Ever since Andrew's publicized love affair with the American actress Koo Stark, the Prince had been described in the press as "Randy Andy." During their romance, the tabloids had published nude pictures of Koo when she appeared as a lesbian in one of Britain's biggest-earning soft-p.o.r.n films. These photographs showed her taking a shower with another woman. Months later the tabloids published pictures of Andrew as he skinny-dipped in Canada: "It's strip ahoy as naked Prince Andy larks about in the River." One downmarket magazine printed the photograph with a poem: A rose is red A rose is redKoo is blueAndy is RandyWhat's HM to do?

On television, the satirical revue Spitting Image Spitting Image caricatured the handsome Prince as a nude puppet, holding up a gla.s.s of Champagne with links of sausage draped over his upper thigh. The Palace threatened to sue the show's producers, but the Director of Public Prosecutions urged royal restraint. "If I were you," he said to the Queen's lawyers, "I'd forget about it, because if you prosecute, they're going to turn up in court with that puppet." The palace backed off. caricatured the handsome Prince as a nude puppet, holding up a gla.s.s of Champagne with links of sausage draped over his upper thigh. The Palace threatened to sue the show's producers, but the Director of Public Prosecutions urged royal restraint. "If I were you," he said to the Queen's lawyers, "I'd forget about it, because if you prosecute, they're going to turn up in court with that puppet." The palace backed off.

Weeks later, Faber & Faber, T. S. Eliot's publisher, announced plans to publish a book with the photograph of the naked Prince Andrew puppet.* This time, instead of threatening a lawsuit, the Palace tried the tactic of shame. This time, instead of threatening a lawsuit, the Palace tried the tactic of shame.

"The Queen's press secretary rang me up," recalled Mathew Evans, chairman of Faber & Faber, "and said, 'We are very disappointed that a publisher of your standing is marketing this tasteless book. We request that you do not reprint any more copies." Evans immediately upped the print order to five hundred thousand copies, and the book became a national best-seller.

"The Queen was hopping mad," recalled a secretary. "She said she didn't see any difference between the prestigious publisher of T. S. Eliot and the lurid Murdoch press."

Her Majesty had previously sued Murdoch's Sun Sun for publishing breakfast-in-bed details about Prince Andrew's entertaining women in his private apartment at the Palace. "The women were always young and fanciable," a former Palace pantry aide told the tabloid, "and Andrew was always so sure of his chances-so cheeky-that he would order double bacon and eggs the night before." for publishing breakfast-in-bed details about Prince Andrew's entertaining women in his private apartment at the Palace. "The women were always young and fanciable," a former Palace pantry aide told the tabloid, "and Andrew was always so sure of his chances-so cheeky-that he would order double bacon and eggs the night before."

In selling his story, the former aide violated the confidentiality agreement he had signed as a condition of employment. The Queen was more incensed by his breach of contract than she was by his revelations. But Murdoch's paper paid the servant more than half ($3,500) of what he made in one year working for the Queen. So the former kitchen helper spilled the beans. He said Andrew's lover, Koo Stark, romped through the Palace kitchen in short skirts and skimpy T-shirts, wearing the bright red dogtags that Andrew had given her after the Falklands War. The actress, four years older than Andrew, issued orders to the staff, organized picnics for herself and the Prince, and helped herself to the Queen's favorite chocolates. The first installment of the story ended with a t.i.tillating headline about the Princess of Wales: "Tomorrow: When Barefoot Di b.u.t.tered My Toast."

The Queen, who was on tour, contacted her lawyers in London, and within hours they obtained a permanent injunction. The next day's headline: "Queen Gags the Sun." The Queen then sued Murdoch for damages, and the Palace justified the monarch's unprecedented action with a terse statement: The servant has breached an undertaking of confidence which all palace employees sign. In this declaration, they agree not to make any disclosures about their work at the palace. It is a legally binding doc.u.ment under civil law. The servant has breached an undertaking of confidence which all palace employees sign. In this declaration, they agree not to make any disclosures about their work at the palace. It is a legally binding doc.u.ment under civil law.

"We might have to move toward some policy of sanction," the Palace press secretary warned royal reporters. "The line must be drawn between legitimate public interest, which all members of the royal family recognize, and prurient interest in their private lives." The Queen was awarded damages of $6,000. The Sun Sun agreed to pay the amount to the Newspaper Press Fund, plus payment of the Palace's legal costs. agreed to pay the amount to the Newspaper Press Fund, plus payment of the Palace's legal costs.

