Game of Crowns: Elizabeth, Camilla, Kate, and the Throne (5 page)

This year, Trooping the Colour is even more fraught with historical
significance than usual. Although the Queen actually turned ninety on April 21, this Saturday in June is the day that her grateful subjects will mark the occasion with yet another carefully choreographed, but still genuine, mass outpouring of affection.

It is also one of the two days each year when the Queen releases her annual Honors List. This list, submitted by the Prime Minister but always subject to the approval of the sovereign (with added guidance from the Men in Gray), bestows MBEs (Members of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire), OBEs (Officers of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire), CBEs (Commanders of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire), and knighthoods on a thousand or more artists, academics, civil servants, scientists, diplomats, politicians, business leaders, and humanitarians. By 2016, the Queen had conferred on her subjects more than four hundred thousand honors and awards.

No less for members of the Royal Family, Trooping the Colour affords the opportunity to gauge where one stands in the eyes of the monarch—and in the royal pecking order. During the Golden Jubilee celebrations in 2002 celebrating the Queen’s fiftieth year on the throne, Her Majesty allowed Camilla to be seen publicly with the Royal Family for the first time—with some important restrictions. At the classical and pop concerts held at Buckingham Palace that year, Camilla could be viewed on the giant Jumbotron, nervously playing with her hair and trying to spy on what Charles and the Queen—Her Majesty’s bright yellow earplugs firmly in place—were up to from two rows behind.

THINGS WERE VERY DIFFERENT DURING
the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee a decade later. Eyebrows raised when Prince Philip was
hospitalized with a bladder infection and, rather than going solo as she usually did under such circumstances, the Queen chose Camilla to take his place next to her in the royal carriage. “She was sending a very strong message,” observed longtime royal commentator Robert Jobson, “that the Duchess of Cornwall deserved to be there.” Camilla, more stunned than anyone at that turn of events, could scarcely contain her glee.

Camilla’s good fortune—“pride of place next to the queen,” the
Times
of London called it—was no accident. For years now, Charles had pleaded with his mother to make a more public show of her acceptance of Camilla, however grudging it might have been. When his father fell ill, he wasted no time in pressuring the Queen to invite Camilla to sit next to her in the 1902 State Landau. Even more important than his personal entreaties to the Queen herself was the deft lobbying with senior Buckingham Palace officials undertaken by Charles’s staff on Camilla’s behalf. In matters of protocol, the Queen almost always acquiesced, albeit sometimes reluctantly, to the Men in Gray.

The situation regarding Philip was back to normal in 2013, when the ninety-four-year-old Duke of Edinburgh not only rode next to his wife in the royal carriage, but did it wearing the full uniform and unwieldy bearskin hat of the Grenadier Guards. This was particularly impressive given the fact that Philip now officially ranked as the oldest living male member of the British Royal Family—ever. Camilla and Kate actually rode side by side in a separate carriage with Prince Harry, unsmiling and clearly ill at ease as they waved stiffly to crowds lining the streets.

Whether the Queen is again convinced to publicly sidle up to her daughter-in-law as she did during the Diamond Jubilee or decides to give another Royal the nod, Camilla must look as
polished and presentable as humanly possible for the occasion. To say she had undergone a Galatea-like transformation in recent years would be a gross understatement. For decades, Camilla’s fashion sense was akin to her taste in furniture—decidedly English shabby. She favored torn riding pants or dirt-stained jeans, boxy sweaters, scuffed, mud-caked boots, frayed scarves, and frumpy tweeds. Her fingernails were dirty and jagged, her crooked and chipped teeth stained by decades of smoking. Her hair was a brittle tangle of straw, from which one might at any given moment pull out an actual piece of straw.

That began to change dramatically in late 2002, when, at Charles’s urging, Camilla subjected herself to a complete makeover. Despite their shared love of gritty country pursuits like gardening and riding, Charles was also a man of refined tastes who spent well over $100,000 annually on his own bespoke wardrobe. His unwavering conviction about how even the smallest things should be done had servants scrambling. They were instructed that lunch must be served on plates marked with the Prince of Wales crest
precisely
at twelve o’clock. A cup and saucer were to be placed to the right with a silver spoon pointing outward at a twenty-five-degree angle. The royal toast was always served on a silver rack—never on a plate—with three balls of butter (no more, no less) chilled in a small dish.

