The Unofficial British Royal Family Pages

Friday 21 May 2004

Memo to Sir Michael: It's Working!

Some people have fun putting lipstick on a pig.  I have to agree that there is inherent excitement in discovering just how far you can go to transform the pig.  And with the right spin on bad facts, you can make some progress…up to a point.  At the end of the day, it’s still a pig though.  I am talking of course about the erstwhile campaign to cram Camilla Parker Bowles down our collective throats.  There was a period of at least four years (1999 through 2002 seemed to be the most enthusiastic) during which almost every week we would be subjected to off the record commentary from self-styled royal insiders about how “nice”, “sweet”,  “good-natured”, or “selfless” Camilla truly was.  The real low point came when we were told how close the two young princes had allegedly become with her just a few short years after their mother was snatched away from them.  (Never bought that one, by the way).  But if nothing else, the spin doctors were persistent:  If only we morons in the public could see her softer side, we would understand that it really is only fair and just that she take on a more public role in her “rightful” place by Prince Charles’ side.   Well sorry to break it to you Mark Bolland, but not on our watch.  Camilla may very well be a grand, sweet lady, but she did some decidedly lowbrow, unladylike things to a person that many of us down here in the proletariat actually bothered to care about.  At the end of the day, that one simple fact is wholly sufficient to mediate against her ever having a “public role”, and it’s a fact that is never going to change.  And, to be intellectually honest about the whole thing, the irony of Charles’ wife lying six feet under ground while his pretend-wife has set up shop in Clarence House is enough to make your skin crawl if you think about it too much.   So I try not to.  Luckily for me, Sir Michael Peat has made it much easier to forget.  And as a result of my amnesia, I am now starting to see Prince Charles…differently. 

In that vein, let’s move on.  And that includes you Diana-philes.   In fact Diana-philes, (since I am one myself, I can say this), It is time to shut up now.  There is a distinct difference between acknowledging that some bad facts cannot be glossed over, and beating a dead horse.  Moreover, whether we want to pretend otherwise or not, Diana genuinely liked Charles.  If you can’t see that, then you either need a drink, or you have been drinking too much.  Either way, you are investing energy in a ‘battle’ that ended almost a decade ago.  (It was a draw in case you missed it.  One side died, but was immortalized. The other lived, but was universally chastised.  Neither result was particularly fair.) And something you might want to consider the next time you feel the urge to revile Prince Charles in the name of Diana: Almost ten years ago, she had begun the process of moving on with her life, and remained friendly with Charles.  Perhaps she saw him through a different prism, that of a human being.  Imperfect, but human, and worthy of her friendship.  So for the sake of everyone, it really is time to move on and take another look at Prince Charles the person.   And to the extent that the removal of a very big distraction has made this much easier to do than it once was, there is one man who deserves the credit.  

I grant you, it isn’t entirely our fault for failing to see Prince Charles in a context other than one involving a woman.  The media can always be counted on to frame stories about him within that very context. If it isn’t a “Charles” story in terms of the Queen, then it’s one in terms of his wife.  If it isn’t his wife, it’s his mistress. To be fair, there are more than a handful of Clarence House advisors who are themselves co-conspirators in this faulty strategy.  But of all the people who must plead guilty to this offense, Sir Michael certainly isn’t one of them.  He has singularly recast Charles in a new light, the light of the Prince himself.  And it’s working:  These days, when I think “Prince Charles”, I think “The Prince’s Trust.” --You can’t put a price on that.  I don’t know what they’re paying Sir Michael, but for what he has done to steer that ship in the right direction, it’s not enough; Give the man a substantial raise, immediately!  Who would ever have thought that Prince Charles would be written about in terms of what he is doing, not who he is…never mind.   No, we haven’t read much about Camilla these days, and frankly that’s fine by me.  I know she is still in the picture. I suspect she always will be.   Where most of us have come down on this issue is about the same place where William and Harry seem to have come down:  Keep her around if you want to, but please don’t try to force us to cheerfully embrace a relationship whose underpinnings are that of heartbreak.   

Sir Michael is an expert at numbers, so it seems apropos that he quickly realized that mitigating Camilla-saturation was only half of the equation.  Indeed, he seems to have got something that no one else at St James, Highgrove, or Clarence House ever did: That for the last twenty years, Charles hasn’t been seen in his own light, but rather in light as reflected off of whatever woman he happens to be linked to.  The truth is that Prince Charles is much more of a person than the salacious gossip surrounding his paramour.  He is a tireless, selfless worker, and he cares deeply about the UK and I dare say the rest of the world, too.  Sir Michael gets that and is doing his best to make sure that we get that too.  Mark Bolland never did.  For all of Mark Bolland’s self-lauded PR capabilities, in the final analysis, he too failed to perceive Prince Charles in human terms.  All he really did was recast Charles out from the shadow of Diana and into the shadow of Camilla.  And, it’s a well known fact that when the only light you get is from reflection, then it’s probably because there are some storm clouds around.  By taking Prince Charles out of the shadows of his personal life, Sir Michael has almost single-handedly changed the prism through which we are able to see him.  And, if you have been paying attention the last twenty years, you know that’s no mean feat.  So I say, let’s hear it for the bean counters.  Whoever said that they don’t know how to work a PR angle?  It wasn’t all that complicated really. It simply involved saving a perfectly good tube of lipstick, and keeping the pigs in the barn…where they belong.

- Elizabeth W. King