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A Century of Royal Weddings, Charles

04-25-2011 by L. S. Carbonell

His Royal Highness, Charles Phillip Arthur George, Prince of Wales, was born November 14, 1948 at Buckingham Palace, eldest child of the Princess Elizabeth and Prince Phillip, first grandchild of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. A month later, he was baptized in the Music Room by Geoffrey Fisher, Archbishop of Canterbury, using water from the Jordan River. He, fortunately, did not develop typhoid or some other disease from the polluted water. Like all royals, he had a neat half-dozen godparents. His mother had been considered the heir presumptive most of her life, instead of the heir apparent, so his grandfather had to make it official just before Charles’ birth that he was to be a royal prince.

Charles was three years and three months old when his grandfather died and his mother became Queen. She had been in Kenya at the time, a preliminary stop on a planned tour of Australia and New Zealand. It had been the pattern of his and his sister Anne’s lives – their parents leaving them behind in England while they went on royal tours or stayed on the island of Malta while their father fulfilled his military duties. When he was five, his nanny was replaced with a governess, Catherine Peebles, who supervised his education until he was sent to school at eight. When he was enrolled in Hill House School in West London, he became the first royal prince to attend a regular school.

After Hill House, Charles attended the schools his father had attended, Cheam Preparatory in Berkshire and Gordonstoun in north-east Scotland, which he called “Colditz in kilts,” a reference to a German castle used as a high-security prison during World War II. Northeast Scotland is on the same latitude as northern Canada, and the boys (it was an all-boys school at the time) were rousted out of bed before dawn to run the track. Charles spent two semesters in Geelong, Austalia, enjoying a visit to Papua New Guinea with his tutor, Michael Collins Persse while at Geelong. His last term he was appointed Head Boy, as his father had been. He graduated in 1967, a year after a similarly aged American student would have.

Charles immediately entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied antrhopology, archaeology and history. He took his Bachelors degree in 1970. Both King Edward VII and King Edward VIII, as well as Queen Victoria’s son Leopold, had graduated from Oxford, but none had attended a school before being admitted to the university. During Charles’ third term, he attended the Old College, University of Wales, where he became the first Prince of Wales to attempt to learn the Welsh language.

Though he had been given the title Prince of Wales when he was nine, Charles went through an investiture ceremony on July 1, 1969. The entire “prince of Wales” thing is a difficult aspect of both British history and current politics.

In 1282, Llewelyn ap Gruffyd, last Prince of the Welsh ( more accurately, Prince of Gwynedd, last independent region of Wales) deposited his royal regalia at Cymer Abbey. When he was killed later in the year, his regalia was given to King Edward I of England (Longshanks of Braveheart). Edward promised the conquered people of Wales that their next prince would be Welsh-born. He moved his pregnant queen, Eleanor of Castile, into Caernafon Castle where she gave birth to the son who became Edward II. Ever since, the first-born son of the English monarch has been styled the Prince of Wales.

The first problem with the title is that it is inaccurate for a Celtic people. Celtic kings and queens are not monarch of land. The land belongs to no one. They are leaders of a people, and to this day, the king who lives in Brussels is called the King of the Belgians, not Belgium, just as Mary Stuart was called Mary, Queen of Scots, not Scotland. Then, there’s the matter of Wales having once been an independent country and has been a conquered country since 1282 and the title being given to an English heir is an insult (in addition to the insult of being the only native people of the British Isles considered to be a non-white race.)

During World War II, the government wanted Elizabeth named Princess of Wales, because there was a growing separatist movement in Wales, reflecting the revolution that had liberated most of Ireland. Relations with Wales had deteriorated to the point where, when English men went off to war, Welsh men were drafted to work in English factories so that English women didn’t become Rosie the Riveters. Welsh women went into the coal mines to replace the men. Welsh cities, because of ship building facilities and coal shipping facilities were targets of the Nazi blitzkrieg, just as relentlessly as London was, but Welsh children weren’t allowed to evacuate to the countryside as London children were. George VI nixed the idea of naming her Princess of Wales for purely chauvinistic reasons.

Relations with Wales had improved by the time Charles was 21, and he had spent time in Wales trying to learn a language only slightly less difficult than Basque. Since the time of Edward I, English kings had not invested their sons in Wales, choosing other venues such as Westminster Abbey. The decision was made to invest Charles inside the ruins of Caenarfon Castle.

The planning was handed over to Princess Margaret’s husband, Earl Snowdon. It became one of the best examples of how the British royals can make something look like centuries of tradition when they made it all up the day before yesterday. The whole ceremony went off beautifully, except for one little detail.

