The royals - Kitty Kelley [222]
From the United States, Prince Philip’s onetime Hollywood press agent offered his services. Henry Rogers of Rogers & Cowan had orchestrated the publicity for Philip’s 1966 trip to Los Angeles. The two men had met on the recommendation of Philip’s Hollywood pal Frank Sinatra, a client of Rogers & Cowan. Now, twenty-six years later, Rogers offered to come out of retirement to help again. Philip thanked him in a handwritten letter from Windsor Castle:
Dear Henry,
Life appears to have changed out of all recognition. Whoever first said, “It never rains, but it pours” made a very profound statement!! So much happened at once and as bad luck would have it, it all took place against the sombre backdrop of the recession.
In spite of the dramatic media, we have had tremendous support through the mail from people of all kinds. I have every hope that things will get better this year.
But thank you all the same for generously offering your help….
The royal family appeared calm and tried to hold firm, especially the Queen Mother. She knew the country had survived bad kings, mad kings, weak kings, dumb kings, homosexual kings, even foreign-born kings. At the age of ninety-two she was not so acute as she had once been, but she was determined to help Charles, her favorite grandchild, achieve what she saw as his destiny. For she was a king maker. In her time she had rammed steel down the spine of her weak husband and made him look strong to his subjects. Now she longed to do the same for her beleaguered grandson.
But she opposed divorce—so much so that she would not let Charles move in with her after the separation as he waited for his apartment in St. James’s Palace to be renovated. The Queen Mother had been reared during an era when divorce spelled social disgrace, and she remained convinced that the only real threat to the monarchy was divorce. She tolerated all kinds of deviant behavior in her family, from alcoholism to drug addiction. But she did not countenance divorce. She said that was the death blow to family stability, which she felt the House of Windsor must represent to survive. She resisted attending Princess Anne’s second wedding in Scotland because she did not want to pay tribute to another divorce in the royal family. Despite her reservations, she eventually relented.
She dismissed those who said the monarchy was in crisis because royalty had stepped off the throne to marry commoners like Sarah Ferguson and Diana Spencer. As the most exemplary commoner of them all, the Queen Mother naturally disagreed with that. She said the problem was divorce and that Sarah and Diana were “unsuitable” because they were the children of divorce.
Both Sarah and Diana had grown up with mothers who had run off from their homes and abandoned their families to seek happiness with other men. Neither Sarah nor Diana had seen a marriage grow into a lifetime partnership that overcame adversity and boredom. Instead both had watched their mothers place personal satisfaction before duty and responsibility. To the Queen Mother, those were the hallmarks of royalty. Now the daughters were following their mothers’ wayward footsteps by breaking their marriage vows. In doing so, they were betraying crown and country.
“You take in two girls from broken homes,” the Queen had said, “and look how they repay you.”
The Queen Mother agreed. She blamed Diana especially for allowing the world to see the “sordid” misery of her marriage. The Queen Mother had used that word in talking to her grandson. Charles had warned her about his wife’s “instability” and her “confounded unreasonableness,” but the Queen Mother