{The Woman I Love} -part one-

During the month of February—considered the month of love—and in celebration of the upcoming marriage of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, I’ll share an excerpt (in three parts) from my book in progress. The section, called “The Woman I Love," features several members of Prince Harry’s family!

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The Woman I Love

{part one of three*}

The timing of Diana Spencer and Prince Charles’ union, caught in the historical crossfire of a major shift in royal culture, arose in paradox. These were the last stages of an era where marriages were arranged to suit one’s level of dynastic duty and now times were shifting into a more modern world where royals, at last less isolated from the masses, desired to marry for love and supportive companionship. (Can you imagine either Prince William or Prince Harry marrying based solely on their dynastic duty? Or for that matter, can you imagine your children marrying someone that you selected for them based on background, connections, and reproductive capabilities?) The irony for Diana and Charles was that without some sort of outside “arrangement,” they would have never become a couple.

But the timing had not shifted enough for Prince Charles in the 1970s and ‘80s allowing him to act from his true feelings, especially since the marital decisions of this particular heir to the throne were still shadowed by his family’s recent history. The actions of a great-uncle, King Edward VIII (Uncle David), who, with some political pressures, gave up the throne “for the woman he loved” in 1936, were a little too close in historical proximity for Charles to have made a similar decision about marrying someone for love, regardless of “background.” (Of course, to make matters worse, Wallis Simpson, King Edward’s beloved and regular companion, was not only twice married—and only once divorced at the time—but an American to boot!) 

The earthshaking decision of the king to choose love and happiness over duty and abdicate the throne (causing a constitutional crisis) was considered abhorrent by the rest of the Windsor family for many reasons. And to show they meant business, they shunned the former king—their brother, son, in-law, cousin, and uncle—insisting on a near exile from Great Britain; he was only allowed to return by royal invitation for short visits or to attend a funeral, but never to live. This exile-of-sorts lasted the remainder of his life; ending only when his body was brought back home for burial, some 36 years later. So it was under this specter that Charles was trained in the mindset of “duty above feelings” by all the palace powers led by his mother and grandmother.

While editing this section (originally written in 2011 or so), I watched the television drama series from 1978, “Edward and Mrs. Simpson.” The actor who played Edward (as prince then king), responding to his advisor’s instruction about “who” he could bring to the palace to avert any further notoriety in regard to his companion, Mrs. Simpson, asks in almost a whisper: “How can he not bring his heart?” I don’t know if King Edward actually said these words, but it was the most poignantly telling line in the program’s reenactment. And perhaps his great-nephew, Charles, asked the same question years later about his own circumstances.

King Edward also said that he could be a better king with the woman he loved at his side and longed to be able to just “be himself,” asking his subjects to trust that would be enough. (“I am different from my father and determined to be myself.”) But palace officials, steeped in tradition, feared such heart-centered notions—so foreign to them the possibility of heart and head working in powerful alignment! (Queen Mary, David’s uncompromising mother, responded to her son’s dilemma by asking, “What’s love compared to duty?”) Not only were the lives of both men, Edward and Charles, altered because of these attitudes, but a nation also remained in wait.  [To Be Continued]

{*Part one of three of "The Woman I Love"....excerpt from my book in progress, tentatively titled, A Memory of Love: The Spiritual Mission of a Princess.}