The Prince of Wales has traditionally had a coronet – a small crown – that he can wear on certain occasions. Llewelyn’s was long gone, but in 1728, Frederick, Prince of Wales had one made for himself. He was never King, but his son George III and grandson George VI both wore the Frederick coronet. It was replaced for Queen Elizabeth’s grandfather, George V when he was Prince of Wales and was worn by his eldest son, Edward, briefly Edward VIII. When he abdicated and went into exile, he purloined the coronet quite illegally. Like most of the regalia and a lot of the jewelry worn by the royals, it did not personally belong to him. A new coronet had to be made for Charles.

When Charles tried on the new coronet, he was probably grateful for his jug ears for the first time in his life. They were the only thing that kept the coronet from become a necklace. Some very rapid adjustments had to be made to keep the ceremony from turning into a comedy skit.

A few years ago, on one of the news comment streams, someone complained about Prince Charles appearing among the troops in Iraq in a military uniform. Well, he’s earned it. He spent time in the Royal Air Force, becoming a qualified pilot on a variety of planes, and then spent six years in the Royal Navy, retiring after serving as the captain of a coastal minehunter, while being qualified as a pilot on other types of aircraft. He also took advantage of Naval rules to grow a luxurious beard his great-grandfather would have proud of.

As he was growing up, Charles was closer to his grandmother, the Queen Mother, and his father’s uncle, Louis, Earl Mountbatten, also known inside the family as Uncle Dickie, than he was to his parents. It was Uncle Dickie who gave Charles guidance about dating: “In a case like yours, the man should sow his wild oats and have as many affairs as he can before settling down, but for a wife he should choose a suitable, attractive, and sweet-charactered girl before she has met anyone else she might fall for…It is disturbing for women to have experiences if they have to remain on a pedestal after marriage.” Charles dated many young women, both in and out of the aristocratic social circles. It had been Lord Mountbatten who had arranged the meetings between his handsome young nephew and the Princess Elizabeth just about the time her hormones went into high gear. In 1974, Mountbatten laid his cards on the table, suggesting to Charles that he should finish up his bachelorhood and marry Mountbatten’s granddaugher, Lady Amanda Knatchbull, then just 17 years old. Charles eventually did propose to Amanda, shortly after Lord Mountbatten, her paternal grandmother, and younger brother Nicholas had been killed by an IRA bomb on Lord Mountbatten’s boat in 1979. Amanda turned him down. It was also suggested that Charles proposed to Amanda’s older sister, Joanna, but that is not confirmed independently.

According to Lady Colin Campbell’s 1992 book, Diana in Private, the Queen Mother favored the daughters of Edward John Spencer, 8^th Earl Spencer, a title dating back to 1765 whose family home, Althorp, is practically next door to the Royal estate at Sandringham. Charles did date Sarah Spencer, and Lady Campbell asserted that he proposed to both of the elder Spencer sisters before getting around to Diana.

Lady Colin Campbell’s book is sort of considered the anti-Morton version of the story of Charles and Diana. There are three available versions – Campbell’s which is very defensive of Prince Charles, Andrew Morton’s two books which we now know were dictated to him by Princess Diana, and Prince Charles official biography by Jonathan Dimbleby, which is pretty bland. The facts are simple. Lady Diana Frances Spencer was the youngest daughter of a family with close social ties to the Royals. She was a technical commoner, just as the Queen Mother had been, but was very much raised inside the aristocracy. She first met Prince Charles when she was 16. Three years later, under pressure from his family to marry and running out of acceptable candidates, Charles started dating Lady Diana, proposed to her and she accepted. The respective parents approved, even if friends and her sisters raised objections.

Their first joint interview after the engagement was announced should have raised enough red flags to get the Queen to withdraw her approval. When asked if they were “in love,” Diana gushed and Charles responded “whatever that means.”

The wedding hysteria on both sides of the pond made today’s excitement about Friday’s wedding look like a case of boredom. Diana’s technical status as a commoner and her brief stints working as a babysitter and kindergarten aide had people in the States picturing her as one of the ordinary people. She was pretty, very young and overwhelmed by the press attention. Diana came to be known as Shy Di, even though in person among her peers, she really wasn’t.

