My Duty Is to Love

 Through the years of reading biographies and books focused on Princess Diana—in my studies of women’s history and royal archetypes—I always held royal biographer Sally Bedell Smith as a fair and trustworthy voice. So I was surprised and disappointed recently when she appeared to join misogynistic and patriarchal-leaning writers by referring to strong women as “domineering” and deeply feeling men as “weak.”

On a promotional tour for her new book, another about the British royal family, Bedell Smith compared King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. Calling Harry “weak” like the Duke of Windsor—because, if I’m understanding her reasoning, both men fell in love with strong women—and saying that “in some respects Meghan and the Duchess of Windsor have similar qualities: very narcissistic, very controlling, very dominating”—because, again, if I’m understanding her premise, that they were/are strong women. (Et tu…even you, Sally?)

However, people who know Meghan Markle—and those more inclined to take the high road— would describe her qualities as “confident, assured, and being a leader.” And she was vilified for that—like other women who dared to step outside the narrow Windsor box. As I see it, Meghan, this accomplished, heart-guided woman, fell in love with a man of great heart—compassionate, caring, sensitive, courageous—a man who was a fellow activist motivated by creating a kinder world, all in the name of love. (And a man who inherited his mother’s “exquisite sensitivity of feeling,” in the words of Jungian analyst Jim Fitzgerald, and is committed to continuing her humanitarian vision.)

[Click here to read the entire article posted on MEDIUM]

Was It the Death of the Heart?

Diana, Princess of Wales, commemorative statue
in the Sunken Garden at Kensington Palace in London

“When the royal family enfolded Diana, they thought they had got a rather dim girl from the landowning Norfolk aristocracy—not exactly the stuff of revolution. They could not have known that she would be transformed into an international superstar who would make their lives hell.” This from an article, “Diana’s Britain,” by the editors at Newsweek magazine published the week after the princess’ funeral. Some feminists of the time were also fooled by “the mouse that roared.” British journalist Beatrix Campbell wondered how more conservative Britain could become when this pretty, inexperienced girl from old landed gentry married into the stale confines of royalty. Calling her wedding gown “a shroud,” she feared Diana would disappear within a dusty patriarchal construct. But Campbell and others began to see it differently.

[continue reading this book-in-progress excerpt on MEDIUM]

 

Diana Spencer Mountbatten-Windsor

Another film featuring a slice of the life of Diana, Princess of Wales, premieres on November 5^th.  Spencer, starring Kristen Stewart, is called a “psychological drama that follows Diana’s decision to end her marriage to Prince Charles and leave the British royal family.” (The “decision” was a bit more complicated than that for all involved, especially Diana and Charles’ sovereign, Queen Elizabeth.) Nonetheless, using this occasion, I’ll post a short excerpt from my book in progress, The Spiritual Mission of a Princess….

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Chapter 3: Social Changes (excerpt)

           “When the royal family enfolded Diana, they thought they had got a rather dim girl from the landowning Norfolk aristocracy—not exactly the stuff of revolution. They could not have known that she would be transformed into an international superstar who would make their lives hell.” This from an article, “Diana’s Britain,” by the editors at Newsweek magazine published the week after the princess’ funeral. Some feminists of the time were also fooled by “the mouse that roared.” British journalist Beatrix Campbell wondered how more conservative Britain could become when this pretty, inexperienced girl from old landed gentry married into the stale confines of royalty. Calling her wedding gown “a shroud,” she feared Diana would disappear within a dusty patriarchal construct. But Campbell and others began to see it differently.

Diana emerged into the world’s consciousness during the second year of Margaret Thatcher’s landmark run as Prime Minister and Great Britain, entrenched in a recession, was in turmoil with the country’s traditional industries in crisis and race riots destroying neighborhoods in the cities. “Into this unrelieved gloom the royal wedding injected a welcome splash of color and glamour,” the Newsweek article continued. “For that reason alone, Diana always carried a fund of good will with her. Yet at the time, few appreciated the central significance of the new princess; she was young and unformed, with enormous potential for growth.” And indeed, from that summer in 1981, Diana’s growth into a striking, outspoken woman paralleled Britain’s own growth into the modern era. Diana may have spent her childhood in the country, but as a young woman she needed the bustle and stimulation of the city and like much of the country’s youth, Diana loved “London’s glitzy rebellious values.” And for better or worse, she brought “an American style of emotionalism,” as feminist writer Naomi Wolf expressed, “to the rigid skin of British formality.”  

