It’s the Charles and Camilla Show

Let the romantics treasure their recollections of his fairy-book first wedding to Diana Spencer. For my money, there’s no better entertainment value than the unscripted reality-TV version of Prince Charles’ nuptials with Camilla Parker Bowles, set for Saturday, unless some unforeseen event forces the rescheduling of it again. There’s the sublime irony of it all: The head of the Church of England—an institution created in defiance of a Catholic pope’s refusal to allow Henry VIII’s divorce and remarriage—must postpone his own wedding to a divorcee in order to pay his respects to the recently deceased Pope John Paul II. Then there’s the tabloid-fueled silliness of it all: A citizenry heretofore uninterested in the image of Charles’ mature lover Camilla, after the virginal Diana, is clamoring now for the wedding’s commemorative tea towels, stamps and china—as a sort of national joke, since they have the wrong date embossed on them. Further indignity was heaped on the couple when Sweden’s Crown Princess Victoria announced she’d be skipping the big day because she’d prefer to go to Japan to open a new Ikea store. So, lift a glass to Charles and Camilla on Saturday, but don’t count on any kind of media honeymoon. It’s all downhill from here.

—Posted by Noreen O’Leary

Photo: Hussein Anwar/SIPA/Newscom

April 7, 2005 in O'Leary | Permalink