Prince William to Marry? Can He Escape the Wales Curse?

Last week on her blog, Tina Brown let us know about a mysterious two-day gap in the Buckingham Palace diaries, which Brown interpreted to mean that come June, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II would announce to the world the engagement of her grandson Prince William of Wales to his longtime girlfriend. That would be Kate Middleton, the most photographed English lass since William's mother captured the world's imagination in the early '80s.

Brown predicts that after a June announcement, there will be a November wedding, probably at Westminster Abbey. Rumor also has it that the queen has been urging William to marry, which may strike some observers as odd, even perverse, given that William's parents' marriage -- also undertaken at the urging of the monarch -- turned out so very, very badly. Indeed, the last two Princes of Wales have married appallingly inappropriately; and while William is only Prince William of Wales, not the Prince of Wales (which he can't be until his father relinquishes the title, presumably by becoming king), there may be good reason to wonder if the Princedom of Wales has not, in the last 75 years or so, been under some kind of matrimonial curse.

There's a reason for all the glossy Technicolor merriment in Stanley Donen's 1951 film, "Royal Wedding," starring dapper Fred Astaire and pretty Jane Powell as a brother-sister dance team in London for the 1947 nuptials of Britain's Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip of Greece. The English, our doughty wartime allies, needed all the merriment they could get, and the film is among other things a love letter to our mother country, whose people came out of the war in much worse shape than their well-fed, rich, and possessions-mad American cousins.

The actual 1947 wedding had been a cold November affair in ghostly Westminster Abbey, but it was staged with all the pomp and pageantry that even then was Britain's alone -- it would be topped only by Elizabeth's 1953 coronation, a scarlet-and-gold riot performed to the accompaniment of silver trumpets and seen the world over via the newish medium of television. Rationing was still going on, the British economy was on its back, but the nation that had faced down the Nazis with Mrs. Miniver-like staunchness could still, by Jove, whip up a spectacle or two, ration coupons, long lines and powdered eggs be damned. (A hilarious take on this grim post-war period can be seen in Malcolm Mowbray's underrated 1984 comedy, "A Private Function.")

The British Royal Family had been heroic during the war, staying in London in harm's way when they could easily have fled to a safer part of the empire. "The children won't go without me. I won't leave the king. And the king will never leave," said then-Queen Elizabeth, later the beloved Queen Mum; photos of the king and queen visiting the bombed-out East End and snapshots of Princess Elizabeth in coveralls repairing a jeep garnered an affection for the Royal Family -- or at least for the two Elizabeths, mother and daughter -- that still endures and has survived much. But there was another reason why the British people so determinedly warmed to King George VI and his little family, a reason even bigger than their truly admirable behavior during World War II: the appalling failure of the reign of George's older brother, Edward VIII, later the Duke of Windsor.

What some term the Romance of the Century was to the House of Windsor the Embarrassment of the Century: a popular heir had ascended to the throne of Edward the Confessor, donned the Crown of a Thousand Years -- and shown himself utterly unequal to the job at hand. He made an ass of himself in many ways, including showing enough sympathy for fascism that Hitler considered reinstating him as king if Germany won the war, but his biggest, most in-your-face screw-up was falling in love with the mannish, pushy, married-divorced-and-remarried American socialite Wallis Warfield Spencer Simpson. It wasn't that she was American, exactly; and it wasn't that she was divorced, precisely; it was that she was both these things and, well, just so damned hard to take. She wouldn't behave like a royal mistress should. Wallis wanted a wedding and, further, she wanted to be queen! Queen Wallis! Can you imagine!?

I've done a good bit of research on this selfish, worldly, icky couple and concluded that they had for 35 years a not uncommon symbiosis: He was weak, dense, wishy-washy and indecisive, while she was strong, dense and domineering; they both had a taste for clothes and nightclubs; and neither had ever had a serious or altruistic thought in his or her life. The British Royals never forgave them, denying Wallis (probably illegally) the honorific "Her Royal Highness" and only allowing her to appear at an official function -- the unveiling of a memorial to her mother-in-law, scary old Queen Mary -- some 30 years after the wedding. The couple lived in glamorous and pointless exile in Paris, always on the go, always dressed to the nines.

So much for that Wales wedding.

The next person to hold the title was and is Elizabeth's son Charles, the man who someday may be His Majesty King Charles III (don't hold your breath, though: Elizabeth is a hale and hearty 84, and her mother lived to be a sturdy 101). Charles, it is said, was a rather neglected child, for an heir apparent, that is. His mother was, er, busy and his father overbearing and distant, so Charles came under the influence of his uncle, the four-flushing Braggart Soldier of all time, Lord Mountbatten of Burma. This somewhat sinister geezer -- who had his own marital problems, his wife Edwina dallying with Jawaharlal Nehru, among others -- advised his young charge to play the field, not to marry too early. Hindsight says that Charles should have married Camilla many long years ago, but while he was busy playing the field, she married someone else. In 1981, the well-worn 32-year-old married the virginal 19-year-old Diana Spencer, and the rest is bizarro history: We all know the infidelities, the bulimia, the nauseating phone calls between Charles and Camilla, the divorce and, most nightmarish event of all, the shocking and sickening death of Diana in 1997.

That one turned out nicely, too, didn't it?

And now we're told that the issue of this wretched union will take him a wife. She's Kate Middleton, a commoner through and through, the granddaughter of laborers but the daughter of new money. She's beautiful and, at 28, not the cloistered princess Diana was at 19. This is no whirlwind romance -- it's been going on for years, and even ended at one point, the two vowing to be "best friends" before finally reconciling. Given the marital disasters of the Queen's little sister, Princess Margaret, and of William's parents' generation (Prince Andrew and Princess Anne struck out, too), no one at the palace seems overly concerned about Kate's non-pedigree, and the two seem like a lovely couple. Anyone with sense could have predicted the Charles/Diana fiasco, and William/Kate seem to have none of his parents' liabilities. They're both in their late 20s. Should they marry, I suspect there will be very little "fairy-tale wedding" hoopla, and I would bet my bottom dollar that the wedding won't be held at St. Paul's, as Charles and Diana's was.

I'm certain the world wishes them well. Queen Kate, the descendant of coal miners! What could be better for a 21st-century monarchy in dire need of democratization?

Now if they could only figure out what to do about Harry.