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Wednesday, June 29, 1994
Prince Charles, in documentary, hints of extramarital affair
By David Alexander
LONDON (UPI) -- The heir to the British throne insisted in a documentary screened Wednesday that he did everything possible to make a success of his fairy-tale marriage to Princess Diana, but he implied that he had an extramarital affair after ''it became irretrievably broken down.''
Prince Charles, in a Central Television documentary screened for journalists and shown later on Britain's independent television network, initially waffled when asked whether he had been persistently unfaithful to Diana with his longtime friend Camilla Parker Bowles.
''These things again, as I was saying earlier, are so personal that it's difficult to know quite how to, you know, to talk about these things in front of everybody and obviously I don't think many people would want to ... All I can say is, um, that, I mean, there is no truth in, in so much of this speculation,'' he said in a rambling response.
When the interviewer pressed him again on the matter, the prince said he ''absolutely'' had tried to be faithful and to honor his marriage vows. Asked if he actually was faithful to his marriage, he responded: ''Yes. Until it became irretrievably broken down, us both having tried.''
The prince's comments have been interpreted by the British tabloid press as being an admission of adultery.
The Daily Mirror urged Diana in a front-page headline Wednesday to ''Divorce him and be happy,'' while The Sun cackled, ''Di told you so.''
The 2 1/2-hour documentary, entitled ''Charles: The Private Man, The Public Role,'' painted a picture of a painfully shy and intensely private person who is ill at ease in the limelight and yet forces himself into the public role for which he has trained all his life.
The documentary touches upon his tense relationship with the news media, needing the publicity for the causes he expouses and charities he heads and yet detesting the celebrity and constant prying that go with being a highly visible public person.
''I do think those people who marry into my family find it increasingly difficult to do so because of all the added pressure, because of suddenly finding they're put into positions which they simply were not trained for and the strains and stresses of that become, in some cases, almost intolerable,'' he said.
''Why just look at the level of intrusion, persistent, endless, carping, pontificating, criticizing, examining, inventing, the soap opera constantly, trying to turn everybody into celebrities and if you're not a celebrity, well, what's the point?'' he added.
The prince fretted over the constraints of being a public person.
Commenting on one of the twice-yearly meetings to set his public schedule, he said, ''I can't describe to you the horror of it because you see, you know, you see your life being set in concrete.''
The documentary touched on the prince's interests, his experiments in gardening and farming, his watercolor painting, his Prince's Trust charity for unemployed youths and his efforts to encourage business into poverty-stricken inner-city areas.
It also showed his congenial relationship with his children.
The documentary addressed Prince Charles' efforts to encourage the government to use him more effectively as an international envoy and salesman for Britain.
During his regular visits abroad as scheduled by the Foreign Office, his goal is to leave ''a warm glow, if one can, as far as jolly old Britain's concerned,'' he said.
''I mean ... it's not just being done for me as an individual for some self-glorification point of view,'' he said. ''I mean that's, I wouldn't do this naturally. I wouldn't do it by choice.''
He expressed concern over the monarch's role as head of the Church of England, saying he would rather the sovereign be known as the ''defender of faith'' rather than ''defender of the faith,'' thus acknowledging the importance of other religions, including Islam and Hinduism, in British life.
Despite the collapse of his marriage, the prince dismissed speculation that he would not succeed his mother as the British sovereign. He said he expected to become the monarch upon the death of Queen Elizabeth II.
''As far as I'm concerned in the ordinary course of events, that is what would happen. And I mean I, all my life, I've been brought up, you know, to, as I say, to do my utmost to try and carry out my duty to the ... country and to everybody else as, as well as possible.''
Still, he denied any frustration over having been a prince in waiting for 25 years and joked that he was in no rush to fill his mother's shoes or bear the additional weight of her responsibilities.
''With any luck,'' he said, ''I shall be so old I won't mind at all."
