Will Charles be the first multicultural monarch?

28 October 2006

Multiculturalism may now be going out of fashion, but the idea of a separate service to meet the requirements of other faiths was, with interesting timing, mooted by the influential Evangelical Alliance in a new report called Faith and Nation. Its point, in essence, was that it would be Charles’s prerogative to have a separate gathering of any kind that he wished, but they did not want him to meddle with the traditional holy liturgy of the ancient coronation service itself. ‘It is no secret that the PoW has long felt passionately about this matter,’ the courtier adds. ‘His determination not to yield so much as an inch of this ground has been strengthened a hundredfold by the events of recent weeks. It has dismayed him to see the people who will one day be his subjects turn upon each other on the basis of their religious convictions. As sovereign, he will wish to demonstrate that he is apart from the politicians who have been sounding off so much lately on, among other things, the issue of veils and that he can set an example for the entire country to follow.’

There is also, of course, the matter of the Duchess of Cornwall. In 2004, when she was still Prince Charles’s mistress, she was coolly informed that royal protocol meant that it would be ‘inappropriate’ for her to sit next to him in Chester Cathedral for the wedding of Lady Tamara Grosvenor and Edward van Cutsem, since the close connections that the bride and groom had with the royal family meant that this was deemed to be a formal occasion. So incandescent was the Prince when this was made plain to him — and, even more embarrassingly, to the public when I broke the story in the Sunday Telegraph — that he decided that neither he nor Camilla would attend the event. He married her, I was told by the well-informed royal author Sarah Bradford, precisely because he never wanted her to be put through such humiliation again.

At his coronation he is every bit as determined that his wife should stand beside him and become his Queen. ‘There will be no talk of her being merely his Princess Consort or any other such half measures,’ the courtier concludes. ‘If, as heir to the throne, he has acquired a reputation in some quarters for weakness and vacillation, then he is making it very apparent in the discussions that are now ongoing that he intends, as Sovereign, to be bold and decisive from the outset of his reign.’

The dress code for the proposed subsequent gathering at Westminster Hall is, of course, far from being finalised. One thing, however, can be said with some certainty. Veils will be more than welcome.

Tim Walker is the editor of the Mandrake diary in the Sunday Telegraph.