Some royal reporters have absolutely used Princess Diana’s words and Prince Harry’s words to undercut the Windsors. Those reporters or commentators will feign outrage at whatever Harry or Diana said, all while quoting those two royal renegades thoroughly. That’s what I thought Jennie Bond was doing in her new column in the Telegraph: “Diana told me Charles wasn’t cut out to be King – but she was wrong; Having been a royal correspondent for 35 years, I know King Charles better than most.” I thought it would be just a shady piece where Diana prophetically understood that Charles would move heaven and earth for his rottweiler and that would always be his fatal flaw as a monarch. But by the time I got to the end of this piece, I thought Bond must really believe the horsesh-t she’s saying. Some highlights:

Diana’s take on Charles: “The truth is that Charles would be much happier living in Tuscany, painting the landscape or studying architecture.” So said Diana, the late Princess of Wales, shortly after her divorce from her husband of 15 years. We were sitting in her drawing room at Kensington Palace talking about the future now that their “fairy-tale” marriage, which had become a living nightmare for both of them, had been officially extinguished. “I still believe that he’s just not cut out to be King,” she continued. “He has enough problems being Prince of Wales!”

Diana believed Charles was in a rut: “He’s stuck in a rut,” she told me. “Just take a look at his programme… he’s doing exactly the sort of things he was doing 10 years ago.”

Charles’s contradictions: Our King is a man shot through with paradox and contradiction. A progressive mind with an old man’s soul; a Royal surrounded by servants who says his role is to serve; someone who believes profoundly in promoting harmony and yet whose family life has been punctured by conflict; a man whose values are rooted in tradition but who accepts the need for change.

Bond was invited to Highgrove twice: Twice he invited me to Highgrove for tea and a chat. His private secretary at the time, Richard Aylard, said the Prince was mystified by the way he was portrayed by the media. He felt he was badly misrepresented. These meetings, I presumed, were part of a campaign to improve that image.

Charles’s labels: Largely because of his fatally flawed marriage to Diana, Charles has been labelled as cold, unfeeling and – by his own confession – unfaithful. But, in truth, he is an extremely sensitive man who has proved himself to be unconditionally and faithfully in love with the woman he should have married in the first place: Camilla. It was his love for her that gave him the courage to stand up to the Palace and his parents and declare that she was “non-negotiable”. It was Charles’s alpha-male moment… and he won the battle. Camilla is now his Queen and they are blissfully happy.

Diana saw the love between Camilla & Charles: In one of our private conversations, she told me that Camilla always had been and would be the love of Charles’s life, and that their relationship was stronger than any marriage he might have made. She told me that she accepted that Camilla had been discreet and loyal… and that perhaps she deserved “some form of recognition”. Whatever Diana would make of the fact that Camilla is now our Queen, it is undeniable that Charles is a much happier man and will be a better King with the woman he always calls his “darling wife” at his side.

Ghastly privilege: In the end, Diana was probably right. Charles might well have been happier sitting in the Italian countryside, painting and communing with nature. But that was not his lot or luck. He was born to what he once described as his “ghastly” destiny: privileged, certainly, but deprived of freedom of choice.

[From The Telegraph]

First of all, Bond sounds like she’s a bit in love with Charles. Second of all, “Whatever Diana would make of the fact that Camilla is now our Queen” – lol, we absolutely know what Diana would make of it and she would be raising holy hell, especially because of how Charles has treated Diana’s sons. Third of all… like, Charles has actually gotten so much worse than he was in Diana’s day. Even then, Diana absolutely knew that Charles would make a completely sh-tty king, she knew how selfish he was and is. But she would be shocked by the machinations going on with Camilla and Charles, at least that’s what I believe. Too bad we can’t ask her, because she died under massively mysterious circumstances, freeing the path for Charles to marry Camilla and for Camilla to become queen.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.