The royals - Kitty Kelley [227]
Within the royal family, the Queen did not need a trackside tip sheet to see who was running best in the mud and who was showing signs of weak knees. She read the opinion polls, which showed that her estranged daughter-in-law was winning the race while her son was still stuck in the paddock.
Charles stumbled along, trying to redeem himself, but even as he tried to make light of his predicament, he sounded more self-pitying than self-deprecating. As he autographed a soccer ball for youngsters at a London recreation center, he told them: “Now you’ve got my name on it. You can kick it all over the place.” He gave up polo entirely; he cut ribbons, laid wreaths, inspected factories, visited troops in Bosnia, toured a former concentration camp in Poland.
But he could not compete with his wife, who radiated in the press like a movie star elevated to sainthood. As one headline put it: “The Princess Bids Halo and Farewell to Her Critics.” She toured hospices and orphanages and Red Cross feeding centers. In India she touched untouchables. In Nepal she hugged lepers. She embraced amputees and ladled soup for starving refugees. People turned out in droves to see her, mesmerized by her warmth, her beauty, her glamour.
Although Charles could not draw crowds like Diana, his equerry said he was well rid of her. He said the Prince had grown more confident because he was no longer saddled with the Princess and subjected to “superficial handshaking tours.” Rather than belittle Diana, the equerry might have been better advised to announce that Charles had lashed himself to the steps of Canterbury Cathedral to do penance for his adultery, as his ancestor did to atone for the murder of Thomas à Becket. The public adored the Princess, and she reveled in the adulation.
She was regularly photographed visiting homeless shelters and talking to battered wives. She seemed especially taken with one woman, who admitted pouring gasoline on her husband and setting him afire as he slept. The woman, who said she had been driven insane by her husband, pleaded not guilty to murder and was freed. The Princess hugged her and said, “You have been so brave.” Later, as Charles visited an inner-city housing project, he shook hands with a woman in the crowd who said she had met his estranged wife. He grimaced. “You lived to tell the tale, did you?”
Measured in newsprint, there was no contest between Diana and Charles. A media research firm measured the number of column inches allotted to each during the first six days of March 1993: Diana scored 3,603 inches of newsprint, Charles only 275.
One of Britain’s prizewinning feature writers, Lynda Lee-Potter, advised the Prince to ignore the tally and stay out of the fray. “He should not play his wife’s games,” she wrote. “He should remain uncomplaining and dignified.” She said Diana had declared open war on her husband. “She desires to be utterly vindicated. She yearns to diminish Prince Charles. She wants revenge, not merely justice. But the continuing public battle she plans can only take place if her husband and his family retaliate. If they do that, they may be defeated. If they refuse to fight, they will surely win.”
By then the Princess had the Palace on the run. They appeared to support her charity work, but behind the scenes they sabotaged her. They kept her from becoming president of the British Red Cross and would not recommend her as head of UNICEF. They allowed her to make a few speeches but winced when she spoke about bulimia and depression. The courtiers, all middle-aged men, did not see her declarations of victimhood as a plus for a female whose poor self-image once made her feel as if she deserved to be dysfunctional. The courtiers said her speeches about self-esteem were silly and self-indulgent.
They sputtered with indignation when she spoke out on issues, especially AIDS, which they said were not in her domain. Diana paid no attention. She