For the royal family, today was a typical day-after-the-bombshell. Queen Elizabeth II was at Sandringham, the northern estate, where her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, shot clay pigeons. The Princess of Wales smiled for the cameras when she took her two sons to play tennis in London. The Prince of Wales was lying low, visiting two hospices near his home at Highgrove in Gloucestershire.
They left it to the spokespeople, spin doctors, unnamed friends and "royal correspondents" of the newspapers, opining portentously in newsprint and on radio and television, to deal with the storm unleashed by the news that the Queen had urged Prince Charles and Diana to bring their failed 14-year marriage to a quick divorce.
For people on the street, hard put to step around screaming headlines and talk show proclamations, the attitude was that of a bedside friend who had been holding a dying pulse for a long time.
"About time," said one taxi driver. "Enough said. Let them get on with their lives."
Everyone agrees that the British monarchy is going through its worst crisis since 1936, when Edward VIII was forced to give up the crown because of his love for an American divorcee. What they are not sure of, now that a possible denouement is at hand, is whether a divorce would end the crisis.
By intervening this week to urge a rapid divorce, the Queen is trying to avoid what journalists and others who keep an eye on Buckingham Palace call the "nightmare scenario," which could happen right now if she were to die.
Then the feud between her heir and his estranged wife would be a serious matter indeed. There would be a hostile king and queen, each with a separate court and conspiring coteries of attendants and publicists, splitting the House of Windsor and endangering the monarchy.
That ugly prospect would be put to rest the instant a divorce decree became final, because then the Princess could no longer become Queen.
But even with a divorce, the problems do not go away. Unlike Wallis Simpson, the twice-divorced American who lived with her husband, the ex-king, in luxurious but ignominious exile in Paris for decades, the 34-year-old Diana is not about to disappear.
One major question is whether the 47-year-old Prince would remarry. As every school child here knows, the Church of England has its origins in one of history's most celebrated divorces -- that of Henry VIII from Catherine of Aragon, which split it from Rome. But the Church frowns on remarriages of divorced people, particularly when their ex-spouses are still living.
Since the monarch is also the spiritual leader of the Church, bearing the coronation title of "Defender of the Faith," some eminent clerics have said it would unacceptable for the Prince to have the throne if he marries Camilla Parker Bowles, the woman he is said to have loved, and with whom he carried on an affair during his marriage.
Today, Buckingham Palace sought to stifle such talk by announcing that the Prince was thinking of no such thing. "Should there be a divorce, the Prince of Wales has no intention of remarrying," said Alan Percival, the Prince's spokesman. But no one at the palace was willing to interpret the statement as meaning that the Prince was forever forgoing the possibility of remarriage.
"If asked, 'Do you intend to get remarried?' the answer is no," said one official in the royal household. "But that's not the same question as, 'Will you never ever in your life remarry?' I don't think anyone is ever prepared to answer that question."
Another eventuality that no one in authority is prepared to discuss publicly is what might happen with a single king sitting on the throne. It is unlikely that the British press, which has avidly documented every twist and turn in the sad saga of the Prince's love life so far, would leave him alone.
Nor is it clear that the British public, which since the days of Queen Victoria has regarded the royal family as a sort of standard of middle-class respectability, would sit still while he carried on relationships outside of marriage. This might be especially true for Mrs. Parker Bowles, who is now herself divorced but seen by many people as a marriage-breaker.
A public opinion poll taken by the respected outfit MORI on Nov. 21 found that 61 percent of a sample of 580 adults thought the Waleses, as they are known, should get divorced, but almost as high a percentage -- 59 -- thought Prince Charles should not be allowed to become king if he married Mrs. Parker Bowles.
Another problem for Buckingham Palace is what to do with the Princess of Wales. The fact that she did not respond today to the Queen's call for a divorce -- her lawyers were reported to be studying the Queen's letter -- was seen by commentators here as a sign that she will strike a hard bargain.
Most expect that the Princess, who had said earlier that she would follow her husband's wishes, will retain some custody rights over their two sons and gain a hefty financial settlement.
No matter what happens, she will remain the mother of the heir, 13-year-old Prince William, and so must somehow be given a place in the arcana of court protocol and ceremony. Even the question of her title -- should she still merit being called Her Royal Highness? -- could become a conundrum for hair-splitting monarchists.
Furthermore, her looks and crowd-pleasing style have won considerable popularity, bringing a touch of down-to-earth humanity to a family that strikes many as aloof and frigid. Her publicly documented tribulations, ranging from bulimia to post-partum depression and self-mutilation, have made her a 1990's icon of suffering that some identify with.
Lastly, there is the question of Diana's obvious bitterness toward her husband and in-laws and her new assertiveness, which has flourished under treatment by an American-born therapist.
"She won't go quietly -- that's the problem," she said, speaking of herself in the third person, in a riveting BBC interview a month ago. She said that she would like to be a roving ambassador for Britain, a prospect that does not go down very well at the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and to be given some sort of public role as a person who cares about the ill and the poor.
In the same interview, she also let drop the thought that perhaps Prince Charles was not temperamentally suited to be king and suggested that perhaps the crown should skip over him and go to her son.
But in drawing up this uncertain calculus, members of the royal family and the Government, which under the Constitution has a strong say in royal affairs, are surely aware that in other times of crisis for the royal family, one key element affecting outcome has been public opinion.
"What drove Edward VIII from the throne was public opinion articulated by a Tory Prime Minister and backbenchers," said David Starkey, a constitutional expert at the London School of Economics. "Public opinion is not yet ready to drive Charles from the throne."
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| The Prince of Wales visited hospices near his home yesterdayand left comments to a spokesman. The Princess of Wales left the Harbor Club in London yesterday, after her regular workout. On Wednesday Queen Elizabeth II said that "an early divorce" by Diana and Charles "is desirable." (Photographs by Associated Press) |
