to think that Camilla is a bit of a national treasure

[GitAwfMayLend]

Yes another wedding based thread.

I think she seems a good egg. And looked lovely today.

Plus there were a few moments where she looked very emotional in the abbey, was very touching.

I can't see Charles even beginning to think about giving up his place to his own son, let alone his sister. He's waited soooooooooo long for his turn (and whined about it quite a lot too).

Careful Edward VIII abdicated in favour of his brother. They quite manifestly have 'the power'.

I couldn't give a toss about Camilla either on a personal level. Just think if we do want to continue with a monarchy it should be headed up by decent people, not a couple with a track record like Charles and Camilla.

flippin you rattled my cage by being so retentive about a typo: calm down about them dear.

Edward VIII abdicated - full stop. You don't get to chose who comes next; it's the next in line in succession. For Edward VIII it happened to be his brother. So if Charles were to abdicate (which I think extremely unlikely), it would be William, Harry, Yorks etc.

thank goodness that one abdicated (Nazi sympathiser and general waster wasn't he?)... Good on ya Wallis. Thanks

Yellowstone as the others have said, the monarch has the power to abdicate, but not the right to choose his successor.

The BRF has very little power. It is Parliament which has the power to change things.

I agree. The abdication probably saved the monarchy. Parties and high jinks until 1972 - we would have been crying out for a republic long before that. Always assuming we had survived his/our friendship with Adolf Hitler.

I would not be in favour of Camilla becoming queen. I don't think we should lose sight of the fact that although Diana was very young when she married, both Charles and Camilla were well and truly grown-up and should have either stood their ground with the establishment or sacrificed their affair.

I think Charles is a weak man who expects to have his cake and eat it. In the Diana/Camilla debacle he was able to and I suspect he thinks that keeping their heads down will enable him to do it again if and when his time to reign comes.

When we all, as a nation, celebrated his marriage to Diana he was not only deceiving her he was deceiving all of us too and that, IMHO, makes him unfit to ever be our king.

I like Camilla more than I ever really took to Diana. I was only very young when Charles and Diana married and so the Diana I remember is the media savvy manipulating one who has been rumoured to have had affairs with more than a few married men herself.

It's been annoying me on facebook to see all the "oh Diana should have been there instead of Camilla" comments.

In an ideal world Diana would have been there as well as Camilla and who knows, if she had been there Diana may well have been spitting feathers that someone younger, prettier and thinner was upstaging her because lets face it she was no saint either.

Camilla seems quite a genuine woman and anyone can make a mistake. They were both young when they first met and she may have been scared off by Charles being the heir to the throne, something she later felt more confident about as she became older. It is a shame that by then Charles had given into pressure to marry and start a family but he's as much a victim of the role he was born to as anyone else, perhaps more so. Heir to the throne isn't a role many people expect to fulfil.

And she seems kind and takes things in good humour. She had half the world hating her at one point and I think she has shown a lot of strength in putting herself past that and fulfilling her Royal duties when many people wanted her to fail.

hocuspontas - I thinks that's true. Edward VIII's abdication was probably the best thing that happened to the monarchy. In fact he was made Governor of the Bahamas during WWII to keep him out of harms way by the British Government

edam - I agree Charles will never abdicate, but then again he may not need to!

Lovely picture here of Edward and Wallis here and here to remind us what could have been.

takethisone Charles was 32 when he married Diana. Surely by that age he should be considered old enough to be responsible?

this is interesting
(now I will go and flagellate myself for not only linking to the Daily Mail but linking to an utterly trivial, bitchy, gossipy piece of nonsense from it)

am very taken with the idea that Charles and Camilla disapproved of Jemima Goldsmith's public backing of Assange.

I agree that if Diana was deceived as to the marriage and the feelings of her dh and it seems so, it is unpleasant and ridiculous in this day and age for any one to feel that was somehow necessary. However I didn't feel that the royal family or specifically Charles was deceiving the nation. In a way I feel that it is part of what a royal family does anyway - deceive the nation and I don't mean this in some really nasty way. I' ve said before I don't agree with the idea of monarchy and the belief it tries to impose or has to impose to justify itself that people are born higher and therefore better than others. I just find that wrong.

Howver how would a royalty work in the modern age where no one believes they have a God-given right to rule etc ?- Or does anyone truly belive that some blood lines are better equipped for the job or somehow destined to rule? I doubt it frankly. So the whole thing is a bit of spin. They have to put on a show, they have to try and exude something elitist otherwise what on earth validity could they find for their continued existance - their titles, powers? They have to deceive, play act a lot, it is what it is all aout in the end.
If you pretend to love your wife and do not, is it worse than pretending to be born to a more important role than any other Briton? To me it is the same. People let themselves be deceived that the royal family is special - yes through wealth, lifestyle and upbringing they are set apart - but not from birth in my view and if we want to believe they are special by birth in that we are like any young bride willing to believe it is the romance of the century.

aiming to be responsible for what? I'm not following your point.

I think you have it pretty much spot on ZZZenAgain.

The monarchy is adept at manipulation and always has been. They have never behaved well or been 'moral' (unless it suited them) because they don't have to.

Look at all the hoo-ha round the wedding and all the arguments people are having on here. People are still interested and it raises a lot of strong feeling.

Now I come to think of it, royal mistresses/favourites have pretty much always been disliked or treated with derision, so it's not surprising people express dislike for Camilla.

I wonder what her title will be if Charles does succeed?

Queen of Hearts perhaps?!

handsomeharry, could be!

Sorry takethisone I misread your post. Thought you were saying that Charles was very young when met and married Diana, rather than when first met Camilla.

I was trying to make the point that he was 32 when he married Diana, and as he knew that it was a sham he is responsible for the unhappiness, etc that followed.

Still feel that is the case but, sorry, it probably wasn't relevant to your post.

I find it strange that the public consciousness has completely erased Charles' other premarital girlfriend, and invented a myth that Camilla and Charles were an unbroken "item". And is so ready to believe that Charles strayed first.

The Queen is probably one of the most morally-upstanding monarchs we've ever had, on the face of it. Of course, we don't know what she is actually like, and she might sacrifice puppies to Baphomet or take potshots at tramps in her free time.

Most of the others, all through history, have had their seedy and unpleasant sides. Even saintly old Queen Victoria was horrifically manipulative with her daughters, and an early master of maintaining the right media image. The Queen Mother too was adept at creating the kind of image for herself that she knew her people would like. Behind the scenes, she was ruthless, ambitious and calculating.

Prince Charles has grown on me over the years, and I think Camilla has had a positive effect on him. Whilst Diana had many good qualities, she was criminally unsuited to be a queen consort. I refuse to believe that she was as naive on her marriage as she made out she was - this was the 1980s, not the 1910s.