'Not our queen of hearts'
2005-02-10 19:53
London - Many Britons welcomed Prince Charles' surprise announcement that he would marry his lover Camilla Parker Bowles, but some said she never will win their hearts the way Princess Diana did.
Within minutes of Charles' announcement that the couple will marry at Windsor Castle on April 8, it was hard to find anyone on the streets of central London who hadn't heard the news.
"We've all been expecting that sooner or later, said Dina Pine, 73, a retired restaurant owner. "But I don't think she should be queen."
"I'm fine with him marrying her. They seem to suit each other," said Bonita Archibald, 39, a hairdresser.
Archibald said Prince Charles should be given the benefit of the doubt in such decisions, even though he has been known for occasional gaffes. "Charles seems to have his head screwed on," she said.
Fergie on the wedding
Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, and other well-known British public figures, said it's time for the public to forget about royal tragedies of the past and welcome Camilla into the fold.
Ferguson, who is divorced from Prince Andrew, Charles' brother, said through a spokesperson in the United States that she "is very happy for" for the engaged couple.
Winston Churchill, the grandson of Britain's wartime prime minister of the same name, said the couple were entitled to be happy together.
"They are clearly very much in love. It must be the end of a series of nightmare years for Camilla, every day reading in the papers about being the mistress this and that.
" They are entitled to have their own happiness the same as everyone else," Churchill told Sky News.
Charles and Camilla - divorcees and longtime lovers - will marry in a civil ceremony, not in the Church of England, and that Parker Bowles will be called Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cornwall after the marriage, and called the princess consort, not the queen, when Charles becomes king.
'Camilla will never be our queen of hearts'
Chris Morris, 54, a building engineer, said that he thought Charles was smart to marry Camilla before becoming king. But whatever happens, Morris said, she will never be as popular as Princess Diana was.
"Diana is still in so many people's hearts," he said. "Queen Camilla wouldn't be so popular."
Charles divorced Diana in 1996, a year before she was killed in a Paris car crash, and some Britons believe the long-standing Charles-Camilla affair was the main reason the Charles-Diana marriage fell apart.
Princess Diana's brother Earl Spencer declined to comment on the announcement by Prince Charles.
In Diana's home village near the Spencer family's Althorp estate north of London, the reaction was mixed.
Jacqui Ellard, 33, the landlady of the Brington village pub, the Althorp Coaching Inn Fox and Hounds, welcomed the news.
"They should be allowed to do whatever they want and it is as simple as that. It is nobody else's business but their own," she said.
- AP