Game of Crowns: Elizabeth, Camilla, Kate, and the Throne (4 page)

More than a million people are jamming the mall in front of the palace and the adjacent streets—a sea of humanity stretching across St. James’s and Green Parks to Whitehall and beyond.
Some are perched on the heroic bronze statues representing justice, agriculture, progress, and industry that ring the eighty-two-foot-tall Victoria Memorial in front of the palace, and three teenagers have managed to find a purchase atop Victoria herself. Dozens more, camera phones in hand, splash in the memorial’s fountains.

Yet crowds in the past have been even larger—notably for the wedding of Prince William to Kate Middleton in 2011 and Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee the following year. Still, as he watches the tumultuous scene on a television monitor inside the palace with the rest of the Royal Family, Charles cannot help but be moved by the size of the throng and his subjects’ obvious enthusiasm.

“Isn’t it incredible?” he says, shaking his head as if it has come as a major surprise. True to form, he gazes at the image on the TV screen, not bothering to turn around and look out the window at actual people. “Just marvelous.” Camilla’s trademark toothy grin disguises whatever doubts she may harbor.

England’s new queen—the first queen consort since Charles’s beloved grandmother—has never been particularly fond of this room just inside the huge glass doors leading to the palace’s famous balcony. This space, known as the “Centre Room,” is one of the most intriguing spaces in the palace—an exotic oriental hodgepodge of dragons, Chinese murals, gargantuan cloisonné vases, lotus-shaped chandeliers, and other examples of priceless chinoiserie brought to the palace from the Royal Pavilion in Brighton.

Camilla has always considered the Centre Room as too closely resembling an upscale Chinese restaurant—an opinion shared by Princess Diana, among others. As a practical matter, it serves
as the garishly appointed anteroom in which the family gathers before facing the music—both literally and figuratively—on the Royal Balcony. In the role of supporting player, Camilla has always been uncomfortable at moments like these. Today, cast in the female lead, she is plainly terrified.

Palace footmen throw open the twelve-foot-high glass doors, and the muffled roar of the throng outside now becomes clear. “We want the King!” the multitudes cry. “We want the King.” Clive Alderton gestures toward the balcony. “Your Majesty,” he says, “I believe the people wish to see their King.”

Charles, still wearing the Imperial State Crown and his hand-woven silk velvet coronation robes trimmed in Canadian ermine, takes a deep breath and walks toward the door. Outside in the palace courtyard, the musical director of the King’s Guard band has been gazing up at the balcony draped with gold and red velvet bunting, waiting for the cue to come over his headset. Now it does, and the trumpets burst into a royal fanfare.

As King Charles III suddenly comes into view on the balcony, the crowd cheers wildly. He is, for the first time in his long life, finally stepping out from his mother’s shadow. No one understands this better than Charles’s Queen, who hangs back, allowing the love of her life to savor this moment that has eluded him for seven decades.

Charles waves to the sea of humanity, letting their adulation wash over him. But within thirty seconds, he turns to beckon his wife outside. To the cameras recording from a distance, it is not evident that Camilla, who at times of stress frequently suffers from what she calls “the shakes,” trembles visibly as she joins her husband on the balcony. Then it happens: William and Kate and their adorable children, Prince George and Princess Charlotte,
step into view. In an ear-splitting instant, the decibel level doubles as the crowd ramps up from joy to hysteria. The band quickly segues into “Rule Britannia,” and as Prince Harry and the rest of the Royal Family drift in behind William and Kate, the din continues unabated.

Just as it appears the noise has finally reached its apex, there is a roar overhead. All heads tilt skyward to see the traditional flypast of RAF aircraft overhead. Still wearing their crowns, the King and Queen shield their eyes to look up as squadrons of Red Arrows, Hawks, and Tornado GR4s scream past.

