Queen Elizabeth’s decision not to attend the wedding of her son and heir has heaped humiliation on Prince Charles and his long-time lover Camilla Parker Bowles, royal-watchers said on Wednesday.
The marriage plans of the two divorcees had already been verging toward the farcical, with the venue changed from Windsor Castle to a town hall register office and constitutional experts even questioning the legality of the civil ceremony.
But the Queen’s surprise announcement on Tuesday night that she would not be going to the town hall added a bizarre new twist.
Buckingham Palace insisted the monarch’s decision was not a snub and said she was trying to respect the couple’s desire for a low-key ceremony.
The Queen, who has in the past never shown approval of Charles’ affair with Camilla, will attend the church blessing ceremony afterwards at the historic castle west of London and is paying for the wedding reception.
'Humiliating and embarrassing'
But for the House of Windsor, tainted by scandals, divorce and tragedy, the debacle has been a bitter blow to their image as a 1,000-year-old monarchy adapting to the 21st century.
“It is humiliating and embarrassing for Charles,” said royal author Judy Wade.
“This is a PR disaster turning into a farce. Royal ceremonials always go like clockwork. Now they cannot even organize a wedding in a town hall,” she told Reuters.
Constitutional expert Harold Brooks-Baker, from the aristocratic bible Burke’s Peerage, was equally blunt.
Reflecting on reports that this is the first time for 142 years that a British monarch has missed the wedding of one of their children, he said: “It is a definite humiliation, it is an outrage.”
“The advisers at Buckingham Palace must sit down and work out what they are going to do. This has got to stop, otherwise they will ruin the whole fabric of the monarchy,” he told Reuters.
Tying the knot is proving a legal nightmare for Charles, already fearful that people will never warm to the woman widely viewed as the wrecker of his marriage to Princess Diana.
The matronly Parker Bowles has always faced an uphill struggle to escape the shadow of the glamorous Diana, killed in a 1997 Paris car crash a year after her divorce from Charles.
'Town hall wedding'
When aides discovered that Windsor Castle could be turned into a venue for public weddings if a license were granted to hold the ceremony there, Charles had to switch his venue to Windsor town hall, just down the road.
Now the queen, perhaps mindful of the monarchy’s dignity being compromised, has turned her back on the civil ceremony.
“I’m sure the queen does not feel it is appropriate, nor does anyone else, for her to pad across the road from Windsor Castle to the register office opposite,” said royal biographer Robert Lacey.
The embarrassment was piled on by constitutional experts who have been arguing that members of the royal family are not allowed to marry in a civil ceremony in England.
Charles, who in his fifties still calls the monarch “Mummy,” will now inevitably feel that the fates are conspiring against him at every turn before the April 8th ceremony.
The latest twist in the saga of what newspapers are calling the “town hall wedding” has prompted lively editorial debate.
“For goodness sake, the Queen is the mother of the man who will one day be king,” said royal commentator James Whitaker.
“In any normal family throughout her land, you would expect the matriarch to be present at her heir’s wedding even if it is for the second time around.”
The left-leaning Guardian could scarcely contain its glee at the downmarket lurch of the royal nuptials. “All it needs now is a punch-up at the reception,” it smirked.