The royals - Kitty Kelley [149]
The President of the United States also declined the Queen’s invitation, but only because his White House staff insisted. They told Ronald Reagan that his first foreign trip as President should not be to a glittering spectacle with British royalty. People might get the wrong impression. So his wife went without him. “I’m just crazy about Prince Charles,” said Nancy Reagan, who arrived with twenty-six suitcases, eleven hatboxes, seventeen Secret Service men, and one borrowed pair of diamond earrings worth $880,000.
The U.S. networks also invaded London, bidding up the price of window space along the parade route. The Palace press office issued regular bulletins about the ceremony to be telecast to 750 million people. Journalists, untutored in titles, learned that Lady Diana Spencer soon would outrank all other women in the realm, except the Queen and the Queen Mother. As an earl’s daughter, she was below thirty-eight categories of British women who had titles superior to her own. But upon her marriage, she soared to the top of the social heap. The ancient title of Princess of Wales entitled her to deep curtsies from all other female royals, including her sister-in-law, the Princess Anne, and her husband’s aunt, the Princess Margaret.
“Most definitely, that’s the protocol,” explained Princess Margaret’s butler, “but not the reality. Never in your life would you see Princess Margaret drop a curtsy to anyone but Her Majesty or her mother. After all, Margaret was born royal; Diana was only marrying royalty. There’s a big difference. And as for Princess Anne, well, as her father once said, ‘If it doesn’t fart or eat hay, she isn’t interested.’ ”
The Palace press office announced the formal style for Lady Diana Spencer. “Following the wedding, she will be known as Diana, the Princess of Wales,” said an aide. “She’s not Princess Diana because she was not born a princess, and she’s not the Princess Diana because only children of the sovereign are entitled to ‘the’ before their title.” Americans, who did not understand titles or their subtleties, called her Princess Di.
In Time, British literary critic Malcolm Muggeridge sounded skeptical about the century’s grandest nuptials: “Only fortunetellers, Marxists and Jehovah’s Witnesses will venture to prognosticate whether Prince Charles and Lady Diana will actually one day mount the throne as King and Queen of England. In the course of fifty years of knockabout journalism, I have seen too many upheavals of one sort and another to feel any certainty about anything or anyone…. Popularity, however seemingly strong and widespread, can evaporate in an afternoon, and institutions that have lasted for centuries disappear overnight. So I can but conclude by simply saying, ‘God bless the Prince and Princess of Wales.’ ” Within fifteen years the critic looked like a visionary.
The night before the wedding, the royal family gathered on the balcony of Buckingham Palace for the largest display of fireworks since World War II’s Blitz. British police estimated 175,000 people camped on the sidewalks around St. Paul’s Cathedral to watch the procession of horse-drawn coaches. Crowds started forming the day before as aristocrats arrived at the Palace for the Queen’s ball.
“That evening had a Waterloo feeling to it,” said one titled British woman. “You could almost smell the formaldehyde from the mothballs. That was the last time I put on my tiara. It was gloriously dotty. We walked down the Mall with our diamonds and our gowns swirling and headed for an enormously grand occasion that everyone wished to be attending, except for those of us who had to go.”
After the ball, Diana spent the night in Clarence House. Charles spent the night in the arms of his mistress. Camilla Parker Bowles later confided to her brother-in-law that she had slept with the Prince in his suite at the Palace. “She was cozy in the knowledge she had his heart when he married Diana,” said Richard Parker Bowles.
The next day, as she recited her vows, the nervous bride transposed the order