Charles: The Heart of a King by Catherine Mayer

Author:Catherine Mayer
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780753550809
Publisher: Ebury Publishing
Published: 2015-02-05T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

The Knight of the Realms

Camilla smiles on the podium. She’s wearing a blue that’s more cobalt than royal, designed to tone with her Nova Scotia tartan collar and scarf, and beginning to accessorise with her fingers on this unseasonably frigid morning. The Duchess of Cornwall has adjusted smoothly to many of the oddities of being a royal, but she wasn’t born with the Windsor metabolism. She feels the cold, unlike her poikilothermic husband and in-laws, and finds foreign trips gruelling. It doesn’t help that the Prince demands jam-packed schedules that allocate no slots to lunches or quiet lie-downs, irrespective of the time zones overflown. Then there are the endless ceremonials. She’s often required to spend more time being welcomed and waved off than actually looking at a place, and everything she sees has been pre-rehearsed and sanitised.

On 19 May 2014, that’s probably a good thing. She has been spared the freezing run-through of Nova Scotia’s welcoming ceremony on Halifax’s Grand Parade. By 9 a.m., the event had already attracted a small but patriotic crush. A choir of schoolchildren shivered in harmony as their adult overlords wrapped up against the cold. No matter: everyone was excited. The authorities had deployed a guard of honour and a platform full of movers and shakers including Justice Minister Peter MacKay, sent to Canada’s federal parliament by the voters of a Nova Scotian constituency. A military band, perplexingly, played ‘What Shall We Do With the Drunken Sailor?’ until MacKay moved to the microphone to check sound levels, announcing his pleasure in welcoming ‘the Prince and Princess of Wales’ to his country. By the time he delivers his speech to the Prince and the Duchess, MacKay has corrected his mistake, though he will mangle another set of titles, referring to the absent William and Kate as ‘the Prince and Princess of Cambridge’. It’s a foretaste of a four-day trip during which avidity for the spectacle of royalty masks a deeper confusion about who the visitors are and what they’re doing in Canada.

Some of that confusion is stirred by the ghost of Diana, who already hovered above the proceedings before MacKay inadvertently named her. Mell Kirkland and Kim Burke have been pressed up against a barrier from early morning to secure a good view. Kirkland proclaims herself content that her city is pulling out the stops for Charles. She doesn’t even begrudge Camilla her moment in the elusive sun. She has come to get close to Canada’s royalty. ‘We all feel the connection, but sometimes you need to be in the presence,’ she says. Yet Kirkland feels no natural affinity for Charles, who seems to her ‘of another generation’. The Diana brand maintains its potency. ‘She is still a huge part of people’s lives,’ says Kirkland. For Kirkland and Burke, as for many across the Realms and beyond, the Princess remains the world’s premier symbol of compassionate humanity. ‘We all need role models,’ says Burke.

The Prince’s brand, by contrast – and as a result – lacks

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