I, along with what seems to be the rest of the world, spent my week binge-watching season four of The Crown, and it has left me shook. This was my mother’s era of tabloid drama and I never understood how piping hot the royal tea was until now. Since finishing season four, I have gone deep down the rabbit hole of researching the love triangle of Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, Prince Charles and Princess Diana. Here are my hot takes:
Prince Charles is scum, and I’m glad that season four of The Crown ruined his decades-long campaign to improve his public image. He marries a 19-year-old girl, who was nearly 13 years his junior and then treated her terribly. I cannot imagine being in Diana’s shoes and realizing that while I was engaged to a man, he was having custom bracelets made for his ex-girlfriend. Also, Camillagate? It takes a weird dude to say that he wishes he were his mistress’ tampon so that way he would always be in her pants. Not exactly the behaviour of the future “Defender of Faith”.
Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, is no saint, but a lot of the hate towards her comes from internalized misogyny. Do I want her to be Queen Consort? Not really, but I think the bulk of rage should be directed towards Prince Charles. Camilla was scorned by the public and the Royal Family for much longer than Charles was, while Charles had a much greater obligation to uphold the morals of the Royal Family. Perhaps Camilla is just a victim to her genetics. After all, her great-grandmother, Alice Keppel, was the mistress of Prince Charles’ great-grandfather, Edward VII.
Princess Diana got done so dirty. I’m not saying she’s perfect; she definitely had some serious mental health issues that were not exclusively caused by her marriage to Prince Charles. But, wow. She was picked to become Charles’ wife because she was young and inexperienced, but she was then alienated from the Royal Family for being young, inexperienced and the darling of the public. If I had been married to Charles, who was unfaithful even during their engagement, you can bet that I would have taken a string of lovers as well. Diana deserved a stable, caring relationship that would have helped alleviate her mental health issues, not to be with a man like Charles, who told her she was getting chubby, which triggered her battle with bulimia. The AUDACITY of Charles, looking how he does, to have any negative feedback on Diana’s appearance.
This is my most controversial hot take. I almost wish I didn’t believe this, so that way I could be content to merely revel in my disgust at their behaviour. But Camilla and Charles are soulmates. All this pain could have been avoided if the Royal Family had consented for them to be wed in the first place. As I previously mentioned, Camillagate was the leaking of a private phone call between Prince Charles and Camilla that took place while they were both still married. The tampon comment was disturbing, but perhaps more disturbing was how in love they were. When they were saying goodbye, it was like two teenagers giggling and pretending that they were going to hang up, but instead they just kept coming back to say that they loved each other one more time. Sickening. But, the fact is that Prince Charles and Camilla are the love story that was always meant to happen, and Diana was victimized because they weren’t allowed to be together in the first place.