Game of Crowns: Elizabeth, Camilla, Kate, and the Throne (27 page)

Yet there was nothing Camilla could do to keep Kate from sharing the spotlight with William when they graduated from St. Andrews on June 23, 2005. The Queen had been sick for a week with the flu, but she showed up anyway along with Prince Philip. It was a first for the Duke of Edinburgh, who had never attended the graduation ceremonies for any of his own children.

This year as every year, Vice Chancellor Bryan Lang told members of the graduating class of 2005 that “you may have met your husband or wife.” After joking that St. Andrews was the “Top Matchmaking University in Britain,” Lang ended by telling graduates to “go forth and multiply.”

The Queen laughed, but she had already made clear her feelings about people who marry too young. After brief courtships, Charles, Anne, and Andrew all saw their marriages go up in flames. Elizabeth now decreed that all royal courtships should last at least five years “so people can really get to know each other.”

That was perfectly fine with William, who told a reporter that he was not marching to the altar anytime soon. “I’m too young to marry,” he declared. “I don’t want to get married until I’m at least twenty-eight or maybe thirty.”

As it happened, Kate and William had already been together for four years, much of that time spent under the radar. There had been a flurry of speculation in the press about a possible engagement on the horizon, but the last thing Kate and the Middletons wanted at this point was to appear grasping.

After the ceremony, as families milled about and chatted effusively outside St. Andrews’s Younger Hall, the Middletons—Carole, Michael, Pippa, and James—kept a discreet distance from the Royals at the edge of the crowd. Carole, dressed in a chic pink wool suit and craving a cigarette, could just make out the Queen in the distance—a tiny, white-gloved figure swathed in canary yellow, her wide hat tilting from one side to the next as William bent down to kiss his grandmother on both cheeks.

No sooner had he made eye contact with Kate over Camilla’s shoulder than William made a beeline for the Middletons. Pulling Kate by the elbow, he whispered that he wanted to take the Middletons to meet the Queen. But Kate realized that such a group introduction in public might appear presumptuous, and wisely demurred. “Perhaps you’re right,” William agreed. “There’s plenty of time for that.”

William also felt there was plenty of time for him to assume a
full schedule of tree plantings, plaque unveilings, and other ceremonial duties as a working member of the Royal Family. Right now, he wanted to embark on the military career he had always dreamed of having. For the next forty-four weeks, the Heir would be training at Sandhurst just as Harry had done before him. “That’s why I put my brother in,” William joked, “as a guinea pig.”

THE HARSH REALITIES OF MILITARY
training were nothing compared to the emotional torment of reliving his mother’s violent and untimely death. Operation Paget, Scotland Yard’s long-delayed investigation into Mohamed Al Fayed’s accusation that Prince Philip ordered British intelligence to murder Diana and Dodi, was finally in full swing, and William (along with Harry, Charles, and Philip) were among hundreds of witnesses grilled by investigators.

Among other things, William told investigators that his mother had no intention of marrying Dodi, as Mohamed Al Fayed claimed. Lord Stevens, who ran the investigation, was especially blunt with Charles. At the end of a punishing three-hour-long interrogation at Clarence House, the Prince of Wales was shocked by Lord Stevens’s final question: “Did you, Your Highness, plot to murder the Princess or have anything to do with her death?”

“No,” Charles replied curtly. “I did
not
.”

The Duke of Edinburgh was even more incensed at the tone of Lord Stevens’s questions, although Diana’s repeated comments in the final year of her life made it easy to see why Stevens had to ask them. “Prince Philip wants to see me dead,” she told Lord Mishcon. “I am sure Prince Philip is involved with the security services,” she insisted on another occasion. “They are going to
get rid of me.” Not long after the divorce, Diana was in the VIP lounge at Heathrow waiting to board a flight to Italy when she looked up at a portrait of Prince Philip. “He really hates me and would like to see me disappear,” she told her friend Roberto Devorik. Then, as she was about to be escorted to her flight, the Princess took a deep breath and shook her head. “Well, cross your fingers,” Diana said. “Any minute they will blow me up. . . . They, the machinery, are going to blow me up.”