Even if His Highness merely asked for a cold drink, staffers knew they were in trouble if he looked into his glass and scowled at what he saw. “He preferred round pieces of ice,” a former valet said, “because he thought the angles made regular cubes ‘too noisy.’ We heard that quite a lot.”

Prince Charles’s valet, Michael Fawcett, was all too painfully familiar
with his boss’s idiosyncrasies—and his insistence on being catered to in every conceivable way. Fawcett’s duties included squeezing the toothpaste from a silver dispenser bearing the Prince of Wales crest onto the Prince’s toothbrush, lathering his shaving brush, slipping on and tying the Prince’s shoes, zipping up the royal fly, and even holding the specimen bottle while the Prince of Wales gave a urine sample during regular check-ups.

Things were no different on the road. Charles traveled with his own hand towels, cushioned toilet seat, and toilet paper embroidered with the Prince of Wales crest. There were even written instructions to be passed on to hotel chefs stipulating the “dimensions and texture” of royal sandwiches. Prince Charles’s childhood teddy bear, which always resided in a place of honor amidst the pillows on his canopied four-poster, was also packed up for every trip and then taken out to be tucked under the covers of His Royal Highness’s bed wherever he happened to be. For more than six decades, the only person allowed to mend Prince Charles’s ancient, unraveling teddy was his beloved nanny, Mabel Anderson.

Pampered and demanding—at his own dinner parties he often ate a different meal from his guests, on Prince of Wales plates and using Prince of Wales utensils—Charles grew up being told that, as far as the Royal Family was concerned, appearances were everything. The Prince knew Camilla would have to streamline her look and adopt an entirely new style if she wanted to be a worthy front woman for what members of the Royal Family wryly called “The Firm.” With Charles’s then deputy private secretary and resident media Svengali Mark Bolland overseeing the entire process, Camilla submitted herself to a handpicked team of dietitians, fitness experts, plastic surgeons, dentists, and cosmetologists.

Over a six-month period, Camilla underwent a series of face and neck peels, Botox injections, and laser treatments to erase the wrinkles and lines in her face and neck. She also had her teeth whitened and capped, and even hired a full-time hairdresser, Hugh Green of Belgravia’s swank Hugh and Stephen salon, to tend to her champagne-colored tresses.

Shrinking from a size twelve to a size ten, Camilla also began wearing sleek gowns and chic suits by British designers like Anna Valentine, Antony Price, Bruce Oldfield, and Vivienne Westwood. Each morning, royal dresser Jackie Meakin laid out the day’s wardrobe for Camilla. And each day, Meakin and the Duchess considered how she would look in photographs standing next to the most stylish woman on the planet: the former Kate Middleton.

IN APARTMENT 1A OF NEARBY
Kensington Palace, Kate sits cross-legged on the nursery floor, feeding a bottle to Princess Charlotte while her big brother plays noisily with a toy dump truck. If anyone needed proof that even the adored Duchess of Cambridge is not entirely immune to criticism, it is embodied in this Beatrix Potter–inspired room with its cheerful periwinkle-blue walls decorated with drawings of Peter Rabbit. After more than $7 million was spent to refurbish the nursery along with the Cambridges’ royal apartment—more accurately, twenty rooms spread out over a four-story wing of the palace—the couple ran afoul of the press when it was announced they would actually be spending most of their time at Anmer Hall, their mansion on the grounds of Sandringham in Norfolk. Sandringham and its twenty thousand acres, along with Balmoral Castle (another fifty thousand acres),
are the only two royal residences privately owned by the Queen and technically not held in trust for future sovereigns.

Still, whenever the Cambridges’ presence is required in the city—as it always is during Trooping the Colour ceremonies—they make Kensington Palace their base of operations. Soon, Kate hands off both Charlotte and George to their Spanish nanny, Maria Teresa Borrallo. She, too, must now be tended to by her full-time hairdresser, Amanda Cook Tucker, and go over wardrobe choices with her personal assistant-turned-stylist, Natasha “Tash” Archer. Although Kate Middleton’s innate sense of style rivaled that of Diana from the very beginning, it was Tash Archer who urged the young wife of the future king to add more polish to her look by wearing Jenny Packham, Alexander McQueen, Emilia Wickstead, and Erdem.

