Fairy Tale Romance

The year was 1981. I was 11 years old. I've never been much of a morning person, but on July 29th of that year I set my alarm to go off at about 4 AM. It's not every day you have a chance to see a fairy tale wedding.

Unless you were old enough to remember it ( and I think I have only one reader who was even alive back then ), it would be hard to comprehend just how big an event the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana was. We had all read about royal weddings in fairy tales, but we never actually thought we would have a chance to watch one in real life. If a boy like me ( a boy who spent all his free time watching sports, and didn't really have any "girlie" interests ) was fascinated by the idea of a royal wedding, I can only imagine what the typical 7-year-old girl must have been thinking of at the time ( As big as the royal wedding was then, it would have been even bigger now. Considering how much Disney has bombarded little girls with princess stuff ( My friend Tom's daughter is only three, and she is already a maniac about princesses ), I think that a lot of little girl's heads would be in danger of exploding if a royal wedding happened today ). This wedding was like a fairy tale come true, and everything we saw on TV that day confirmed that. It was a real-life example of a perfect fairy tale romance.

Too bad it was all a lie ...

I don't think I really need to tell anyone the rest of story. We all know how it worked out. However, looking back at it all now, I've come to realize that Prince Charles did have a fairy tale romance in his life. That romance was with Camilla Parker Bowles.

Well, perhaps not your perfect "suitable for children" romance, but fairy tales romances are supposed to be about true love, and the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that Charles and Camilla are a great example of true love.

Okay, maybe "great example" is the wrong the choice of words. They did, after all, carry on an affair when they were both married to other people. That's certainly not a great example for anybody. They probably didn't really love their first spouses, but that's no excess for their underhanded behavior. Common decency suggests that they should have divorced their first spouses before starting an affair. Common decency suggests that they shouldn't have even married their first spouses when they ( Charles and Camilla ) were still in love with each other. However, their situation was so far from "common" that I'm going to cut them a little slack about their lack of "decency".

For those who don't know the story, Charles met Camilla way back in 1970. He wanted to marry her, but his Mom didn't think she would be a suitable wife for him ( That's tough enough under any circumstances, but it's got to be even tougher when your Mom happens to be the freakin' Queen! ). Obviously, the most noble thing to do would have been to marry her anyway ( like King Edward VIII did in 1936 when he gave up his throne to marry a divorced American woman ), but it's understandable that he caved into the pressure from his Mom.

So, he told Camilla that he could never marry her and she ( understanbably ) eventually married another man. He, of course, married Diana, but apparantly their respective marriages couldn't get in the way of the love they had for each other.

Once again, cheating on the spouses - BAD BAD BAD ( There are rumors that Charles and Camilla got in on the night before the royal wedding ), but there is still something about their enduring love that warms my heart. Camilla obviously never stopped loving Charles, and it's clear that he REALLY REALLY loves her. I mean, one could potentially question Camilla's motivation ( after all, there are obvious benefits to being the lover ( and eventually the wife ) of the Prince of Wales ), but there's no doubt in my mind that Charles was motivated by true love. After all, as the freakin' Prince of Wales, he could have married pretty much anybody. He actually did wind up marrying a stunningly beautiful woman, but his love for Camilla never faded. I was really happy to see the two of them finally get married in 2005.

Yes, they both made mistakes, and they hurt a lot of people in the process. However, I still can't help but feel happy for them. It took 35 years, but they finally got married. I actually find the story of Charles and Camilla's romance more inspirational than any fairy tale I've ever read.

Rich

P.S. I have *NO* idea why this subject popped into my mind lately. It just did, and I felt like writing about it. If you didn't like this topic, well ....
... there's always the next post. :)