizabeth R, has a
painful vignette of the Queen visiting an old people's home. She
asks one elderly soul, who is obviously not dressed for the
street, whether she lives there. Then, does she have a room of
her own? When the woman says yes, the mistress of a thousand
rooms replies, "That must be rather nice."

    One might in the current climate question whether a nation
needs to underwrite a performance like that. Sue Townsend,
author of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, has just published
a novel called The Queen and I, which imagines that the royal
family has been consigned to a public housing development by a
stern republican government that has overthrown the monarchy.
The book is both funny and impudent, but it contains a portrait
of Elizabeth that is admiring in spite of itself. Townsend
plays up Her Majesty's awkwardness, but of all her clan she
adjusts best to her alien circumstances, simply by applying
common sense and pluck.

    Homely values, so simple and yet, it seems, so elusive,
are apparently the secret of her exemplary reign. In Elizabeth
R, the Queen becomes eloquent when reflecting on her own
outlook. She recalls the moment when she gave a young soldier
an award for gallantry: "I said, `That was a very brave thing
to do.' He said, `Och, it was just the training.' I have a
feeling that, in the end, probably that is the answer to a great
many things."

    And in the end, that may be the answer to what went wrong.
The training that Her Majesty received from her parents did not
prove easy to pass along to the next generation. She and Prince
Philip, both austere and chilly as parents, were able to
instill a concept of duty in their children, but not the warmth
that still radiates from their grandmother.

    Ironically enough, the family member most blessed with
these qualities is Diana, the outsider now determined to follow
her own path. Last month she opened a drug-rehab center in
Brixton, a London slum that was the scene of grim riots in 1981.
In a sense she was updating her grandmother-in-law's forays
into blitz-ravaged areas. Despite the best efforts of the
staff, not all the planned events came off, and the visit looked
to come up short. Diana read the situation at once, and asked
to hear more from the lusty gospel choir that had sung for her
earlier. Who could blame her? Their selection had been
Everything's Gonna Be All Right.