The royals - Kitty Kelley [126]
Marrying into the royal family at that time carried a certain responsibility for producing children. The Prince of Wales had not yet married and provided an heir, and his brothers, Prince Andrew (thirteen) and Prince Edward (nine), were too young to marry, so the prospect of children from Anne, fourth in the line of succession, became crucial. Mark Phillips was summoned to the Palace and ordered to provide a specimen of semen. When his potency was assured, the Queen offered him a title, which he respectfully declined. The Queen could not understand anyone’s preferring to remain a commoner, so she tried again. But the young captain said no and was staunchly supported by Princess Anne. Later he turned down a desk job in the Ministry of Defense, preferring to be a country squire. So the Queen offered to buy Anne and Mark Gatcombe Park, a 500-acre estate in Gloucestershire worth almost $2 million. Phillips accepted. “Very nice of her, indeed,” he said.
“They’re gold-plated parasites,” roared Willie Hamilton in Parliament. “The lot of them. All parasites.”
Four months later the surly Princess earned grudging respect from the public when she faced down a gunman threatening to kidnap her. Traveling down the Mall toward Buckingham Palace one evening, Anne was riding with her husband in a royal limousine. The blue light above the windshield indicated that a member of the royal family was inside, so pedestrians and motorists were stunned when the limousine was rammed by a small white Ford Escort. The Ford’s driver jumped out with a pistol in each hand and started firing. The assailant ran toward the limousine, shooting the Princess’s chauffeur, her protection officer, and a pedestrian. Then the gunman lunged toward a rear door to grab the Princess. Frightened but tough, Anne and her husband held on to the door from inside until the deranged man was subdued.
Acts of terrorism were so rare in England in 1974 that policemen did not carry guns* and people did not worry about getting shot. One man who rushed to Anne’s rescue was more intent on manners than mayhem.
“My first thought was that the two cars had bumped each other, and that the driver of the Escort had lost his temper,” recalled Ron Russell, manager of a London cleaning firm. “Obviously he didn’t realize he was embarrassing a member of the royal family. Someone should tell him. With this in mind, I pulled off the road.”
The public was shocked by the attack on a member of the royal family but praised the composure of the Princess, who seemed to dismiss her assailant with the dispatch of Mary Poppins.
“The girl’s got steel britches,” a London cabbie told the Daily Mail.
Her father agreed. Anne had called him in Indonesia, where he was on a royal tour with the Queen. The Princess did not want to talk to her mother about the attempted kidnapping, only her father. “God help that cretin,” Prince Philip said. “If he had succeeded in abducting Anne, she would have given him a hell of a time while in captivity.” Upon her return to London, the Queen presented royal honors to the four men wounded while trying to protect her daughter. The Duke of Edinburgh commended his favorite child on scoring a public relations triumph. “Well done,” he told Anne. “You saved the Civil List.”
The royal allowances remained unchallenged until Princess Margaret let a fox into the chicken coop. With her penchant for weak men, she had become romantically involved with an effete young man who had lived with an avowed homosexual. Margaret was forty-three years old when she met Roderic (“Roddy”) Llewellyn at a party. He was seventeen years her junior. As the second son of Sir Henry Llewellyn, he was an aristocrat, which was not insignificant to the Princess. His father seemed amused by their relationship. “You mean Roddy’s new friend?” he asked. “Well, it makes a change from his usual Italian waiters.” Margaret said the long-haired youth, who lived on a commune in Wales, reminded her