While the Royal Family files back through balcony doors, Kate, smiling broadly as she holds Charlotte in her arms, turns to give a final wave to the multitude. One last, deafening roar goes up from the crowd. William, who has never sought to eclipse his father in any way, looks mortified; he gently takes Kate by the elbow and steers her inside.

IN THE WEEKS THAT FOLLOW
the coronation of King Charles III, the British tabloids question whether “The Bridge” from one monarch to the next stands strong or will buckle under the weight of public sentiment. New postcoronation polls indicate that the public, feeling betrayed that Camilla has been crowned Queen despite Charles’s repeated pledge that this would never happen, now more than ever want William as their sovereign.

The effects are felt more quickly abroad, where Charles’s ascension to the throne is causing a rupture in the Commonwealth. Fifteen of the fifty-three former British colonies and dependencies that make up the Commonwealth had held on to the British
monarch as their queen even after winning their independence—an arrangement that survived over the decades almost entirely because of the personal affection the people in those countries felt for Elizabeth. Without her, Australia and Canada now quickly vote to oust Charles as their head of state, opting instead for republicanism. Other Commonwealth member nations soon follow.

Charles and Camilla are also unpopular in Scotland, and the death of Elizabeth removes any impediment to independence. There are calls for a new referendum; within a few months, experts say, Scotland will probably become a republican state and join the European Union.

In Great Britain itself, where in the aftermath of Diana’s death Camilla had been called a whore by passers-by in the street (“They’ve got to blame someone,” Camilla said then), the new Queen is costing the monarchy dearly. Poll after poll shows that, while the public has fallen increasingly in love with Prince William’s young family, the average Briton chafes at the idea that Camilla has replaced Elizabeth as their Queen.

King Charles does nothing to mollify his critics. In fact, he privately lectures the Prime Minister on a wide range of policy issues—something his politically savvy mother would never have done—and publicly pushes for sweeping urban and environmental reforms.

Having successfully alienated even the monarchy’s staunchest allies in the government, Charles endures one humiliating setback after another. Parliament votes to slash the budget of the royal household dramatically. Certain properties from which the crown derives hundreds of millions of dollars in annual income are confiscated. Antimonarchist republicans, whose efforts have
been kept in check by the people’s love for Elizabeth, make huge gains in the polls.

There is one bright spot for the monarchy: Britons remain as smitten as ever with the Prince of Wales and his young family, although given the Windsors’ storied longevity, William will be well into his sixties before Charles’s death puts him on the throne. The Prime Minister suggests to the king that he might stave off the inevitable by bowing to public pressure and abdicating in favor of William, but he refuses. William himself, King Charles points out, has vowed he will never be party to such an unprecedented “scheme.”

In a breathtakingly short time, the love and respect the British people harbored for their sovereign all but vanishes. It becomes glaringly obvious there may be no future King William V, no King George VII. The monarchy is crumbling under the weight of the King’s intransigence. Charles could well be the last to wear the crown.

AS SCENARIOS GO, THE FALL
of the House of Windsor is scarcely far-fetched. “As her reign nears its end,” observed Scottish journalist and historian Neal Ascherson in the
New York Times
, “the emphasis on person, not Crown, becomes ominous. The British increasingly fear that Charles may be a weak, unpredictable king. If they are right, will the l,000-year splendor of the Crown outweigh people’s impatience with an elderly, melancholy man?” More to the point, will they lose patience with an elderly, melancholy King who broke a solemn promise to his subjects
not
to make his controversial wife their Queen?

Camilla has told friends that, despite her famously easygoing and self-deprecating nature, she has spent countless sleepless nights pondering all the variables. “Don’t make the mistake of thinking Camilla is dumb,” said the comedian Joan Rivers, who, surprisingly, was a longtime friend of both the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall. “She is a very smart lady. She knows exactly what she’s doing, what people think of her, and what can happen if she makes one wrong move.”

