King Charles won’t uphold a ‘family monarchy’: royal author
King Charles III is no family man, according to a royal expert.
Historian Tessa Dunlop has claimed that the new monarch will fail at having a conventional family dynamic during his reign, as opposed to his parents, Queen Elizabeth II and her husband Prince Philip, who spent 73 years of marriage together before his death last year.
Dunlop, the author of “Elizabeth & Philip: A Story of Young Love, Marriage, and Monarchy,” told the Mirror that Elizabeth and Philip were “instant trendsetters” during their courtship and subsequent seven decades together.
“Britain’s pinup family, the House of Windsor, had reached dizzy new heights,” she said of the pair’s marriage in 1947. “Within a year Prince Charles was born; the original baby boomer, his arrival sealed the deal for family monarchy.”
Dunlop also noted that during “this era of the nuclear family, divorce laws didn’t change for over 20 years.”
“Irrespective of what happened behind closed doors, Elizabeth and Philip were the perfect couple in a fast-changing society,” she said of the royal couple, who would have celebrated their 75th wedding anniversary on Nov. 20.
“Theirs would prove a tough act to follow,” she noted.
In contrast, their son had a doomed marriage to the late Princess Diana in the 1980s before he ultimately tied the knot with Camilla, Queen Consort.
Dunlop also pointed out how Charles, now 74, felt immense pressure from both his family and British society by 1980 as the world was thirsty for another royal wedding.
Enter: Diana Spencer, a young, wide-eyed girl who was thrown into the Wild Wild Windsor West when she married Charles in 1981 after just a few dates. Their marriage was volatile — with cheating allegations on both ends and Diana feeling depressed and suffering from an eating disorder.
“On the surface, his marriage looked like the perfect second act — another blushing bride with her sailor prince,” Dunlop said.
She reasoned that Charles — whom she called “the product of his generation just as his parents were of theirs” — will not be able to uphold a “family monarchy” due to his highly publicized separation in 1992 and 1996 divorce from Diana.
“Times had changed: Divorce was prevalent, celebrity culture distorting, infidelity unacceptable. Charles and Diana’s giant wedding ended in giant failure. Family monarchy fell apart.”
Despite being married to Camilla since 2005, Dunlop argued that the royal family has drastically changed.
“But can our everyman king find a new brand as potent as family monarchy?” she asked. “Let’s hope so for the sake of our divided nation.”
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