`O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!” I chortle in my joy. This scepter’d isle, this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, will have a new queen.
And I think her name will (and certainly should) be Camilla.
The global new media went all goo-goo, ga-ga, gooney and gooey last week over the alleged news that Prince William, eldest son and heir of the Prince of Wales and the late ex-Princess of Wales, had actually turned 18.
More ink, newsprint and television time was devoted to this than to the discovery of the Salk polio vaccine or the fall of Kamarut — which, as you must know, resulted in the death of the impertinent Tuamba Wangyee and assured British victory in the First Burma War.
I digress. Far more consequential to the fate of the Empire — which I think now is mostly Pitcairn Island and a few Lesser Antilles — was another major historic event last week. On Tuesday night, Prince Charles made his first ever joint, public, official appearance with his longtime royal paramour, Camilla Parker Bowles, the well-bred, horsey, upper-class divorcee vamp accused of undoing Charles’ “Marriage of the Century” to the much-lamented Princess Di.
The occasion was a gala held in London’s Shoreditch district on behalf of the Prince’s Foundation, one of Charles’ many Prince thingies.
The prince and Miss Knickers, as some of us irreverently called her after the release of some interesting royal audio tapes a few years ago, have of course been seen together in public before, but never at an official outing.
And it occasioned not a single lifted brow from Her Majesty, the Queen, who in fact earlier this month allowed Camilla to grovel before her at a private party Charles threw at one of his country retreats. Top ho!
Surely, a visit to The Palace can’t be far behind. And then? Well, Charles is said to be sniffing about the Presbyterian Church of Scotland as a possible venue for a royal marriage, in lieu of the Anglican Church of England he’s sworn to defend, which looks dubiously upon divorced persons (and pretty much everything else).
If marriage is in the offing, even a dull, drab Presbyterian one without capes and swords, then, according to ancient law and custom (the Rood of Wussex or some such?) Camilla should become Queen.
There are those who do not think this a simply wizard idea, and say that, if Charles wants to make an honest woman of Camilla, he shouldn’t expect to have royal crowns and thrones thrown into the deal. Indeed, a National Opinion Poll in the Sunday Express showed that 44 percent of Britons prefer to have Prince Edward on the throne. Curiously, the same poll found that another 44 percent wanted Charles. And, more curiously, a different national poll in the Guardian this month reported that 44 percent thought Britain needed a monarchy.
But polls can change, even British ones that seem to be stuck at 44 percent. And, anyway, anyone who thinks Camilla should not be Queen is probably the kind of person who would honor the dead by tossing a cheap bouquet of flowers onto a dirty sidewalk.
Consider her, um, virtues:
Unlike the fluffy-headed, selected-for-her-bloodlines, former baby-sitter and assistant kindergarten teacher Diana, Camilla is an educated, well-read, articulate woman whose English is as good as any to be found in the novels of P.G. Wodehouse.
Unlike the late Diana, Camilla can actually ride a horse and Troop the Colours, still the chief requirement of monarchs.
If Charles and Camilla become King and Queen, Prince Edward will be free to pursue his real destiny, which — as the tabloids and celebrity magazines have made clear — is to become the next John F. Kennedy Jr.
As country gentry who knows how to garden party and wear a (riding) habit, Camilla is what the present Queen would call “our kind, dear,” and not, “not our kind, dear.” Diana, who hated fox hunting weekends and used to hang out with lower class types with ludicrous names like “Sloane (Street) Rangers” and “Sir Elton John,” was not “our kind, dear.” If there is always to be an England, the British class system must be upheld, and there’s no one like “our kind” to do it.
Finally, there is this. Queen Victoria, apparently, romped with her Scottish “ghillie” (male attendant), John Brown. Her son, Edward VII, had a vast army of mistresses (including Lily Langtry and, some suspect, Chicago society belle Bertha Palmer). Charles’ great uncle, Edward VIII, married a scheming American floozie after a string of pathetic affairs with domineering, social-climbing, married British ladies. Charles’ great-aunt-in-law, Edwina Mountbatten, had affairs with practically everyone (as long as they weren’t middle class), including, apparently, Paul Robeson and possibly India’s Jawaharlal Nehru. Charles’ brother Andrew sported with porn queen Koo Stark and assorted other babes, then married Fergie, the daughter of one of Britain’s most notorious bounders, who herself had what you might call roaming toes.
Yet Charles, through all his life, through thick and thin, through his ridiculous arranged marriage, through knicker tapes and worse, has stayed true to the one great love of his life, Camilla.
Isn’t it time we had fidelity like that in the Royal Family?
