Royal blind item: Which royal love child story did Princess Diana believe?

Photo credit: Gawker.com

Royal blind item: Which royal love child story did Princess Diana believe?
The existence of royal love children is an interesting subject. Although history is littered with examples, only two children fathered by living royals have been officially acknowledged in recent times: Prince Albert of Monaco has admitted that he is the father of Jazmin Grace Grimaldi and Alexandre Coste.

King Albert II of Belgium is reputed to be the father of artist Delphine Boel, although this has not been confirmed. The late Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands (father of Queen Beatrix) had two illegitimate daughters, Alicia von Bielefeld and Alexia Grinda-Lejeune, recognised after his death, although rumours persist of more children outside marriage. Some also believe the Duchess of Cornwall, formerly Camilla Parker-Bowles, is descended from Edward VII through his mistress, Alice Keppel.

Then there are some disputed claimants. Robert Brown, an accountant from Jersey, came forward to say he was Princess Margaret’s secret son with Group Captain Peter Townsend, but failed to convince a judge. Attempts to prove that Prince Philip fathered two children, Max and Louise Boisot, with his childhood pal, Helene Cordet, have come to nothing.

At one stage, there were several putative offspring of the late Duke of Windsor popping up in the UK press. Fanny Cradock, a wild-eyed television cook, even wrote a novel called The Windsor Secret in which Wallis Simpson gave birth to the Duke’s son. To this day, nobody has produced reliable evidence that he ever had any children.

However, the Duke of Windsor apparently did believe that Michael Canfield, the first husband of Jackie Onassis’s sister, Lee Radziwill, was the secret son of his younger brother, the Duke of Kent, who was killed in 1942. What a film the mysterious Mr. Canfield’s life story would make! The bisexual Duke may also have been the father of Raine Spencer, Princess Diana’s stepmother — at least that’s what Raine’s mother, novelist Barbara Cartland, once told respected writer Michael Thornton.

So what about modern royals? Whispers that Diana’s father might have been the late Sir James Goldsmith have been discounted, but there are two recurring rumours concerning secret paternity that I still wonder about and neither concerns Prince Harry, who is definitely the son of Prince Charles and looks more like him and the Queen every day. Diana believed one of the tales about current royal love children to be true — and she knew the secrets of all the world’s royal families. Diana told a friend, who told someone else, who told someone else …who told me.

Source: The Morton Report

My best guess
Prince Andrew, the rumored son of Henry Porchester, 7th Earl of Carnarvon (Queen Elizabeth II's racing manager)

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.