Charles wins admiration if not love of his people

Prince Charles has spent a lifetime waiting for two things: the throne and his one true love. With the announcement of his impending marriage to Camilla Parker Bowles, one of those aims has finally been achieved.

But he still has yet to win over the popular affection that has eluded him since his fairy-tale wedding to his late wife, Diana.

In the eyes of the public, the Prince has always looked wooden. He talks to his houseplants. He has fuddy-duddy ideas about art and architecture. He will never have Diana's movie-star glamour or inspire the devotion she so enjoyed.

But in middle-age he has won admiration as a serious, public-spirited Prince, with his subjects' respect if not their love.

Groomed from birth to take the throne, Charles found himself for years eclipsed by Diana and ridiculed as old-fashioned.

But he gradually won back sympathy from his subjects after Diana's death in a Paris car crash in 1997.

His longtime lover Parker Bowles advanced gradually into the public spotlight to win greater acceptance, and Charles has emerged as a thoughtful and caring single parent.

When his beloved grandmother, the Queen Mother, died in 2002 at the age of 101, the grief-stricken Charles again won admirers with his eloquent farewell to her.
And his charitable work, primarily focused on creating job opportunities for young people in poor areas, has quietly earned him respect.

But the 21st Prince of Wales, Queen Elizabeth's firstborn son, has entered middle age with kingship a distant prospect.

His 1996 divorce from Diana left him looking an unlikely sovereign, and royal-watchers openly questioned whether he would ever be crowned.

He complained of the monarchy's slide into soap opera and spoke of the social and spiritual ills of the world, gaining a reputation as a crank who would rather be an organic farmer than a monarch.

He was criticised for his forthright views on architecture after he called a planned modernist extension to London's National Gallery a "carbuncle".

But behind the media ridicule lies a serious-minded man with a genuine concern for the good of his people, supporters say.

As a young Prince, he achieved numerous royal firsts, including getting a university degree. But he has wrestled with the question of what he should do before becoming king.

"My great problem is that I really don't know what my role in life is," he once said.

A liberal by nature, the "philosopher Prince" has given off the air of a man desperate to do some good in the world.

"I'm driven by the feeling I've had for a long time through travelling around this country ... that I personally mind about the conditions in which people live," he said in a radio interview in 1987. "I feel that in my particular position I can't just sit here and not do something about it."

In the eyes of many, his crowning achievement was to find such a popular wife as Diana. When they married in 1981, Diana seemed the perfect choice as a royal wife: she was pretty, well-bred and apparently deferential to her husband.

But after the marriage broke down in 1992, reports emerged that the union had been a disaster from the start and that Charles was a reluctant bridegroom who carried on bedding a mistress up to and after the wedding ceremony.

The strength of their attachment was exposed in the 1993 "Camillagate" furore, in which tapes were purported to record a lusty phone conversation between Charles and Camilla, in which he said he hoped to be reincarnated as her tampon.

However, although the tabloids heaped ridicule upon the Prince, opinion polls suggested his future subjects were less outraged by the alleged indiscretion. A slim majority of those questioned by pollsters said they still wanted him to be king.

Charles was born on November 14, 1948, in the 12th year of the reign of his grandfather, King George VI. When the king died in 1952, Queen Elizabeth acceded to the throne and Charles took over as heir apparent. He was just three years old.

- REUTERS