Royal Pains -- `Close Your Eyes, Charles, And Think Of England'

Prince Charles didn't want to marry Lady Diana Spencer, but even his mistress, Camilla Parker Bowles, was certain that "the mouse" was absolutely right for England's future King. Second of four excerpts from "Behind Palace Doors: Marriage and Divorce in the House of Windsor."

Charles Philip Arthur George, Prince of Wales, heir to the British throne and the world's most eligible bachelor, had a problem. He was not in love with the girl he was going to marry:

And nobody would listen to him.

His fiancee, Lady Diana Spencer, was the girl next door. Their families had known each other all their lives, and for generations past. She had been guaranteed immaculate by the surgeon-gynecologist to the queen; she defined the word "innocent." Her face on the cover of a magazine sold out the edition. Exactly as advertised, approved and admired by all, Lady Diana seemed made to order.

But he barely knew her.

"She is exquisitely pretty, a perfect poppet . . . but she is a child," he told a woman friend plaintively, still brooding less than a month before the nuptials about the wisdom - the sanity - of his choice. "She does not look old enough to be out of school, much less married," Charles fretted.

But for all the angst and air of irresolution surrounding the prince in the weeks following the announcement of his engagement to Lady Diana, palace aides did not sense a crisis, or even acknowledge a problem.. The prince's worries were drowned in the palace clamor for a marriage that was more than a marriage: It was a massive public-relations coup for the monarchy.

Ratings is the name of the game for royalty as well as for television, and the wedding was to be the essence of triumphalism, the biggest ceremonial event the British monarchy had ever staged: a royal spectacular, a real-life fairy tale shown live on satellite TV around the world. Hundreds of millions of dollars were in play, and the prince had as much say in the matter as a corporal in the Light Brigade.

The prince seeks advice

Charles met with his father in an attempt to win him to his side. But the meeting was a disaster and resulted only in a long, inconclusive wrangle that ended with Prince Philip bluntly telling him that since his 30th birthday he had been "living on borrowed time" as a bachelor. Public expectation was at a peak: It was time, Philip growled, "to get off the pot."

The prince left the meeting with his father more depressed and frustrated. "Why does he always manage to make me feel like the bloody monkey to his organ grinder?" Charles asked the woman friend in whom he sought solace that evening, and who was one of the several married women in whom he placed a special trust. Like his late great-uncle David, the duke of Windsor, he had a weakness for other men's wives.

Camilla Parker Bowles, the one Charles trusted most, and had loved longest, continued to try to soothe his nerves as the wedding grew closer. She had the most important qualification as a mistress: She was a good listener. She had evaluated all his relationships, the serious ones, as if some fealty were due, as if his future happiness were on her conscience. She knew that Charles fell in love with dangerous ease and she would perceive his conquests through her steely reality rather than his romanticism. Marking them on a scale of 1 to 10, none had earned more than six on her scorecard. Diana, far different from the others with whom he had been involved, got a nine. "She's an absolute mouse," Parker Bowles told him. "She will be fine; she is almost perfect."

It was heartfelt advice. Only a little older than Charles, Parker Bowles was considerably wiser in the ways of the world, and her strategy as a mistress turned on her sanctioning and taking an early hold on his bride. In Diana, she was convinced that the prince had found a woman who suited her own book exactly, "an absolute mouse."

Short on looks, but a striking woman with a faintly dangerous past, Parker Bowles was married to Lt. Col. Andrew Parker Bowles, one of the prince's closest friends. She and Charles had been lovers before her marriage. The emotional bond that attached them went back a long way.

History repeats itself

Parker Bowles' great-grandmother, Alice Keppel, was the mistress of Charles' great-great-grandfather King Edward VII. She felt history was on her side. "My great-grandmother was your great-great-grandfather's mistress. How about it?" she had boldly propositioned Charles when they first met in the late 1960s, when she was still Camilla Rosemary Shand.

He never recovered from that opening line. From that moment on, wherever Charles was, Parker Bowles was never far away.

"At Biarritz (where she went with the king every Easter), Alice Keppel was as much the queen of England as Alexandra herself," Parker Bowles once told a friend, who got the feeling that she was revealing something about herself, that it was her ambition "to get at least the same recognition, and nothing less."

In 1981, it seemed that Parker Bowles was on her way to achieving that goal. All of London, her London, knew of her relationship with Charles; she was welcomed everywhere and treated with respect. Even her husband, like George Keppel 100 years before him, did not question his friend the Prince of Wales' choice of mistress. Like her great-grandmother, Parker Bowles remained the prince's favorite; her advice was listened to above all others.

But she could not convince him that Diana was "the right bride." He had never had anything from her but honesty and caring, so why should he not trust her judgment now? Her feelings were hurt. She was also very angry, and for several weeks refused to take his calls. It was the first sign of discord in their relationship in nearly 12 years.

Eight weeks before the wedding was to take place, unable to reach Parker Bowles, Charles was in a highly agitated state of mind. Several times he talked to Lady Tryon, another of his trusted women friends, whom he had nicknamed "Kanga." An attractive Australian blonde, Kanga had also been an early and uncompromising supporter of Diana. Did she still think that Diana was the right woman for him? Absolutely, said Kanga. Although not as close to Charles as Parker Bowles undoubtedly was, she had always told him what she thought without regard for proprieties.

Last resort: Princess Anne

In early May he took the unusual step of consulting his sister, Princess Anne.

Their relationship had never been close. "The only time I see much of him is during holidays," she had once remarked, "and roughly speaking that's enough." Their harmony was usually a question of whether the princess was in a humor to resurrect or forget sibling jealousies. She swam better than he did, she was more advanced as a rider, too, but the royal family showered its attention and concern on Charles, the heir apparent, and with it, many suspected, much of the love of which Anne had felt deprived.

At 30, she could still be as intimidating and competitive as she was when they were children, only now he knew he could defend himself better.

Maybe she could not take seriously her brother's litany of reasons why he feared that Diana would not be a suitable bride for him after all, but no sharpened sisterly senses detected the dangerous undercurrent of his concern, that anticipated the biggest crisis the royal family had known since the abdication of Edward VIII. And when he had finished, she dismissed his fears with an almost willful lack of insight into what he was trying to tell her.

He was too stuck in his bachelor ways, she chided: and told him to grow up. "You've got to play the hand you are dealt," she said. She added slyly in the tones that had so often angered and motivated him as a child and now evoked and mocked the Windsor insularity they still shared: "Just close your eyes and think of England, Charles."

He returned to London amused, and chastened by her gamy bluntness. "Nothing is more irritating than obtrusive good advice from one's little sister," he said lightly. But his disappointment was plain to see.

"He was as frustrated as hell, and he was beginning to suspect that the court believed in the marriage only to the extent that it served the purpose of the monarchy," said a close friend of the family. "Looking back, he was absolutely right, of course; he knew so many things, but nobody at the palace was prepared to level with him or help him carry the responsibility of that knowledge."

(From the book "Behind Palace Doors: Marriage and Divorce in the House of Windsor," by Nigel Dempster and Peter Evans. Copyright, 1993, Welcome Productions Inc. and Peter Evans. Reprinted by arrangement with the publisher, G.P. Putnam's Sons. Distributed by Los Angeles Times Syndicate.)

Tomorrow: `I can't keep her out of my bed.'