With the release this month of season five of Peter Morgan's The Crown—and its emphasis on the next generation: the marriages, affairs, and divorces of three of Queen Elizabeth's children, especially spotlighting Charles and Diana—here's an excerpt from my in-progress book, The Spiritual Mission of a Princess, with notes on 'love.' As royal archetypes, were Charles and Diana simply a mismatched couple or was it a "karmic-setup"...with some divine intervention to show the world the way of the heart?
~ WHATEVER 'IN LOVE' MEANS ~
Through the ages,
history shows that members of royalty—including Charles, Prince of Wales—“was
not encouraged or expected to follow their hearts into marriage,” as author
Caroline Weber wrote in her book review of The Diana Chronicles. It was
dynastic duty first: a decision about which marital alliance would best serve
the realm and which eligible woman would be most likely to produce a male heir.
It was about power, ownership, control.
Since the desire of one’s
heart was not part of the equation in this extremely patriarchal system of
marriage—where little value was put on love—then if you happened to be in love
with someone who wasn’t suited for the job of royal wife or husband, consequently
your lover was either forgotten or set aside for later affairs. This was just
the way it was, until it wasn’t.
~ ~ ~
“In the history of
the human race, the idea of romance as the prelude to marriage is very rare,”
Alistair Cooke wrote in “The Quest for a Royal Bride” in a July 1981 Parade
magazine article featuring the upcoming wedding of Charles and Diana. “It must
come as a shock to many people to be reminded that today most marriages, high
and low, in the great majority of countries, are arranged, and that the
choosing is not done by the partners,” the British historian continued. “It is
true, in a particular sense, of royalty. For hundreds of years, love has been
the least essential element of a royal marriage. There are certain precise
conditions. Once these are met, if the partners also come to love each other,
so much the better.” And declaring only days before their wedding, in his
famously lighthearted way, Cooke said that if Charles and Diana indeed loved
each other, it would be considered “a happy accident.”
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Engagement photo,left, Diana & Charles, right "The Crown" season four |
As writer and
humorist Nora Ephron said: “You can never know the truth of anyone’s marriage,
including your own.” Underneath all the soap opera of the Wales’ arranged
marriage (which pretended it was not), we don’t know much about the moments of sweetness, love and support
that both Charles and Diana said were there. But we do know there was
turmoil—and duplicity. Historically, in the times when arranged marriages were
more typical than not, it was accepted as normal for royal and aristocratic men
to have a discreetly-handled lover—and Charles took advantage of the system.
But in the changing social culture of the late-twentieth century (including the
evolving women’s movements), compounded by the tabloid press now exposing the
private lives of royals, it all seemed hypocritical and vastly out-of-date. And
the young Diana was having no part of the hypocrisy! “For the first time this century,” as feminist
author Beatrix Campbell wrote in 1998, “a woman called a future king to account
for his behavior as a man.” Diana not only denounced the archaic monarchic code
of “men will be men” (and the one where women stay quiet, don’t complain so not to rock the royal boat), but exposed the similar double-standard code of the
patriarchy held by many men around the world.
There were
probably many feelings and emotions that pushed Diana to go public about the
disappointments of her marriage. There was hurt and jealousy over her husband’s infidelity, anger and
disappointment, perhaps embarrassment. But
underneath it all, I’d say there was the heart-achingly desire to be loved. (If
not by her husband, then at least by her sympathetic public.)

Nevertheless, “every relationship I have ever looked at Astrologically,” Steffan Vanel states, “can be seen as a ‘karmic set-up’ revealing what the evolving souls knew they would do to each other.” And it was true about Charles and Diana. “Conflictual [sic] as well as complimentary,” wrote Martha Caldwell about the astrological karma between Diana and Charles according to Vanel’s research. “Diana and Charles were perfect for each other in light of what they came to Earth to learn in this lifetime. Much of Diana’s karma surrounds her experience of relationship, so it is with Charles that she worked on her most troublesome issues.” Vanel picked up from there: “The karmic lesson for Charles has been to look inside himself to know who he really is. Diana was the perfect manifestation of a force which would pull the rug out from under his over-identification with role in his life to help him in his own evolution.”
~ ~ ~
Prince Charles
caused quite a stir with his “whatever ‘in love’ means” statement during an
interview with his young fiancée. But philosopher and writer Alain de Botton
would have understood Charles’ frustration. Since his first book, a novel titled On
Love, de Botton combined the theme of love and relationship in his writing
and teaching, but not in a conventional way. The novel’s first line reads:
“Every fall into love involves the triumph of hope over knowledge.”
“Compatibility,” de
Botton later wrote, “is an achievement of love. It cannot be its precondition.”
His essay “Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person,” explained On Being
radio host Krista Tippett, “was, amazingly, the most-read article in the New
York Times in the news-drenched year of 2016. As people, and as a culture,
de Botton says, we would be much saner and happier if we reexamined our very
view of love. Nowhere do we realistically teach ourselves and our children,”
Tippett continued, “how love deepens and stumbles, survives and evolves over
time, and how that process has much more to do with ourselves than with what is
right or wrong about our partner.”

We are inside a profoundly evolving world; a fundamental consciousness shift is occurring and the nature of our relationships and what we desire from them are shifting as well. But many people have been stuck in the old paradigm, expecting satisfying relationships inside an outdated model. If we are indeed all here to grow and evolve and assist with each other’s evolution, then it’s time to open our hearts—wide with generosity and compassion—so we see each other with love. And sometimes our guides into a new way of being related are unexpected ones. During her life within the archaic institution of the British monarchy and its duty-bound royal family, Princess Diana called out its hard-edged, mindset of “duty over love” and declared that she led with the heart, not with the head, and that love, real love, must always come first. It was a lesson passed on to her sons, as well as to her former husband.
So whether in a
romantic relationship or just living day-to-day out in the world, there’s simply
this, in the words of Marianne Williamson: “You are loved, and your purpose is
to love.” ~