Charles and His Middle Aged Bride

Middle-aged women in Washington seem intrigued by the middle-aged romance.
The Guardian UK had the story today.
“I don’t care about royalty,” says Linda Cashdan, journalist and director of Washington writing consultancy the Word Process, “but I am fascinated with a guy who is so in love with a woman. In a way, the Charles and Camilla story has the same appeal of King Edward VIII and the Duchess of Windsor. He gave up his throne for the woman he loved. It’s unusual because most British men are so passive.”

“This trip is all about introducing Camilla to the colonies,” says Virginia Newmyer, an American expert on British royalty who lectures at the Smithsonian Institution and various universities. “And high time, I say. Charles is finally happy with a woman who truly loves him and he no longer needs to keep her under wraps. For years, he was ground under the maternal thumb and then thrown into the disaster of his marriage to Diana. Now, at the age of 57, he’s finally got a life that matters. I think it’s great and I wish him well. The Princess of Wales is dead. Long live the Duchess.”

Like an impresario preparing for opening night, Charles has stage-managed every detail of his wife’s American debut, including her wardrobe of hats, shoes and dresses. He does not want her to be unfavourably compared with Diana in any way. He even allowed a television crew from CBS’s 60 Minutes – the highest-rated news show in the US – to film him and Camilla a few weeks ago carrying out official engagements in Britain, including a trip to his model village of Poundbury in Dorset. During an interview at Highgrove, he was willing to discuss his sons, William and Harry, and the war in Iraq, but questions about his former wife were forbidden.