John Roughan: Prince Charles just the right man to be King

It must have been 25 years ago now that I got a glimpse of Prince Charles. I was working for a newspaper in Wales and was assigned to cover an utterly forgettable function he was performing. But I've not forgotten my impression of him that day.

The small Welsh crowd was warm; the title Prince of Wales meant something there. But the man looked miserable. His face was as grey as his suit, his eyes drawn. He fulfilled whatever it was he had to do with an air of weary duty.

Did I imagine it, or was he worried about something? That was the period when all sorts of people were worrying about him. The heir to the throne was by then in his 30s and a mounting consensus held that it was high time a future Queen was on the scene.

The poor fellow's marital prospects were a subject of constant analysis in the press. Every young woman who had ever been spotted anywhere in his orbit had been lined up in the court gossip columns and assessed with increasing urgency.

None of their lists included the very young woman announced to the world within a year, and no wonder. The demure girl, a nice-looking kindergarten nanny, looked to me at least as unlikely a companion for Prince Charles as could be imagined. She was gloriously young; he had never been young. Maybe that would work.

What the court columnists didn't know then, or didn't tell us, was that he had long since met the woman he loved and would love to this day. Camilla Parker Bowles had always been in their lineup. She would need to divorce, of course, but since she wasn't Church of England apparently she couldn't make the cut.

All these years later, not much has changed. In the weeks since the wedding announcement the British still struggle to accept the plain preference of the Prince's heart. Some of the vituperation in even serious newspapers has been quite extra-ordinary. An example:

In the Independent this week, one Matthew Norman wrote: "Leaving to lawyers the question of where, if anywhere, Charles can legally marry Camilla, it seems to me that that situation comedy is the most useful reference point for analysing this never-ending fiasco."

Prince Charles, he wrote, "is a paradigmatic sitcom anti-hero, being as big a loser as Basil Fawlty, David Brent and Alf Garnett and with an endless supply of self-pity, misplaced certainty in his own wisdom and a total absence of self-awareness concerning his inherent absurdity". This, because he has decided to marry and his mother refuses to go to the registry office? Admittedly, that decision of the Queen or her advisers is the kind of thing that leaves me also wondering, who are these strange people to whom we are supposed to swear allegiance? But the vitriol being written in Britain has been way over the top.

It is notable that the most vicious comment is prompted not by the posthumous sanctification of Princess Diana or the popular disapproval of Camilla's role in her failed marriage, but from liberals who probably never succumbed to Diana's doe-eyed poses and certainly would not dare adopt a tone of moral superiority to Charles' and Camilla's affair.

If they are old enough to remember 1960s sitcoms they will easily recall the circumstances in which Prince Charles married the wrong woman and might privately respect a love that has survived the years in which Camilla had to stay out of sight and sit in the back rows of any family occasion she was allowed to attend.

But none of that is acknowledged because the saga of Charles and Diana was a disaster for the monarchy, and British press commentary is now astonishingly determined to see that the monarch never recovers.

Well, that is Britain's business. The British alone pay for the monarchy, they alone gain from it.

For us, and similar old colonies, the end of the monarchy would make little difference to anything.

The Queen's nominal representative, the Governor-General, is now chosen by our elected representatives and answers entirely to them.

While Prince Charles is in the country this weekend he will be treated as a visitor, not an intimate. We no longer want the monarchy involved in our affairs to the extent that the Governor-General can be, and nor do they want to be.

If the monarch disappeared we could, and probably would, carry right on appointing a Governor-General as the point of reference for law and constitutional continuity. But I no longer believe it will disappear with the death of Queen Elizabeth II.

Given the chance, I suspect the man visiting New Zealand today would make a pretty decent King. If he lives long enough he would follow a Queen whose sheer longevity will ensure an eruption of popular sentiment at her death. The event will not have the excesses of desperate sentimentality that Diana evoked but it will strike a deeper chord in Britain's heritage and character.

Charles would start in its afterglow and plainly has the qualities to build on it. Far from lacking self-awareness or a sense of the inherent absurdity of his position, he seems redeemingly sensible about it. He would be better than his mother, I think, when boundaries need to be breached, and he is not afraid to think aloud.

He makes thoughtful speeches, and some of his views provide cheap shots for critics. But the monarchy could live with that. Quite soon, people might be comparing his style favourably with the flat, bloodless bromides on the old film of his mother.

Prince Charles seems by far the most impressive of their bunch, the most intelligent, attentive, diligent and, but for some wretched disclosures long ago, the most dignified and strong. He will have his day and married openly, honestly and happily at last, he will do it well.

* John Roughan is a Herald assistant editor.