The Labor Party picked up this youthful call to modernize with forty-three-year-old Tony Blair’s campaign for prime minister in 1997. Since his “agenda echoed Diana’s,” according to Catherine Mayer’s Time magazine article, “How Diana Transformed Britain,” Diana met in secret with him and his election team in support of Blair’s “mandate to build a more inclusive, caring Britain.”  By the time of her death, only months after Blair’s election, she seemed to embody “how new Britons wanted their country to be.” After centuries of practiced reserve and mystery, it took the Royal Family a little longer to realize how much the country was changing even though they had clues inside their own family which had been moving, as Newsweek reported, “from archaic rule to modern dysfunctionality.” Then the shock of the princess’ death left them unprepared for the rising new era of more open public self-expression—the unbuttoning of England’s stiff-upper-lip sensibility. “The People’s Princess,” Mayer wrote, summing up Diana’s impact, “had unlocked hearts, reordered values, presided at the triumph of emotional intelligence over cold intellect, of compassion over tradition.”

{Why Royal Weddings Matter} No. 8: The Language of Flowers

The Royal Wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle has come and gone...yet its ripples of beauty and diversity, gentleness and humanity are still with us! And my series "Why Royal Weddings Matter" on Confluence Daily, online magazine especially for women, continues as well. The next installment, No. 8: "The Language of Flowers," is reprinted below with some lovely flower images....

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The Language of Flowers

Bridal folklore throughout history, inspired by ancient mythology, tells of maidens entwining creamy white, aromatic orange blossoms into a bridal wreath for their hair, to ensure fertility; or carrying a bunch of sweet-smelling white lilacs, representing innocence; or tucking fragrant herbs into their bouquets, rosemary for remembrance and dill, believed to provoke lust. (Both herbs were also eaten for their supposed powers!)

Along came the French, picking up where the ancient Persians left off by assigning meanings to flowers and herbs, and in 1819 published Le Langage des Fleurs. The etiquette-driven, ritual-loving Victorians, as passionate as they were sentimental about flowers, followed suit. With so many rules and restrictions about what was proper to say to whom (and outright flirtations certainly prohibited), they adopted the romance-filled language of flowers and, to help sort it all out, created their own dictionary-like books, lyrically illustrated.

This romantic language was perfect for weddings since many brides, including royal ones, lead with the heart when it comes to their wedding bouquet. Queen Victoria carried a nosegay of snowdrops, noting friendship (they were her beloved Albert’s favorite flower); and Grace Kelly, after much thought, selected lilies of the valley as her simple wedding bouquet, meaning return of happiness. And along with the other all-shades-of-white flowers, Kate Middleton, of course, had blooms of Sweet William, signifying gallantry.

Princess Diana’s massive bouquet—to match the scale of her bouffant gown—was filled with fragrant cream and yellow flowers and greenery from gardens all over England and included (by special request from the palace) “Mountbatten” roses, a glorious shade of yellow mimosa rose named for Prince Charles’ adored late uncle, Lord Louis Mountbatten. However, according to the Kate Greenaway version of Language of Flowers, yellow roses have the unfortunate, but in this case prophetic, meaning of decrease of love and jealously. (Ouch!)

Yet nothing could be as sincere and sentimentally dear as Meghan Markle’s small, almost childlike arrangement bound in a raw silk ribbon. The morning before their wedding, Prince Harry picked a handful of white flowers from the couple’s private garden at Kensington Palace for the florist to use in his bride’s bouquet—including scented sweet peas, jasmine and forget-me-nots; other petite blossoms were astilbe, lily of the valley and astrantia. Sweet peas represent delicate pleasures; jasmine, sensuality and grace; and the fabled forget-me-nots (a favorite of Harry’s mother) speak for themselves—yet for an added heart-tug, they also indicate true love.

The bridal bouquets of Diana and both her daughters-in-law had green sprigs of myrtle, Victorian-era symbols for fidelity. Like the last several generations of royal brides, the myrtle came from shrubs at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, planted by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. The legendary connection continued when stems from the 1947 bridal bouquet of then Princess Elizabeth, Harry’s grandmother, were also planted amid the mythical landscape. So through the language of flowers, the hope of fidelity—and love forever—continues. ~

[Bits excerpted from The End of the Fairy-Tale Bride: For Better or Worse, How Princess Diana Rescued the Great White Wedding—and other bits added after the flower-feast and love-fest wedding of Harry and Meghan!]

