4th June 2006
Heard from my friend Rosie today for the first time in years.
She rang out of the blue this morning and asked how I was.
Obviously I couldn’t tell her I feel as if my heart’s been ripped out and stamped on.
She wouldn’t have listened even if I’d told her – she’s still as obsessed with the Royal Family as she’s always been, and I could barely fit in the words ‘I’m fine’ before she started ranting on about poor Prince Charles and poor Camilla and all the horrid people who don’t understand their great love, as if she knows them personally and can speak authoritatively on their behalf.
Ridiculous. But it reminded me of a conversation she and I had years ago, about love and the restrictions that are imposed on it sometimes.
Again, the bloody Royal Family was the topic of conversation, as it pretty much always is when you’re talking to Rosie.
I’ve no idea why or when she decided that Charles and Camilla being kept apart by family expectations is the world’s biggest ever tragedy, but that’s definitely what she thinks.
‘We’re so lucky, aren’t we?’ she said wistfully.
‘I mean, we can choose for ourselves, marry whoever we want.’
I probably agreed at the time. Because yes, if you’re not the heir to the throne, you probably do assume you’ll have complete freedom of choice when it comes to love.
And yet my love for Ollie must remain mute, gagged and silenced.
And do you know what? I don’t feel in the slightest bit sorry for the Royals, with their immense wealth and many beautiful homes and castles.
They know from birth that they’re part of a structure in which duty and family are valued more than individual freedom.
If you’d grown up as a Royal, you’d surely mind less when you couldn’t have what your heart wanted; it would be the norm.
Everyone around you, all your relatives, would be thinking not only of themselves but of the greater good.
Sacrifices, when they were made, would be recognised and valued – whereas I can’t even talk about mine.
As a non-Royal, I’m supposed to be ‘so lucky’ because there’s nothing stopping me loving whoever I want, with no family restrictions whatsoever.
What an infuriating lie. The truth is that only some of us have the benefit of that supposed freedom of choice. Others, like me, have hearts that we’re expected to switch on and off depending on a tyrant’s whim.