Diana Has Prince In Her Power

Princess Diana now holds the trump card in her failed marriage.

If she doesn’t want a quickie divorce, Prince Charles will have to wait for two more years. And her closest confidante says she’s determined there will be no divorce until her future status is assured.

As the royal family gathers for a traditional Christmas at the Sandringham estate in Norfolk, Diana leaves two big questions unanswered: Where will she spend the holidays and how will she respond to the queen’s request for a rapid divorce from the heir to the throne?

Queen Elizabeth II and Charles have already laid their cards on the table. After three years of turbulent separation, the queen said this week it’s time for the couple to divorce. Charles said he agreed with his mother.

This stirred much speculation about whether Charles could someday be crowned along with Camilla Parker Bowles, his longtime love who was divorced earlier in the year.

After Charles sought to quash this talk by saying he had no plans to marry again, one tabloid newspaper reported that Camilla was ready to stand by him regardless of whether they wed.

“A Queen With No Crown,” The Sun called her in Friday’s editions.

If Charles were to take another wife, it could present the monarchy with perhaps its thorniest dilemma since 1936, when King Edward VIII abdicated to marry the American divorcee Wallis Warfield Simpson.

As king, Charles would be the temporal head of the Church of England, which frowns on divorced people remarrying if their ex-spouses are alive.