Funny, isn’t it, how the unthinkable becomes the thinkable, then the possible, then the acceptable and finally the inevitable? You can see the process in motion when it comes to the prospect of the Duchess of Cornwall becoming Queen Consort in Waiting. Once, the Duchess was lucky to appear in public without getting pelted with bread rolls; now she’s allowed on The Archers, having redeemed her cameo appearance with a plug for osteoporosis awareness, and, ahem, for Duchy Originals shortbread. When a girl in Wiltshire asked her whether she was to become Queen, she said: ‘You never know.’ Which, in terms of ambiguity, equals Prince Charles’s response to a similar question in the US: ‘We’ll see, won’t we? That could be.’
Meanwhile, the press is squared, the middle class is quite prepared for a Queen Camilla. At least those of the middle class who take their lead from the press. My own sinking feeling that the thing is a done deal came when I saw Hello! magazine deliver the message to the hair salons and waiting rooms of Britain that two ‘queens-in-waiting’, viz the Duchess and Kate Middleton, had had lunch together. Then there is the supportive commentary from columnists with standing, such as Charles Moore of this parish. The Prime Minister apparently takes the same view. Asked on Sky TV whether he was ‘up for a Queen Camilla’, he declared himself a ‘big Camilla fan’. That, I suppose, is the contemporary equivalent of the ten thousand swords that Edmund Burke thought would have leapt from their scabbard to avenge even a look that threatened Marie Antoinette.
Richard Kay of the Daily Mail recently charted the Duchess’s progress towards a throne in terms of ‘a familiar pattern of behaviour… hand-wringing reluctance, followed, after a respectful interval, by acquiescence’. Thus the Duchess moved from her declared abhorrence to the notion of ruining the marriage of Prince Charles and his wife to being the Prince’s mistress; from seeing no need to be married to the Prince after Diana’s death to doing just that; from an unwillingness to accept a royal title to being Duchess of Cornwall; from being horrified at the prospect of being Queen to, well, apparently graceful acquiescence. So let’s put the other view of the matter: mine. The Duchess of Cornwall is a mistress made good. She and Prince Charles could have married when they were young and single; they did not. She acquired her present position by virtue of an adulterous relationship. That relationship caused a good deal of pain to Princess Diana and quite possibly to Andrew Parker Bowles, formerly the Prince’s brother officer.
The couple sustained that relationship — sinful, according to the lights of the church of which Prince Charles will one day be head — even after its harm was well known. For the Duchess to become Queen would be to reward persistent adultery, to suggest that if you stick to a wrong course of conduct you will be rewarded at the very highest level. At least, in this life.
Does that sound nuts? It doesn’t, obviously, amount to any sort of constitutional impediment to a Queen Camilla; and given the way the Church of England was founded (‘on the bollocks of Henry VIII’ according to one rude Irish verse) it would be odd to suggest anything of the sort. The Prince of Wales can do what he likes, when it comes to his wife’s status. To the part of the nation which doesn’t care about the choreography of the monarchy and isn’t particularly exercised about matrimony, it’s a non-issue. Me, I respect the institution of the monarchy, but I mind much more about the institution of matrimony. And rewarding persistent adultery doesn’t seem to square with upholding marriage.
Personalities don’t come into it either. I’d way rather be married to Camilla than Diana. The Duchess seems a sane, pleasant, down-to-earth sort of woman, though it’s a pity she gave up on the cigarettes. But the Church of England isn’t meant to bless unions that come about by virtue of one of the couple being involved in the breakdown of the other’s marriage; Charles and Camilla expedited, at the very least, the breakdown of each other’s unions. Withholding the crown from Camilla would be some sort of tacit recognition that there is something to be atoned for.
I wrote once criticising Prince Charles and Camilla when they began to live together, and I was overwhelmed by the response I got, almost entirely hostile to the notion that Camilla would one day replace Diana. That hostility has diminished, but it hasn’t gone away. Prince Charles should be grateful that the prospect of a Queen Kate right now puts the likelihood of a Queen Camilla usefully in the shade.
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