The King………and I

The Royal Regiment of Wales has a singular motto: it reads, “Gwell Angau na Chywilydd: Death rather than Dishonour.” 

That motto, that sentence, indeed that statement says, in those few words, everything that matters in life. However, back to that motto: Death rather than Dishonour. I re-ran a sector of Netflix’ the Crown on my t.v., not forgetting that it was a fictionalised commentary upon, at that time, The Man Who Would Be King, and his approach to His marriage, and also with the slag who now sits  as Queen upon the Throne of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, beside the Man who is now King.

I sometimes tend to forget that there is a vast gulf between those whose lives are within ‘The Establishment’ and ordinary people, and that ‘gulf’ was so apparent in the life, the training, the very upbringing, of that ‘Man who would be King’. Their lives, even the way in which they think, is so very different to people like me. It is claimed that when Charles first met Camilla, he was immediately smitten, and whilst dating, they became intimate. 

Whether true or not, I neither know nor care, but by the strange rules which seem to govern the ‘Elite’, which calls for the man to marry a virgin; this intimacy ruled Camilla out as a immediate marriage partner: but Charles continued to cling to Camilla’s memory. He met Diana, and in the most abbreviated courtship known to civilised society, they became engaged after meeting only thirteen times. 

After marriage, Diana soon became mother to the heir, and soon after the ‘spare’, but she also became one of the most photographed women in the world, for she possessed a rare beauty; and unfortunately for Charles, placed him in her shadow in popularity.

It is known that, despite his marriage, Charles was soon back in touch with his old flame Camilla. Unfortunately for Charles, she was now a married mother, but there seemed to be a peculiar echo of earlier times, with the late Duke of Windsor’s predilection towards women who happened to be other men’s wives. When Diana’s marriage became strained, Charles took refuge in a return to Camilla, and one very intimate phone conversation was recorded, and sold to the Mirror newspaper. 

This recording wasn’t published at that time, as the newspaper’s editors did not wish to be seen to help further fracture a Royal marriage, but when the Queen consented to the request that her son and his wife become separated; all bets were off, and the tape was published, becoming known as ‘Camillagate’. Diana’s worst fears were confirmed, as those recorded words were splashed all across the Western world, and her beliefs of Charles’ adulterous behaviour were hardened into reality.

We all know of what followed, with the divorce; with Charles snuggled up with his slag, who had finally been kicked out of the marital home by an incandescent Brigadier Carter Bowles: and Diana rebuilding her own life. When she met her death in that Paris tunnel, driven by a drunk who should have been ten miles away from the controls of a powerful car, at least Charles had the good sense to demand that a Queen’s Flight jet be given him, so that the dead mother of a future King be returned to England with dignity.

Whatever sadness might have remained after Diana’s death was soon eclipsed, as it was just on the year after the funeral were Charles and his choice of partner seen together as a couple. He married her, and after the death of his mother, Elizabeth 2, he let it be known that the slag would become Queen when he was crowned. His memory must be extremely short-spanned, or perhaps that slogan “ Death rather than Dishonour. “ never really meant much to ‘The Man who would be King’.