Free Game of Crowns: Elizabeth, Camilla, Kate, and the Throne by Christopher Andersen Page B

Beatty.
    Fleet Street wasted no time holding up the wild princess as a prime example of decadence and moral decay among members of Britain’s aristocracy. “The upper classes,” noted journalist Malcolm Muggeridge wrote at the time, “have always been given to lying, fornication, and corrupt practices.”
    For all the aggravation Margaret undoubtedly caused her, the Queen never scolded or pressured Margaret to change. It was enough that, in order to avoid a constitutional crisis, Elizabeth did not hesitate to stand in the way of her own sister’s one true chance at happiness.
    “Of course as sisters the Queen and Princess Margaret loved each other very much, without doubt,” their cousin Margaret Rhodes said. “But the Queen always puts duty first. Always.”

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    Strange, but I never felt intimidated in his presence, never. I felt from the beginning that we were two peas in a pod.
    —CAMILLA
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“I AM SO DESPERATE, CHARLES. PLEASE LISTEN TO ME!”
    SMITH’S LAWN NEAR WINDSOR CASTLE
    AUGUST 1971
    “That’s a fine animal, sir!” Charles was sliding off his sweat-soaked mount at Smith’s Lawn near Windsor, and turned to see the young blonde in a green Barbour jacket and painted-on jeans standing apart from the rest of the awestruck onlookers. “I thought,” she continued brightly, “you played wonderfully well.”
    The scene around the royal enclosure was too familiar to Charles: scores of comely young women, the highborn daughters of Britain’s elite, all smiling broadly and hoping to catch the Prince’s eye. Charles recognized all of them—with the exception of the one young woman audacious enough to break away from the pack and call out to the Prince directly.
    Camilla Rosemary Shand stood out from the leggy, shapely,meticulously groomed young “Windsor Club groupies” who routinely threw themselves at him, yet he was instantly charmed by her brash self-assurance. He wandered over and started up a conversation about their shared love of horses in general and polo in particular. To one spectator, the couple looked “completely relaxed in each other’s company.”
    At this time in Charles’s life, someone to talk to was precisely what he needed. His isolated, loveless childhood had been followed by what Charles later referred to as a “prison sentence” at Gordonstoun, the spartan Scottish boarding school Philip had chosen for his son. Even when it snowed, Gordonstoun’s mostly middle-class students began each day with a shirtless run topped off with an icy shower. Charles’s classmates, not wanting to be accused of sucking up to the future king, alternately teased, shunned, and bullied him.
    At Cambridge University, where he studied archaeology, history, and anthropology, the awkwardly stiff Royal who had been called “sir” since he was named Prince of Wales at age ten made few friends. Now that he was about to embark on a seven-year tour of duty as an officer in the Royal Navy with a stint aboard the guided missile destroyer HMS Norfolk , Charles felt more than ever in need of a confidant.
    Mummy and Papa were not about to change any time soon. Philip showed only thinly veiled contempt for his son, and the Queen worried that perhaps he was too sensitive. (Later, while serving aboard the HMS Jupiter , Charles broke down over the phone while telling his mother that a young seaman under his command had been killed in a car crash. “Charles,” she told her private secretary, “must really learn to be tougher.”)
    There had always been only one person with whom Charlescould share his deepest thoughts: his adored great-uncle Lord Louis Mountbatten of Burma, the legendary World War II hero who later served as Viceroy of India and First Sea Lord. Convinced that his great-nephew would make a superb king, “Dickie,” as Mountbatten was called in royal circles, invited Charles to spend long stretches of time at Broadlands, his imposing estate in Hampshire.
    At Broadlands, Mountbatten