The once and future king!
The wait is over and we have a new and future king of England to fawn over. William and Kate have given us a boy after the entire empire had prepared for the possibility that a little girl might be born to inherit the ancient throne of the old sod.
In some ways, the British royalty have been a part of our American life almost since we can remember. We do not recall Elizabeth being crowned queen in the early fifties, but, we do so remember the life parallels between he oldest son--Charles--and our own growing to manhood. We have read about Charles for our entire life and it has seemed that he has personified the monarchy to us due to closeness of age more than anyone else has done so. We have watched him grow into manhood as we did the same and to reach an age that we also enjoy when so many of the worries of life have been put behind us and we enjoy the fruits of a grand age when there is wisdom and still the time left, hopefully, to put it to use.
Prince Charles has yet to be given his own charge in life and with the longevity of his mother, he may be quite elderly before he ever becomes king of England. After all, the queen mother of Elizabeth lived to be over one hundred years old when she died early in this ever lengthening century.
Charles was always a sort of odd character in English royal history. He did not marry young but he took a young bride that he apparently did not really know when he wed Dianna, who became known as the people’s princess for her activities surrounding charities and causes that included the banning of land mines around the world. Charles and Diana had the obligatory “heir and a spare” in William and Harry and they became the darlings of world society at an age just as tender as the new child that we saw join us this week. But the real and enduring one was the divorced Dianna whose death placed her among the great personalities of both English royal and traditional history. We watched her mature from a teenage bride to become a woman of great affection and love for those that she would, in the end, never live to see become her subjects. We remember the night that she died and the tolling of the bells along the Thames in London the somber morning after the news came out. Dianna was cast aside, in life, by the British royal family and the people who loved her so have never forgotten nor will they ever forget.
If there was a female Arthur, Dianna was probably it.
Dianna made her presence and influence known on her oldest son both in life and even unto death. William was by Kate’s side when the child came this week and that seems perfectly normal until one realizes that it is the first time that it may ever have happened, certainly in modern English dynastic history. Charles was at a cricket match when Dianna had William and the distance that English kings and queens have kept from their offspring was finally broken by Dianna when she insisted on personally raising her children instead of foisting them off on nanny’s as they went about their appointed royal tasks.
Perhaps it is the modern age that has made prince Charles seem so oddly out of place yet so representative of so much that our current society goes through. After he divorced Dianna, Charles took up with the love of his life, Camellia, whom he once had a bizarre love meeting with in a muddy field midway between their two residences one rainy afternoon. Those who saw him afterward thought that it was so pathetic in so many ways. Now, Dianna is in Valhalla and Charles continues to await his turn on the throne with his now wife and past lover whom Britain will always compare to the incomparable Dianna and the new love of their collective lives, the commoner with all the royal grace, Kate Middleton.
At best, Charles will be a place keeper monarch awaiting someone that his subjects would much rather see on the throne than himself as he lives in the shadows of both his first wife and a queen, Elizabeth, who have both more than lived up to everyone’s expectations.
We remember what Barack Obama said on the night of his first election in 2008 as he spoke in the peoples place in Chicago--Grant Park. He said that he had run for president because of his children and his hope that they might live to see a twenty second century that still might uphold some of the finer things that both the twentieth and the twenty first had passed down to them. The same might hold true for this new once and future king of England who might very well be the king, at 87, when the twenty second century unfolds for them. We along with so many others who wish them well at this time, will not live to see that time as our time will have long since passed but we can hope and pray that there is a world for he and his children that we, looking out at them from our photographs, might still be able to identify with and that there might be still a common heritage and some threads that we can all hold on to as the passing parade of the ages enfolds us all. It is, after all, why we have kings and queens and princesses and princes and presidents in the first place.
IOVHO,
Regards,
Joe
To say that "God exists" is the greatest understatement ever made across space and time.
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