Royal family to test Camilla with visit to the United States
LONDON – Are Americans ready for a possible Queen Camilla?
That’s the question Prince Charles and his new bride may be hoping to answer next week as they embark on an eight-day tour of the United States that will take them to New York, Washington and San Francisco.
The couple started testing the waters last week with some unusually solicitous attention to the media. Charles invited American journalists out to his Highgrove Farm in Gloucestershire, and taped an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes.” Then, Camilla turned up on the front pages of several British newspapers in an eye-grabbing, diamond-studded royal tiara.
On Wednesday, there was more hobnobbing with American media at a send-off party that included U.S. Ambassador Robert Tuttle and his wife Maria. He promised the prince a warm reception for Camilla in the United States.
But royal watchers say it could be a big challenge, given how hugely popular Princess Diana remains in the United States even eight years after her death. Charles’s 35-year relationship with the woman then known as Camilla Parker Bowles contributed to the breakup of his marriage to Diana in 1996, a year before she died in a Paris automobile crash.
A successful U.S. tour, proving that Camilla can handle the requisite royal duties abroad with her own down-to-earth grace and aplomb, would help ease doubts about whether she will be accepted by the British public as queen when Charles ascends to the throne.
At least some British papers believe Camilla has started to win over Charles’ mother, Queen Elizabeth II. The monarch lent her daughter-in-law the sparkling tiara handed down from Queen Mary for a state dinner Tuesday, and royal-watching newspapers here interpreted the gesture as symbolic recognition that Camilla, 58, has finally come into her own as a member of the royal inner circle.
Prior to the couple’s wedding in April, the palace, sensitive to the public’s continuing attachment to Diana, said that Camilla would not use the title “princess” and would be known publicly as the Duchess of Cornwall even when Charles becomes king.
Constitutional experts here quickly pointed out that as the spouse of a reigning king, denying Camilla the title of queen would contradict precedent. And in royal-watching circles, it is gospel that Charles would like her to have the title, if the public can be won over to the idea.
At Wednesday’s send-off at Clarence House, the royal couple looked content, relaxed and affectionate toward each other during the hour and a half event.