DIANA, SURROGATE PRINCESS

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The real loser seems to be that perpetual kinglet, Prince Charles, and here again it's hard to muster much sympathy. By his own account, he lacked the courage to reject a loveless marriage; once in it, he lacked the discipline or grace to try to make it work. Instead of rebelling against his mother and the institution she represents, he seems to have turned his bitterness against his hapless bride. So the revenge Di now seeks fits all too well. If she succeeds in her campaign to have the crown bypass him and go directly from Queen Elizabeth to young Prince William, Charles will turn out to have been no less a reproductive "vessel" than Di herself--a royal stud.

It's time for the British to realize that successful breeding isn't always consistent with "family values." After all, the only humane solution would have been to let Charles run off with Camilla long ago, leaving a test tube of sperm behind in Buckingham Palace. His mom could then have distributed it among hundreds of female volunteers in a kind of genetic Bake-Off--with the throne then being awarded to the most boring and phlegmatic child that resulted. The next step would be to take away the royals' allowances, which amount to $15 million a year for the lot. Princess Di, for example, likes visiting the sick, and she'd undoubtedly feel a whole lot better about herself if she had a job as a nurse's aide.

But as an American, what do I care? Every time I read about one of the princesses getting her toes sucked, I marvel once again at the wisdom of our own Founding Fathers. Maybe they couldn't foresee that in 200 years or so the British royal line would dissolve in farce. Maybe they thought the madness would end with the notoriously bonkers George III. But they knew there was something inherently wrong with the idea that political power resides in a strand of DNA, or that the fate of a nation--or even just its self-respect--should depend on the sexual proclivities of a handful of overpaid layabouts.