Duchess Camilla is great because people ‘don’t want another glamorous Diana’

Late at night, when the royal commentators go home and they’re alone with their thoughts, I do wonder if many of them quietly acknowledge, to themselves, that they’ve been tasked with embiggening the dullest bunch of royals ever. Seriously, don’t you think that many of them give the eye roll and the small shake of head that the only people they’re being given are: an angry, lazy second-in-line, a crown prince who is ass-deep in financial impropriety, a wife who flaps her jazz hands, cosplays flags and does little work? One of the biggest scams must be the Camilla beat – the Duchess of Cornwall is too old to be repackaged into someone shiny, new and exciting. So they’re trying to make it sound like it’s a good thing that Camilla is so unglamorous, so unexciting, so frumpy.

People around the world will embrace ‘steady and charming’ Camilla when she becomes Queen Consort because most don’t want ‘another glamorous Diana on the throne’, according to one royal expert. Speaking on True Royalty TV’s The Royal Beat, Ingrid Seward, Editor in Chief of Majesty Magazine, said the Duchess of Cornwall, 74, being ‘slightly in the background’ will be a ‘very good thing’ when the time comes for her to become Prince Charles’ Queen.

However, the royal commentator suggested that Camilla still has some work to do to increase her popularity – especially in the US, where the ‘ghost of Princess Diana’ overshadows the Prince of Wales and the Duchess.

‘I think people that have met Camilla really love her, and can see the warmth that she has,’ said Ingrid. ‘But globally she’s not so popular, especially in the United States, because of this huge swell for Diana that will never go away. So I feel that Camilla and Charles have always got the ghost of Diana hovering over them. I don’t think the world wants another glamorous Diana on the throne, I think after the Queen goes, to have someone steady and charming but slightly in the background like Camilla is probably a very good thing.’

[From The Daily Mail]

Are British people honestly like “oh thank God, Camilla is not glamorous, we would have hated having someone glamorous on the throne”? I really wonder. It really is the fundamental dichotomy of modern royalty. They need glamour to get attention, to further their political and social power and thus, provide for the continuation of a modern monarchy. But they also “need” to be “real” and among the people and have those “middle class ideals” or whatever. Camilla is popular with the aristocrats and that’s about it – she’s not glamorous enough to be of interest to casual royal-watchers and she’s got too much problematic history to be accepted by the “middle-class values” royalists. Imagine honestly believing that a country “doesn’t want” someone glamorous though.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, WENN.