Royal advisors under fire over British wedding
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-02-24 16:35

Somebody has not been doing their job in Britain's royal household, according to royal watchers, after a series of missteps in the preparations for the wedding of heir to the throne Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles.

The public are warming, slowly, to the long-simmering love affair of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles and approve of their upcoming marriage, according to a poll published in The Times. [AFP]

An unprecedented chain of events, from the rushed marriage announcement two weeks ago to the sudden decision by Queen Elizabeth II to miss her son's civil ceremony, has tarnished the whole family's reputation, they say.

"It has been appallingly managed, very unlike the royal family. They have got egg on their face over this," said Nicholas Davies, a renowned authority on the royal family and author of a dozen related books and biographies.

The prince and queen's various advisors should have sorted out the details more carefully, he told AFP.

"These people are so on the ball normally, it just seems extraordinary. Either they had an off day at the office or they are very bad at working speedily," Davies said.

The royal household is hastily making the final arrangements for Charles, 56, to wed his longtime mistress, 57, on April 8 after the couple's engagement was announced prematurely to avoid a newspaper leak.

Unfortunately, the wedding -- which was always going to be controversial due to Camilla's perceived role in the break up of Charles's first marriage to the late Princess Diana -- has hit several obstacles that could have been avoided.

"They have just not got the proper advisors," said another royal family expert Charles Mosley, editor-in-chief of Debrett's, which publishes British guides to etiquette and the aristocracy.

"Or, they may have good advisors but they just do not take the advice, that is the other side of the coin," he noted.

Clearly there has been insufficient research into the marriage plans, Mosley said, noting in particular an embarrassing backtrack on the actual venue.

Clarence House, Charles's office, announced last week that the pair would move their civil wedding from Windsor Castle, one of the queen's official residences just outside London, to the town hall down the road because the royal palace has no licence to hold a civil marriage.

Royal advisors "are people who are supposed to be at the top of their profession... and they can't even do their homework," said Mosley.

"It is absolutely appalling."

Throwing another spanner in the works, the queen decided on Tuesday that she would skip the civil ceremony at the very public Guildhall and attend only a subsequent blessing and prayer service at a chapel inside Windsor Castle.

"She does not want to be part of the circus in the middle of Windsor because the wedding will be a circus," said Davies, blaming the whole farce on the fact that the arrangements had been rushed.

The advisors "will be totally embarrassed there will be profuse apologies," predicted the author, who is planning to publish a book entitled "Rebel Royals" around the time of the wedding.

"Overseas it really looks an absolute mess," he said. "It will be a really black mark and that is very, very embarrassing for the queen who hates to be seen like that. It would not surprise me at all if a few heads roll."

Some have even questioned the legality of the wedding, arguing that the future king must have a religious wedding.

Hoping to calm such fears, Britain's top legal authority, the Lord Chancellor Charles Falconer -- who advised the royal family on the wedding -- issued a statement Wednesday confirming that it was within the law.

But the confusion and backtracking have left royal commentators astounded.

"I don't quite know why it descended into such a fiasco," said Ingrid Seward, editor-in-chief of Majesty magazine.

"Normally (royal weddings) are planned meticulously by the master of the household and this one obviously hasn't been," she told AFP.

London's Evening Standard newspaper pointed the finger of blame at Charles's private secretary and advisor Michael Peat, quoting an anonymous royal source describing his position as "most uncomfortable".

But a Clarence House spokeswoman refused to comment on whether anyone was being blamed for the various hiccups in the royal arrangements, insisting that they were "all in the normal course of working out a wedding".

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