{The Woman I Love} -part one-

During the month of February—considered the month of love—and in celebration of the upcoming marriage of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, I’ll share an excerpt (in three parts) from my book in progress. The section, called “The Woman I Love," features several members of Prince Harry’s family!

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The Woman I Love

{part one of three*}

The timing of Diana Spencer and Prince Charles’ union, caught in the historical crossfire of a major shift in royal culture, arose in paradox. These were the last stages of an era where marriages were arranged to suit one’s level of dynastic duty and now times were shifting into a more modern world where royals, at last less isolated from the masses, desired to marry for love and supportive companionship. (Can you imagine either Prince William or Prince Harry marrying based solely on their dynastic duty? Or for that matter, can you imagine your children marrying someone that you selected for them based on background, connections, and reproductive capabilities?) The irony for Diana and Charles was that without some sort of outside “arrangement,” they would have never become a couple.

But the timing had not shifted enough for Prince Charles in the 1970s and ‘80s allowing him to act from his true feelings, especially since the marital decisions of this particular heir to the throne were still shadowed by his family’s recent history. The actions of a great-uncle, King Edward VIII (Uncle David), who, with some political pressures, gave up the throne “for the woman he loved” in 1936, were a little too close in historical proximity for Charles to have made a similar decision about marrying someone for love, regardless of “background.” (Of course, to make matters worse, Wallis Simpson, King Edward’s beloved and regular companion, was not only twice married—and only once divorced at the time—but an American to boot!) 

The earthshaking decision of the king to choose love and happiness over duty and abdicate the throne (causing a constitutional crisis) was considered abhorrent by the rest of the Windsor family for many reasons. And to show they meant business, they shunned the former king—their brother, son, in-law, cousin, and uncle—insisting on a near exile from Great Britain; he was only allowed to return by royal invitation for short visits or to attend a funeral, but never to live. This exile-of-sorts lasted the remainder of his life; ending only when his body was brought back home for burial, some 36 years later. So it was under this specter that Charles was trained in the mindset of “duty above feelings” by all the palace powers led by his mother and grandmother.

While editing this section (originally written in 2011 or so), I watched the television drama series from 1978, “Edward and Mrs. Simpson.” The actor who played Edward (as prince then king), responding to his advisor’s instruction about “who” he could bring to the palace to avert any further notoriety in regard to his companion, Mrs. Simpson, asks in almost a whisper: “How can he not bring his heart?” I don’t know if King Edward actually said these words, but it was the most poignantly telling line in the program’s reenactment. And perhaps his great-nephew, Charles, asked the same question years later about his own circumstances.

King Edward also said that he could be a better king with the woman he loved at his side and longed to be able to just “be himself,” asking his subjects to trust that would be enough. (“I am different from my father and determined to be myself.”) But palace officials, steeped in tradition, feared such heart-centered notions—so foreign to them the possibility of heart and head working in powerful alignment! (Queen Mary, David’s uncompromising mother, responded to her son’s dilemma by asking, “What’s love compared to duty?”) Not only were the lives of both men, Edward and Charles, altered because of these attitudes, but a nation also remained in wait.  [To Be Continued]

{*Part one of three of "The Woman I Love"....excerpt from my book in progress, tentatively titled, A Memory of Love: The Spiritual Mission of a Princess.}

{British Royal Family Engagement Rings}

After the engagement of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle this fall—and the news that Harry designed Meghan's ring—Vogue compiled and shared an anthology, "A Close Look at the British Royal Family's Engagement Rings." Some are heirloom family rings, others were newly designed....

The Vogue article begins with Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, who became Queen Elizabeth then the Queen Mother, and includes her two daughters, Elizabeth and Margaret, her granddaughter and brides of her grandsons, featuring Princess Diana and her daughter-in-law, Duchess Catherine—who now wears Diana's famous sapphire and diamond engagement ring. 

Prince Harry's mother's ring was originally part of his inheritance; however, he gave it to his big brother when William was planning his engagement to Kate Middleton.

Click here and enjoy the Vogue story.....