Ultimately, the provocatively-titled, 832-page
Operation Paget Inquiry Report into the Allegation of Conspiracy to Murder
would confirm the findings of the original 1999 accident investigation. Diana’s undeniably eerie premonitions aside, the man behind the wheel of the Mercedes sedan in which she and Dodi Fayed were riding that night had a blood alcohol content more than three times the legal limit. As mundane as it sounded, the Princess of Wales and her Egyptian lover, neither of whom were wearing seat belts that night, were the victims of a drunk-driving accident.

By dredging up memories of how William’s mother was relentlessly pursued by the press, Operation Paget did give a new sense of urgency to a more immediate problem. Now that William was at Sandhurst—where a close-cropped military haircut revealed the famous Windsor bald spot—and Kate on her own in London, Fleet Street no longer felt obliged to abide by the hands-off policy that had been in force at St. Andrews. Now, whenever Kate left her family’s stucco-walled Chelsea pied-à-terre, photographers leaped out at her from behind trees and parked vehicles, then pursued their hapless prey on foot.

Through it all, Kate displayed the sort of calm under fire that would impress a queen. She smiled convincingly for the cameras, never voiced a word of complaint to the paparazzi, and certainly
never showed a flash of temper—something several members of the Royal Family were famously prone to do.

However, just two weeks after William and Kate graduated from St. Andrews, bombs planted by Islamist terrorists went off on the buses and subways of London, killing fifty-two people and injuring more than seven hundred others. Once again, the Queen immediately ordered the Union Jack over Buckingham Palace to be flown at half-staff. Less than twenty-fours after the attack, she was touring the wreckage and making the rounds of hospitals to comfort the injured.

A moment of silence in memory of the victims was observed the following week throughout Europe. As Big Ben tolled, members of the Royal Family gathered, heads bowed, in the forecourt of Buckingham Palace. The image of the Queen, standing in an archway with her handbag dangling from her elbow, was, said former Prime Minister John Major, “a powerful reminder of the unifying power of the monarchy—and, more specifically, the bond between the Queen and her people.”

Just ten days later, William swept Kate and a dozen of their closest friend off to his favorite place on the planet—the foothills of Mount Kenya. But no sooner did they return than Kate was once again darting down streets with packs of paparazzi in hot pursuit.

Kate had no official standing and therefore was not technically entitled to government protection of any sort. But when a German magazine published a photograph pinpointing Kate’s Chelsea flat with a big red arrow, William asked the Palace to do something about it. Prince Charles was happy to oblige. At his personal request, the Queen’s law firm of Harbottle & Lewis fired
off letters to newspaper and magazine publishers threatening legal action if they didn’t back off.

This time, however, the Palace’s threats fell on deaf ears. “Kate Middleton wants the privacy of a nun,” said the
Sun
’s Fergus Shanahan, “yet she chooses to go out with Prince William. She can’t have it both ways.”

IF ANYONE KNEW WHAT IT
was like to exist unprotected on the fringes of Royal Family life, it was Camilla. Now that she was the Duchess of Cornwall, Camilla was finding that things weren’t much easier. When she made her all-important first official walkabout just a few days after her wedding, the press pointed out that she had worn the same tartan wrap and coat for the third time in less than a week.

Determined not to embarrass her husband, Camilla packed fifty dresses for their six-day tour of the United States in November 2005. “We’re going to be going into Diana territory,” she told Charles, referring to the fact that Americans admired the late princess as much as if not more than her own countrymen did. “I at least want a fighting chance.”

After a stop at Ground Zero and a celebrity-crammed champagne reception at the Museum of Modern Art, the couple awoke the next morning to a front-page photo of Camilla wearing an ill-fitting blue velvet dress and the headline
QUEEN CAMILLA IS NEW YORK
’
S FRUMP TOWER
. “If it was Diana they were looking for, forget it,” New York columnist Cindy Adams remarked. “Glamorous Camilla definitely ain’t.”

Still, as Charles and his bride wended their way from Washington
to New Orleans (where they seemed genuinely horrified by the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina) and then on to San Francisco, the American press and public began to warm to the charmingly stodgy older couple.

From Camilla’s standpoint, it was just as important that she not repeat Diana’s mistake by competing with her husband for attention. With that in mind, Camilla adhered to the Four Steps Back Rule, always careful to walk at least four paces behind a ranking Royal—in this case Charles—after arriving at an event.

