A Prince and His Princess Arrive: Charles and Di

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In part Charles' restlessness may reflect a desire to redefine his public role. Observes Royal Biographer Robert Lacey: "He has to develop a strategy for the ten to 20 years before he takes the throne. He cannot spend them politely expressing interest in problems." The Prince, indeed, seems on the verge of becoming an activist. He spends considerable time and effort on the "youth initiative" of the Prince's Trust, a program that helps young people start their own businesses. Troubled by high British unemployment rates, he would like to extend the scheme to every major city in the country. He has spoken of the responsibility that Big Business has to help the urban poor. "I just feel that sometimes, not too often, I can throw a rock into a pond and watch the ripples create a certain amount of discussion." Charles threw a rock through the plate-glass window of modern architecture last year when he decried the sterility of much contemporary British design. In a speech to the Royal Institute of British Architects, he castigated a proposed steel- and-glass addition to the National Gallery as "a monstrous carbuncle on the * face of a much-loved and elegant friend."

Along with worldwide attention and even adulation, Diana and Charles have come in for what some feel is an unfair share of criticism. The royal family, these observers suggest, cannot win. As the Times of London wrote in a recent editorial, "The public demands that (the royal family's) members embody fantasies which are contradictory: for freshness and sophistication, for novelty and stability." Paradoxically, that is precisely what the royal couple have been able to do, especially Diana. With her mixture of conservativism and modishness, of shyness and assurance, she conveys both continuity and spontaneity.

Charles and Diana are mirrors and exemplars of stalwart British qualities: civility, courtesy and coziness, with a dash of style and a bit of fun. Charles will need those qualities as King. His small-is-beautiful philosophy should come in handy as well, for Charles and Diana will be King and Queen not of imperial Britain but of a realm that has almost shrunk to the proportions of Shakespeare's sceptered isle.

Of royalty, the English economist and journalist Walter Bagehot wrote, "Its mystery is its life. We must not let in daylight upon magic." Charles and Diana have allowed the shutters to be opened just a crack. To spread them any further would spoil the illusion. To be modern, yet keep the mystique--that is the trick. It is a trick that Charles and Diana have gracefully mastered.