Doubts about the impact she may have on her husband’s standing in the eyes of his subjects clearly gnaw at Camilla. “She has always been so in love with Charles,” said a former lady-in-waiting to the Queen Mother, “and at the same time she has always been absolutely determined not to come between Charles and his people. Of course, in reality, Camilla has done just that on many occasions.”

For members of the Royal Family both old and new, few occasions are more inherently stressful than the monarch’s official birthday celebration—and the one marking the Queen’s ninetieth birthday in 2016 will be no exception. On the morning of the big event, Camilla does not wake up next to her husband in their giant canopied four-poster at Clarence House. Charles has already been up for more than an hour, and is in his dressing room being attended to by his valet.

Normally, Camilla would not be spending a summer weekend at Clarence House at all. She would be happily ensconced at Ray Mill House, the gray stone mansion in Wiltshire that she purchased for $l.3 million after finally divorcing her spouse of twenty-two years, Andrew Parker Bowles, in 1995. It is no accident that Ray Mill House is conveniently situated just sixteen miles from Highgrove, Charles’s lavish country estate west of London.

As the Duchess of Cornwall and the wife of the heir to the throne, Camilla has at least three official residences of her own—Highgrove, Clarence House, and Birkhall, the fourteen-bedroom residence at Balmoral that had once belonged to the Queen Mother. Yet her undisputed favorite is Ray Mill House, a comparatively cozy sanctuary from the pressures of royal life. It is also the one place where she can spend time with her rambunctious tribe of grandchildren and away from the increasingly curmudgeonly Charles.

Critics point out that security measures at Ray Mill House alone cost British taxpayers upward of $3 million a year, but it is worth it to this royal couple for yet another reason. After decades spent chasing stolen moments of passion in country getaways or the homes of mutual friends, Charles and Camilla have concluded that cohabitation is anathema to their relationship. They cannot keep their love alive without the excitement that comes from the carefully planned illicit rendezvous, the furtive liaison at their favorite trysting place.

By 2016, Charles and Camilla are no longer living together in the traditional sense. Instead, he divides his time primarily between Clarence House and Highgrove, while she spends as much time as possible with family and friends at Ray Mill House, waiting for her prince to show up at any time of the day or night—all just as it was during his marriage to Diana.

“You have to understand that Camilla loved being a royal mistress and all the intrigue that went along with it,” a Wiltshire neighbor said. “Without all the sneaking around, it just wasn’t as much fun as it used to be. So they just set the clocks back and pretend they’re still secret lovers. I’m not really sure they’d know how to do it any other way.”

Yet on this Saturday morning in June, sex may well be the farthest thing from Camilla’s mind. Instead, as the wife of a future monarch and the daughter-in-law of the current one, she will be called upon once again to play an important part in one of her nation’s most colorful spectacles. Today the annual Trooping the Colour will take place on Horse Guards Parade by St. James’s Park—the ceremony that has marked the sovereign’s official birthday since 1748. Full of pomp and pageantry, this is always one of the most important and colorful public dates on the royal calendar. Edward VII, who was born on November 9, 1841, permanently moved the Trooping the Colour ceremony to its current date because June seemed like a more temperate month for a parade celebrating his birthday.

During sixty-four years on the throne, Elizabeth II has missed Trooping the Colour only once—in 1955, when a rail strike caused the cancellation of the event altogether. For thirty-six of those years, this occasion also offered the Queen, an ardent equestrienne, the opportunity to ride sidesaddle from Buckingham Palace down The Mall, resplendent in the medal-bedecked red uniform of her royal regiments. In 1981, a young man in the crowd fired blank rounds from a pistol and startled her horse, nearly pitching the Queen to the pavement. Undaunted, Elizabeth continued to attend on horseback for another five years before finally opting to make the journey in a royal carriage. No longer wearing the uniform, she nevertheless always wears the Brigade of Guards badge, a large jewel representing the regiments that participate—the Coldstream Guards, the Welsh Guards, the Irish Guards, the Scots Guards, and the Grenadier Guards.