The American press had occasionally been less than kind, but the opposite was true back home in England. The entire trip had basically been designed as a public relations juggernaut for the woman Charles was intent on someday making his queen, and in that sense it seemed to have succeeded brilliantly. The British media declared the tour to be nothing less than a triumph, and gave much of the credit to Camilla. As a seasoned veteran of court intrigue, the Duchess realized that praise was a good thing—but not too much praise. “Charles never likes to share the limelight,” said Richard Kay. “He was jealous of Diana and at times he is jealous of Camilla.”

Conversely, Charles became livid whenever he felt his second wife’s reputation was being impugned. Their debut as a married couple abroad may have gone exceedingly well, but not well enough to keep the Queen from specifically excluding the newly minted Duchess of Cornwall from the state prayers for the Royal Family recited at all Church of England Sunday services.

With prodding from Camilla, Charles pointed out to his mother that Diana’s name had been included in the prayers before their divorce. This latest slight, he argued, hampered his efforts
to win over that sizable portion of the public that still found Camilla objectionable.

Her Majesty refused to budge. The Men in Gray had shown her new polls indicating that three out of four Britons still strongly opposed the idea of a future “Queen Camilla.” The Queen told her son that there were simply “too many people who are still unhappy about the marriage.” She was not about to offend them.

Camilla took solace in the fact that, for the first time as a member of the Royal Family, she had been invited to the Windsors’ lavish Christmas festivities at Sandringham. More important for the Duchess of Cornwall, who had been relegated to the shadows for so long, this was the first time in decades that she could spend Christmas with the man she loved.

It also marked the first time that Camilla pitched in to help the Queen and the rest of the Royal Family finish decorating the twenty-foot tree that had been cut down on the grounds of the estate. Presents were opened on Christmas Eve, following the German custom adhered to by the Royals since the reign of Queen Victoria. The family that truly had everything restricted themselves to exchanging gag gifts—a white leather toilet seat for Charles one year, a shower cap from Prince Harry with “Ain’t life a bitch” embroidered on it for the Queen the next. The Duchess of Cornwall, whose earthy sense of humor was agonizingly evident in the notorious “Camillagate” tapes, had for years picked out the gag gifts that Charles handed out to his relatives. “It’s such wonderful fun,” she told her Wiltshire neighbor, “to finally see the looks on their faces when they open them—especially the Queen’s.”

Afterward, there was an extravagant black-tie banquet where Camilla’s high rank now meant she was seated next to Prince
Philip and directly opposite the monarch. At church services the next day, Camilla was visibly moved when two thousand people turned out to greet the newest member of the Royal Family. However, none of this kept Charles from wincing and shaking his head when, during the service, the Duchess of Cornwall’s name was not read aloud during prayers for the Royal Family.

Once again, Carole Middleton asked her daughter repeatedly if she had received the coveted invitation to spend Christmas with the Royal Family at Sandringham. And, for the fourth year in a row, Kate would have to disappoint her mother. While Charles and the Queen clearly approved of William’s girlfriend, Christmas at Sandringham was reserved exclusively for Royal Family members or those who were officially about to become one.

What Kate could not know at the time was that William had pleaded with his father to ask the Queen if she would make an exception in Kate’s case. According to one Clarence House staff member, Charles was about to broach the subject with Buckingham Palace but abruptly changed his mind. “She has waited so much longer for this moment,” Prince Charles said of Camilla. “I don’t think it’s fair to ask her to share it with someone else. Perhaps next year.”

Over the coming weeks, Kate and William would savor the occasional romantic interlude—toasting the New Year at Wood Farm, a ski holiday in Switzerland (where they were photographed kissing for the first time), cozy weekends at Highgrove or at Kate’s Chelsea flat. Yet by keeping such a low profile, the couple inadvertently fueled speculation that their affair had fizzled.

In the meantime, Charles saw to it that his bride was given every possible opportunity to be seen in the presence of the monarch. During ceremonies unveiling the new home of the Welsh
Assembly in early March 2006, the Queen actually planted a kiss on Camilla’s cheek—a royal seal of approval, or as close as one could get to it.