A Prince and His Princess Arrive: Charles and Di

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Diana herself, over the course of four years of marriage, has undergone a transformation. She began as a reticent, slightly plump kindergarten teacher from Sloane Square, the trendy headquarters of London's gilded youth. She has become an elegant, magnetic and outgoing woman who no longer shirks the spotlight. Goodbye, Laura Ashley primness; hello, Margaret Howell panache. The retiring Sloane Ranger is now a glittering femme fatale. When she wore her hair in a '40s upsweep to the opening of Parliament last year, there had not been such a fuss since Guy Fawkes tried to blow the place up; ermine-swathed earls opened their eyes for the first time in years, and scarcely anybody paid attention to the Queen's Speech from the Throne. Diana is also attracting a whole new generation of Britons to the monarchy. When the couple dropped in at the Live Aid concert in London in July, they got a standing ovation from the young, T shirted crowd. In an age when movie actors are the only royalty for most people, Charles and Diana are the real, the greater thing: royalty as superstars.

Monarchy, with its archaic pomp and ceremony, usually embodies the age that is passing rather than the one that is arriving. The secret of Diana's rejuvenation of royalty is that she embodies today. She is a postfeminist woman, the new-fashioned old-fashioned girl who mixes "trad" and pop. She embraces the role of wife and mother with a dash of flair. Even her problems are trendy: the speculation about her sometimes shaky adjustment to her new life makes Diana seem regular, contemporary. She is royal in an original way, proving that one does not have to be stuffy to be regal.

When Their Royal Highnesses arrive in Washington on Saturday morning, it will be Diana's first trip to America. The visit to the capital is not unlike Ronald Reagan's going to London to see a rodeo, for they are patrons of the National Gallery's grandiose exhibition of treasures from Britain's stately country homes (see following story). At the top of their itinerary is morning tea with the President and Nancy Reagan. Then, after Diana visits a hospice and Charles stops by the American Institute of Architecture, they return to the White House that night for a black-tie dinner in the State Dining Room. "Nancy has put together a guest list that will interest them," says Deaver. "It's mainly not Washington people." Among the names: Cosmetics Queen Estee Lauder, Actor Peter Ustinov and Artist Jamie Wyeth, plus such Reagan regulars as Betsy Bloomingdale, the Walter Annenbergs and Social Moth Jerry Zipkin.

On Sunday Charles and Diana are to attend services at the Washington Cathedral, take a private, 90-minute tour of the National Gallery exhibition, then go by helicopter to join an elite handful of guests for a luncheon at Philanthropist Paul Mellon's country estate in Upperville, Va. That night they will be the guests of honor at a formal dinner at the British embassy, where they are also staying. On Monday the couple will perform a more typically prosaic duty by trooping off to a suburban JCPenney store to bless the chain's nationwide "Best of Britain" merchandising campaign. Monday night Charles and Diana will meet some "young leaders" of America at the National Gallery. The requested emphasis on youth probably reflects Diana's tastes, for it is said that she finds Charles' older friends rather starchy.