Because Charles was heir to the throne, this was a state wedding, including in the 3,500 guests heads of state who were not relatives of the groom. It is the only royal wedding this century held at the massive St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. Our First Lady, Nancy Reagan was among the guests, along with the heads of most of the Commonwealth states, the deposed kings and queens of most of the old kingdoms and empires of Europe, the Prime Ministers of most of the allies of the United Kingdom. It was the largest state gathering in the U.K. last century. An estimated 750 million people watched the wedding worldwide on television and two million lined the procession route.

When Diana stepped out of the Royal Glass Carriage with her father, we all saw the gown for the first time. Okay, everyone get ready to complain. The dress was a mess. The designers went with their vision of a royal wedding dress instead of actually looking at the girl they were putting the dress on. It looked like it was two sizes too large. It had gotten badly wrinkled in the coach and they weren’t waiting in the chancery with a steamer. A wedding gown should make the bride look beautiful. It should not so dominate the picture that the bride gets lost. Margaret’s and Anne’s gowns were perfect because they made the brides beautiful and focused attention on them. Diana’s was a disaster because all one saw was the dress and the 25 feet of train that trailed behind her dragging on the carpet. The gown was designed by Elizabeth and David Emanuel, made of ivory silk taffeta and antique lace, decorated with hand embroidery, sequins and 10,000 hand stitched pearls. Somewhere under all that tulle was the Spencer tiara.  Charles wore his full dress naval commander uniform.

Prince Andrew and Prince Edward stood with their older brother, while Diana was attended by Lady Sarah Armstrong-Jones, India Hicks, Catherine Cameron, Sarah-Jane Gaselee, and Clementine Hambro. Apparently the Queen Mother’s expressed concern about finding maidens to attend royal brides back in 1947 was solved by chosing bridesmaids who ranged in age from 5 to 17. Lord Nicholas Windsor and Edward van Cutsem, were pageboys.

It is traditional for all royal ceremonies for the royal family to appear on the balcony of Buckingham Palace. During the appearance after Charles and Diana’s wedding, the crowd starting chanting for the couple to kiss. They did, breaking the royal rule of never engaging in public displays of affection.

After the balcony, there was a breakfast for 120 guests. There were 27 wedding cakes and the usual champagne.

The official wedding cake was prepared by the Naval Armed Forces, created by head baker David Avery. It took 14 weeks to create and the bottom layer took 12 hours to bake. There was a spare cake in case of transit accident, which was distributed among the naval cookery trainees, with pieces for the trainees’ mothers.

After beginning their honeymoon in the town of Romsey in Hampshire, they also used the Royal Yacht Brittania for a honeymoon cruise as had Princesses Margaret and Anne.

Following the births of their sons William and Harry in 1982 and 1984, the marriage went very south very quickly. Everyone knows the story, so there’s no point repeating it here. The divorce was final on August 28, 1996. Following the divorce, Diana became involved with the crusade to ban land mines. Land mines are considered a political issue and as such it was a charity forbidden to the Royal family. Diana could be involved with it and not trespass on any of the myriad charities sponsored and patroned by the royals.

On August 31, 1997, Princess Diana was killed in a car crash in a Paris tunnel riding with her boyfriend Dodi al Fayed, son of the owner of Harrod’s Department Stores. The driver Henri Paul was also killed, but Diana’s personal bodyguard survived. Dodi’s father has maintained ever since that they were killed by the Royal family to prevent Diana marrying a Muslim.

Prince Charles charities involve the disabled, the environment, the arts, medicine, the elderly and heritage conservation. His original charity foundation The Prince’s Trust provided grants for young entrepreneurs and artists to give them a leg up in the world. He has drawn a lot of criticism for his views on modern architecture. In his view, the core of many cities has a certain style – Georgian and Wren London, turn-of-the-century Paris, and these cores should be preserved and complimented. He has also be ridiculed for his beliefs about organic farming and sustainable environment. Prince Charles is a man with a brain, definite opinions, commitments and passion, and a really boring presentation style. He has now officially become the longest serving king-in-waiting, surpassing the wait of Edward VII, Queen Victoria’s heir, who was born after she assumed the throne. As Prince Charles recently put it, the problem with being Prince of Wales is that the thing that moves one forward involves the death of one’s parent.

I have a town hall meeting to attend Thursday with my Senator Bernie Sanders, so the schedule for these has moved up. We will return to Charles and Anne on Wednesday, not Thursday. Tomorrow, the spare heirs, Andrew and Edward.

Related articles

• A Century of Royal Weddings, Anne (lezgetreal.com)
• A Century of Royal Weddings, Margaret (lezgetreal.com)
• A Century of Royal Weddings, The Two Elizabeths (lezgetreal.com)