Wednesday, February 28, 1996
Princess Diana agrees to divorce
By David Alexander
LONDON (UPI) -- Princess Diana announced Wednesday that she has agreed to divorce Prince Charles, formally ending a stormy 15-year marriage that has seen both members of the royal couple admit in televised interviews they had extramarital affairs.
The princess of Wales said through a spokeswoman that she would continue to be involved in rearing her two children, William, 13, and Henry, 11, would remain at Kensington Palace and would retain her royal title.
''The princess will continue to be involved in all decisions relating to the children, and will remain at Kensington Palace with offices at St. James's Palace,'' the spokeswoman said in a statement. 'The princess of Wales will retain the title and will be known as Diana, princess of Wales.''
Diana's lawyer said the agreement to a divorce was the first step in the process of ending the royal couple's marriage.
''The prince and princess of Wales met this afternoon in private at St. James's Palace, and the result of that meeting is that the princess of Wales with huge sadness and regret agreed to Prince Charles' request for a divorce,'' said Anthony Julius, Diana's lawyer.
''What will happen now is that there will be discussions between lawyers and a timescale will be addressed,'' he told Independent Television News. ''Nothing is going to happen immediately but the decision has been taken in principle.''
Buckingham Palace said Queen Elizabeth II was interested to hear of Diana's announcement. The princess's decision came just two months after the queen sent letters to the couple urging them to seek a speedy divorce.
The queen sent the letters in mid-December, and Diana was stunned when the contents were leaked to the press before she had been able to speak to her children about the matter.
The move toward divorce came four years after Charles and Diana formally separated. The couple were married in a fairy- tale wedding in 1981, but their marriage soured in the late 1980s and they formally separated Dec. 9, 1992.
Prince Charles went public with his feelings about their marriage in a televised interview nearly two years ago. Asked if he had remained faithful to the princess, he said he had been true to Diana until it became clear their marriage had become irretrievably broken down.
The news media interpreted his remarks as confirmation that he had been engaged in an extramarital affair with his longtime friend, Camilla Parker Bowles.
Diana responded Nov. 19 with a televised interview that she kept secret from Buckingham Palace until just hours before it was broadcast. She told an interviewer that she had also had an extramarital affair.
Diana said she did not want a divorce, but added her marital situation needed ''clarity.'' The queen responded a few weeks later with letters urging the two to end the marriage.
The prospect of a divorce has raised some concern about whether Prince Charles should be allowed to follow his mother to the throne, but a constitutional expert, Lord St. John of Fawlsey, said Wednesday the end of the prince's marriage should have no effect.
''I think the result was inevitable,'' he said. ''We are living in the '90s and the whole of society has changed. It would be unreasonable, I think, to expect the royal family to hold standards that have radically changed in the whole of society, where divorce is now accepted as a regrettable part of life.''
''I think what is important is the constitutional issue, and that is, Prince Charles will succeed to the throne,'' he added. ''His status rests not on his marriage but on statute. And ... the princess of Wales is being treated fairly and reasonably and is being honored as a continuing member of the royal family. That is very important, too.''
Attitudes over divorce in the royal family have changed since Charles' great-uncle, King Edward VIII, gave up his throne in 1936 to marry an American divorcee, Wallis Simpson.
Princess Margaret, the queen's sister, was obliged to give up on her first love, Group Capt. Peter Townsend, because he was divorced, but Margaret herself later divorced the earl of Snowdon.
Princess Anne, Charles' sister, divorced Mark Phillips and subsequently remarried Tim Laurence.
Nor, if he succeeds his mother, would Charles be the first divorced person to occupy the throne. Henry VIII, the first head of the Church of England, divorced two of his six wives and had two others beheaded.
When George I came to the throne in 1714, he had already divorced his wife for adultery, and he kept her imprisoned in a German castle until her death.
Since Victoria's day, the royal family has been upheld as an example of family values, but that image didn't always fit reality. King Edward VII -- great-grandfather of the present queen -- was infamous for his extramarital affairs, although his wife, Alexandra, suffered in silence.