Not surprisingly, what she is going to wear today is of far less concern to Kate than it is to Camilla. Camilla has come along light-years in terms of her appearance and public image, but she cannot compete with a supremely poised natural beauty who also happens to be thirty-five years her junior.

Nor could anyone, for that matter, hope to compete with the newest stars in the Windsor firmament. At the end of last year’s Trooping the Colour ceremonies, when the Royal Family gathered on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, the loudest cheers rose up from the throng when William stepped onto the balcony carrying George. It was a rare official outing for the twenty-two-month-old prince, who wore the same powder-blue outfit that William wore when he made his balcony debut in 1984. George waved at the crowd and played with the gold braid on his father’s uniform, easily upstaging everyone—including the Queen.

George’s appearance was, in fact, historic. It marked the
first time that four generations of present and current British monarchs—the Queen, Charles, William, and George—were seen together on the royal balcony.

“
ALL EYES ON GORGEOUS GEORGE
!” trumpeted the next morning’s
Daily Mail
—although his mother got more than her fair share of kudos. Words like “amazing,” “slim,” and “radiant” were used in the press to describe how Kate looked as she stood on the balcony, just six weeks after giving birth to Charlotte.

The Little Princess stayed home then, but Kate and William fully intend to have her join them on the balcony this year. Charles will be especially thrilled. A doting grandpa to George, the Prince of Wales is, according to William, “positively obsessed” with Charlotte. At a gathering of RAF pilots who flew during World War II, he boasted that his granddaughter was not only adorable but “already sleeps through the night, and is much easier on Mum than Prince George.”

Although Camilla had grandchildren of her own and fully appreciated Charles’s affection for George and Charlotte, she also realized that the little Cambridges were the newest pawns in an ancient and very public game. “It can be subtle or it can be very obvious,” Harold Brooks-Baker, the longtime publishing director of
Burke’s Peerage
, once observed. “But everyone on that balcony is to one extent or another jockeying for position. Being seen up front, and close to the monarch, is everything.”

Certainly, each Royal’s team of handlers took care to examine the video and the stills, analyzing every position, motion, and gesture. Last year, unable to do anything about the commotion being caused by George’s debut, Camilla made an effort to be seen up front in her oversized cream-colored hat and celadon-green silk suit. Kate, dazzling in an ice-blue-and-ivory silk Catherine
Walker coat dress and one of the white fascinators for which she had become famous, became so engrossed in keeping an eye on George that for much of the event she was completely out of sight. While Camilla stood up front next to Charles, William, and George, her chief rival for the public’s affection—Kate—was hidden behind the sovereign. The Prince of Wales, who still complained bitterly over perceived slights to his wife, laughed at the next day’s photographs. They showed all the Royals smiling and waving, but in Kate’s case only her fascinator was visible, sailing above the Queen’s head.

WHILE TWO QUEENS-IN-WAITING FRET ABOUT
their futures, the current one stirs awake on the morning of her special day. It is seven-thirty, and a chambermaid is gently rapping at her door. Elizabeth, like her daughter-in-law Camilla, has always been sensitive to light and wears eye shades even though her bed is also encircled by heavy curtains. She sleeps more or less bolt upright, propped up on a pile of down pillows with custom-designed Porthault linens bearing the royal insignia. It takes only a minute or two for the Queen to pull back the curtains and arrange herself in bed. She then beckons the chambermaid in with the words she uses every morning without variation. “Yes, yes, come in!” she chirps. “I’m ready for you!”

The maid enters a room that, save for its occupant, seems wholly unremarkable. Neither Kate nor Camilla have ever been in the Queen’s bedroom, and it is certainly nothing like Camilla imagines it; there is not the slightest resemblance to the regal boudoir she has conjured in her dreams.

True, the Queen’s bedroom is located in the east wing not far
from the Throne Room, where tourists can pay to see the high-backed velvet chairs bearing the initials E.R. II and P (for Philip) and the seat cushions bearing the imprint of the royal derrieres. For those who know where to find the secret latch hidden in the oak-paneled wall, there is actually direct access from the Throne Room into the Queen’s private chambers. On other floors of the east wing, guest rooms have the name of the occupant posted on the door: Prince Charles, Prince Harry, Princess Anne, and so on. There is no such name tag on the Queen’s bedroom door.