A NEW king of England has been crowned but the comments have not stopped pouring in. There are two layers (even more) of general perceptions attending the events: one is positive and the other, adverse. In between are the most amusing, most caustic remarks ever made against royalties—assuming most of us still believe in this group of privileged individuals.
Body language experts are having a field day analyzing how Charles readied his head when the crown was about to be placed on his head by the Archbishop of Canterbury. And poor Camilla—how we all sordidly lapped up the scenario of the woman seemingly nervous and agitated as she waited for that crown to fall on her head. She fidgeted with it. Her entire body appeared to shake. One observer noted how she even made what came across like a subtle retreat of her entire body.
Was it guilt? Was it fear? Was it pure anxiety? All these questions are addressed to Camilla who to many, most especially to us who are outside the circle of pro- and anti-monarchy, remains the great mistress long after she had married her prince.
How right are we in our assessment of the events preceding and following the coronation and the circumstances surrounding the same, only a hardcore chronicler of royalties can guess. Uneasy may be the head that wears a crown only because outside this coronation, there is a memory of another person who should be wearing that crown.
Online, there is this plot—well-written I dare say—circulating like wildfire about a princess who fell in love with her prince. But the prince was not in love with her. The prince was madly in love with an older woman. The prince and his woman (she is sometimes portrayed as a witch) were looking for a surrogate for their children. The two plotted to have the young, beautiful princess fall in love with the prince. The princess soon found out about the conspiracy and she died brokenhearted.
The princess would haunt the prince and his woman till the day the two were crowned. And thereafter.
For kings and queens and princes and princesses, fairy tales do come true as well as unravel.
Charles and Camilla and other personages inhabit a space where terrible and terrific tales are foretold.
The tales of mistresses, for example, are not unusual parts of the biographies of kings and princes. The present king’s lineage goes back to the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha before it shifted to the House of Windsor where two kings had reputations for maintaining mistresses. In fact, going back further when you examine the sources of information online, one does not only identify female mistresses but also male lovers. Any cursory research would always bring you to Charles and his mistress, Camilla Parker Bowles.
The biography of Camilla Parker Bowles reveals matter-of-factly one thing and that is her maternal grandmother, Alice Keppel, was a mistress of King Edward II, the eldest son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.
There is a Netflix offering, a series called Blood, Sex and Royalty. It revolves around Anne Boleyn. Done to pop and jazz and rock music, the film examines the life of the second wife of Henry VIII, treating along the way a tumultuous period where women were left the following options: to be a wife, a mistress (there is that role), a nun or a spinster. When the king therefore approaches Anne eyeing her to be the next mistress, the young girl bristles with rage. For she is more than that.
In a scene at the Boleyn household, the paterfamilia is aghast to discover that his daughter has refused the entreaties of the king to make Anne his mistress. To him, the offer of the King is precious.
Anne gets her wishes: she becomes the wife of the king but not at the expense of the separation of Church and State.
The series, which has been described as “winky,” makes use of current slang and modern dialogues and is a documentary making use of “talking heads.” While the actors tend to act in that British way that seems to push the energies higher than what the camera requires, the narrators who are labeled as historians belonging to academic organizations compete in articulation and hysteria as well.
Blood, Sex and Royalty takes us to the Tower of London where the Anne of Amy James-Kelley recalls the beginning of a sordid love affair with a very young, very virile Max Parker as Henry Tudor. We all know what happens to queens sent up the tower, don’t we? We cannot help but compare another piece of cinema called Anne of the Thousand Days (a reference to the three years after which she was dumped by Henry) where the king was played by the more robust Richard Burton, or A Man for All Season where Robert Shaw was a pugnacious, massive monarch.
History proves to be the better teacher, a vindicator: Anne Boleyn would have a daughter, Elizabeth, who would become Queen Elizabeth I of England. She was the Virgin Queen and would leave an era called the Elizabethan Age noted for great literature and civilization. In the case of Anne, the series may have painted her as someone who uses her beauty to get her wishes, but we also remember a woman who reads and who was in a way too intellectual for the men of the kingdom to handle.
Blood, Sex and Royalty streams on Netflix. The life of Charles and Camilla streams on free and cable TV where their daily struggles and loquacious lifestyle will entertain this generation until Charles the King gives up the crown for his son. And a new series begins. n