The royals - Kitty Kelley [214]
Diana did not have the nerve—then—to openly defy the Queen, so she did as she was told. “I know my duty,” she said, lowering her eyes. When the crowds saw her riding with the Queen Mother in the carriage, behind the Queen and Prince Charles, they roared wildly and gave the second coach more applause than the first. The Duke of Edinburgh scowled.
“He openly snubbed Diana that day,” said reporter James Whitaker. “When she walked into the royal box, Philip turned away and would not speak to her. She sat by herself as he buried his nose in the program. He did not look up or acknowledge her presence, but she didn’t seem particularly to care.”
When someone mentioned the Duke’s rebuff, Diana shrugged and said, “The man has the warmth of a snow pea.” She was buoyed by the rousing cheers she had received, but her elation later evaporated as her confidence sagged.
During the meeting at Windsor Castle, the Queen had asked Diana what she wanted. “A legal separation,” she replied. Instead the Queen recommended a cooling-off period. “We’ll revisit the subject in six months,” she said, adding that she expected the couple to proceed with their long-standing plan to tour South Korea. They agreed, but the trip was a public relations disaster. Diplomatic cables indicate almost as much tension between Charles and Diana as between North and South Korea. Press photos supported the top-secret cables flying back and forth from Seoul to London: they showed a dour Prince and a grim Princess, who clearly despised each other.
When the Queen saw the pictures, she called her son. “Charles, I don’t understand,” she said. The implication was that he was not trying hard enough.
“Don’t you realize she’s mad?” he said angrily. “She’s mad!”
Before the Queen could respond, Charles had hung up on his mother.
Upon their return to England, Diana told friends that she did not think her husband was fit to be King. In the past she had said she knew she would never become Queen and that Charles would ascend to the throne without her. Now she questioned his ability to reign. She said she based her assessment on her instincts and her intimate knowledge of her husband. This raised questions about Charles, who was remembered as a shy little boy who always seemed fretful. Was he too timid to become King? asked an editorial under the headline “Unfaithful AND Reluctant?”
Charles wanted to respond but didn’t know how best to defend himself. His zealous equerry urged him to cooperate with the journalist Jonathan Dimbleby on a book about his life. So the Prince decided to give the respected journalist unprecedented access to his private diaries and letters. The biography, to be preceded by an exclusive television interview, was timed to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of Charles’s investiture as Prince of Wales.
Such anniversaries gave the royal family opportunities to celebrate themselves with stirring parades and fireworks. But in 1992 the Queen, then in her fortieth anniversary* year on the throne, canceled plans for a grandiose celebration. She stopped the fund-raising for a $3.6 million fountain that had been planned in Parliament Square and said no to a military parade. “The