American Politics Journal -- Charles and Elizabeth: In the End, Weeping for Themselves

American Politics Journal

Charles and Elizabeth:
In the End, As Always, Weeping for Themselves
by Jeff Koopersmith

Sunday, August 31, 1997 -- NEW YORK (APJP) -- Princess Diana had always been sort of a bellwether in my life.

Fifteen years ago my new wife (a Brit) and I threw a "Charles and Diana" party in the Hollywood Hills the day she mistakenly married Charles. It was a big fete, complete with continuously running videotapes of the royal wedding. Friends -- Lon and Jean Gillette -- appeared in high-formal attire, and Charles and Di kitsch we had brought home from England weeks before was strewn around the house.

It was such fun.

But years later, as the first rumblings of trouble oozed from the House of Windsor, cracks in our own marriage began. As Diana struggled with her new-found celebrity, I joined her, seven thousand miles away, trying in vain to adjust to my own minor well-known-ness in the much smaller world of media politics. As Diana was taken up in the arms of scandal so too was I. As she battled the anguish of unrequited love I continued my search for my own perfect love. Both of us caught in gilded traps made by our own design, both of us caught in eddies of disappointment -- with ourselves and with those pretending to love us.

Today. and in days to follow, I can only guess the hypocrisy we will witness from Balmoral and Windsor Castles. The Queen, so bent on maintaining her macabre place in history, will weep at her own cruelty.

Charles, who is curiously winging this moment to Paris to bring home the shattered body of his once-young ex-wife, struggles even now to put himself in the center -- clinging to her beloved-ness, riding her reputation still, in harsh contrast to his own empty soul.

In the end Diana gave Charles a final bittersweet gift -- his freedom to reign, undeservedly, in a time when no man should. Charles did not deserve this gift. He, like his friends, lives in a world where nothing but his own happiness seems important. He had tortured this young woman for more than a decade. He openly pursued an affair with his mother-figure girlfriend and destroyed her marriage along the way. He drove a vibrant Princess to bulimia and antidepressants. He pondered how to divorce her yet keep his crown and coffers despite the Church of England.

As the press chews up its own -- blaming the paparazzi for hounding Diana and forcing her car crash in Paris -- don't be fooled. Blame the House of Windsor, and its disgusting pursuit of genetic superiority, for her untimely death. I can assure you, the first thing that crossed the minds of the Prince and the Queen was what this would do to their reputations.

One thing they knew for sure: after the shock, the people would realize that Charles and Elizabeth, the Queen and the Prince, were piloting that car this morning as sure as they drove Diana to the City of Lights in this, her final desperate try for love.