Video Pick: "Charles and Diana: Unhappily ever after"

Starring Roger Rees and Catherine Oxenberg as the ill-fated Prince and Princess of Wales, "Charles and Diana" offers a compelling and dramatic insight into their marriage breakdown. As with most reenactments, fiction doesn't always match up to reality. For example, Diana's first speech (in Wales) is shown as a daytime affair, when in reality it was an evening event. Also, major characters such as James Hewitt are noticeably absent. These are minor hiccups in an otherwise brilliant portrayal of two royal figures who, in the end, desperately longed to be free to find someone to love and someone to love them, to paraphrase Oxenberg's character.

My intense dream about Princess Diana

I had an interesting dream about Princess Diana yesterday morning. We were sitting in a restaurant enjoying ourselves. However, the atmosphere was ruined by Prince Charles' absence. I put my arms around her and said "It's too bad Daddy (Prince Charles) can't be here." Diana shushed me, agitated by the presence of an eavesdropper at the next table.


 I got up and went to a cooler/fridge to get the both of us something to drink. I barely had time to ask her whether she wanted apple juice or orange juice, when the eavesdropper quietly confronted her. He told her that he was a reporter, and demanded that she give him the information he needed to write a story about her.

Seeing her obvious and palpable distress, I grabbed a pair of black pliers and held them at his throat, shouting at him and making a scene so that he could get thrown out of the restaurant. It was then that I woke up.

Diana, Charles, and Camilla: Love at first sight

Photo credit: Love at First Sight

Prince Charles, so the story goes, chose Lady Diana Spencer to be his wife because of her valuable qualities:  she was a young, pretty, virginal, and sweet tempered Protestant from one of Great Britain's most aristocratic families. However, did their subconscious attraction to each other's facial features and facial proportions help seal the deal?

This is the intriguing angle examined in Love at First Sight, by British portrait painter Suzi Malin. The book was sparked while painting a posthumous portrait of the Princess of Wales, when Malin noticed similar facial features between Charles and Diana. What followed was five years of research. According to the book, there are three types of visual attraction. In the case of Charles and Diana, their attraction was one of the most famous cases of  harmonism. They had similar facial proportions; although their features were different, the spacing between their features were the same.

Malin also states that "when brothers have similar facial proportions and each takes a harmonist partner their wives might well look alike." This may help to explain the striking resemblance between Diana and Sophie, Countess of Essex.

Malin argues that harmonists "like the way the other looks and feel comfortable with them, but because they fall in love with the outside appearance, if the inner beauty doesn't match up, the relationship starts to feel hollow. Such pairings have a high casualty rate." Little wonder, then, that Charles' and Diana's celebrated marriage fell apart in such an appalling manner.

Photo credit: Taman Kanak-Kanak Sanggawinaya Blog

Malin asserts that Camilla Parker-Bowles' resemblance to Charles' nanny Mabel Anderson is more than a coincidence. This is an example of another type of visual attraction, called prima copulism, where one romantic partner "is drawn to the other as they are subconsciously reminded of their first love - their mother or father." The first love can also be a nanny if she was an important figure in that person's life.
At the end of the day, we can't help who we're attracted to, and it seems that royals are no different.





Sources: (1) "Face facts about falling in love", Sunday Sun, February 8, 2004; (2) "Suzi Malin", New London News newsletter, September 2007.

Diana: The coolest princess

In an earlier blog post, I highlighted an International Business Times article that tried to explain why Prince Harry was the coolest royal. Well, no wonder he is so cool...in the September 1990 edition of Royalty magazine:

In my opinion, this emphasizes the point that Diana has influenced her children's values, traits, and mannerisms in so many ways. I hope that Harry continues to infuse Diana's compassion, informality, and courage into his own public life.

Royal blind item: The pendulum prince

Photo credit: Gawker.com

Royal blind item: The pendulum prince
The Royal Husband was already a man of a certain reputation when his naïve bride married him. She wanted to believe the romantic best about a man she adored, and so ignored the society rumours that swirled in more than one country. Although he is still attractive to ladies, some in high places whisper that he is gay, which is unlikely to be 100% true, and he is certainly the father of all his children. Others are convinced that he is a ‘pendulum prince’ — i.e. one who swings both ways, a label attached to more than one royal man.

It wouldn’t matter too much if the Royal Wife had known and accepted his inclinations at the time of their marriage, but apparently she didn’t and the truth came as a great shock. In dynastic style, she put the family line first and buried herself in work.

While the Royal Wife was busy, busy, busy with cutting ribbons and pastimes of her own, the Royal Husband found plenty of me time, down time, and private time with some close friends, prudently away from the attentions of paparazzi. There were a number of crises, but the Royal Wife insisted putting on a public front.

When it came to the children, the Royal Husband was overly strict. The Royal Wife looked the other way, just as she did over his other activities. The result was that the children were emotionally damaged by such harsh discipline. One had rebellious episodes, and although is technically ‘settled’, some fear that situation might not hold forever. Another has had relationship difficulties that have attracted speculative gossip. At the moment, the Royal Wife lets the Royal Husband pretty much do exactly as he likes.

This is not the British Royal Family, although Queen Elizabeth knows all about the Royal Husband; all royal families know each other and most know each other’s secrets. The late Princess Diana also knew about this Royal Husband, but not through marrying Charles and joining the House of Windsor. And that is actually the biggest clue of all.

Source: Margaret Holder, The Morton Report

My best guesses
Royal Husband: Prince (now King) Juan Carlos I of Spain
Royal Wife: Princess (now Queen) Sofia