In Praise of Prince Charles

This is one of my more peculiar hobby horses, but let's take a moment to non-ironically appreciate Prince Charles. I came around to the Prince back when he married Camilla Parker Bowles. For all the scorn heaped on the couple, they always struck me as a particularly touching love story. They'd been together, in some form or another, for decades. Bowles is frumpy and long-villified, yet despite the hits to his public image and the opposition of both the royal family and the British people, Charles insisted on eventually marrying her -- pure sentimentalism, driven by a desire to legitimize and celebrate her role in his life (even as she will never be part of the succession).

Now, Charles is about to release a book on organic gardening. And the Prince's commitment isn't new, nor untested. Charles has a farm that's run according to organic, sustainable, principles. And he's been public with his convictions, dating back to long before such ideas were hip. "When all of this started in the 1980s," The New York Times reminds us, "the British press ground His Royal Highness down to a nub, branding him the prince who talked to plants. (Granted, he did say things like, “To get the best results, you must talk to your vegetables.”)' So there again, he took shit for a cause he believed in, and that most of us now find laudable. There's a courage to that, and for all the scorn heaped on him in The Queen for refusing to take a strong stand when the monarchy was in crisis, when Charles has stood firm, the principles he protected were significantly more admirable than a mere rearguard defense of his own station in life. "He’s still a little sensitive about [the attacks on his environmentalism]," continues the Times. '"One of the great difficulties” of converting to organic farming,' he wrote in his book, 'turned out to be convincing others that you had not taken complete leave of your senses."'

Even so, the Prince befriended Eric Schlosser, of Fast Food Nation fame, and apprenticed himself to sustainable thinkers in the US. He created a line of food products called "Duchy Orginals," which are organic and sustainable, commercially successful ($80+ million in sales a year), critically acclaimed, and all profits go towards charity. He tours well-run farms, speaks at sustainability conferences, and exchanges shout-outs with Al Gore. Definitely my favorite modern monarch.

Update: Also, read this great Kinsley column on Charles and Camilla.

There's no special magic about a prince approaching middle age who marries a young society beauty. And the more we learn about Princess Diana, the less magical that story seems. And, of course, the abdication tale remains far from inspiring.

Now, what about a prince who marries a young beauty out of his sense of duty, who waits for decades until a car crash frees him and then marries the woman he really loves -- a woman whom almost everyone else in the world finds remarkably unattractive; a woman he didn't need to marry in order to enjoy her companionship as he had for decades; a woman his family and the world didn't want him to marry. And what about a woman who watched her longtime lover marry a much younger beauty; who married someone else herself out of some kind of bitter realism; who fell in love with a young future king but is marrying an old weirdo who very likely won't ever occupy the throne; a woman who is inviting a lifetime of public mockery for every aspect of her public appearance. . . . Now that is a love story.