The Duke of Edinburgh phoned his son and told him that his love affair with Koo Stark was over. "It's finished, Andrew," Philip said sternly. The twenty-three-year-old prince did not even think of protesting. He was too afraid of his father and too afraid of embarra.s.sing his mother. In love, but immobilized with fear, he did not know what to do. So he did nothing. Despite avowals of love to Koo Stark and a marriage proposal, he now drew back. He never apologized or explained. He simply did not call her or accept her calls.

"Koo Stark's life was ruined as a result of Andrew," said her friend Louise Allen Jones.

Although stunned and heartbroken, Koo Stark departed gracefully and maintained a discreet silence. She married months later and tried to resume her acting career. But she could never shed the identification with Andrew. Her marriage ended in divorce several years later, but she did not see Andrew again for years. Although he dated other women, he remained in love with Koo until the Princess of Wales decided to distract him with her friend Sarah Ferguson.

Diana had met Fergie at a polo match before her marriage, and they quickly became friends. They shared a fascination with astrologers, clairvoyants, and tarot card readers and compared notes on each of their sessions. During her marriage, Fergie regularly visited the bas.e.m.e.nt apartment of a London faith healer known as Madame Va.s.so, who placed her under a blue plastic pyramid and chanted. Fergie said the Madame cleansed her while performing psychic cures.

Sarah had attended Diana's wedding and visited her several times in Kensington Palace when Diana was depressed, always making her laugh. She was the only person invited for lunch at Buckingham Palace on Diana's twenty-first birthday. "She's great fun," Diana told Andrew, who was her favorite in-law. She submitted Sarah's name to the Queen as someone young and single to include in the Windsor Castle house party for Royal Ascot week.

At the time, Fergie had hoped to marry Paddy McNally, a race car driver she had been living with on and off in Switzerland. She had proposed to him several times in their three-year relationship, but McNally, a forty-eight-year-old widower with children, kept saying no. Finally she issued an ultimatum: Either marry me or I'll leave. He offered to help her pack.

"She's been badly treated by men," said her friend Ingrid Seward, editor of Majesty Majesty magazine. magazine.

As her father had done to her mother, McNally frequently reduced Sarah to tears by openly pursuing other women. Now, hoping to make him envious, she waved the Queen's invitation for Royal Ascot. He responded by encouraging her to take advantage of the opportunity to socialize with the royal family. He even drove her to Windsor for the weekend and deposited her into the hands of a royal footman. McNally cheerily waved good-bye and told her to enjoy herself.

Over lunch before the races, Sarah and Andrew became acquainted. Rather, re reacquainted: they had met as children, twenty years earlier, at a royal polo game. At this reunion he fed her profiteroles and she punched him in the arm, saying they were much too fattening. He tried to stuff them into her mouth, and she laughingly threatened a food fight. Both rowdy and rambunctious, they shared the same lavatory sense of humor and fondness for bodily noises-belches, burps, and grunts. "She whooped and hollered at all his fart jokes," recalled the waiter who served them at Windsor Castle. "As a joke, she later gave him an anatomically correct doll, and he displayed the ghastly thing in his suite at Buck House."

The gauche Prince, who banged his silverware on the table and helped himself to food before others were served, was described by some acquaintances as "Germanic, boorish, and a show-off just like his father." Others applauded him as the only one of the Queen's children "to pursue an honest-to-G.o.d job in the navy." He also studied photography and played golf like a pro.

Like his great-grandfather, his grandfather, and his father, Andrew had bypa.s.sed a university education to join the Royal Navy. When he went into the service, he was second in the line of succession, so he was accorded the privileges of royalty. He did not eat with the rest of the officers and insisted on having meals served to him in his private cabin. The chest patch on his flight suit read "HRH Prince Andrew." His nickname was "H" for Highness.

In 1981 he made a twelve-year commitment to the navy. The next year, during the Falklands War, he distinguished himself as a helicopter pilot. By the time he met Sarah in 1985, he was a lieutenant aboard the frigate HMS Brazen. Brazen. A few days after Royal Ascot, he returned to his ship. But before going aboard, he sent Sarah roses and signed the card "A." A few days after Royal Ascot, he returned to his ship. But before going aboard, he sent Sarah roses and signed the card "A."

The Princess of Wales helped the courtship along by arranging to visit Andrew's ship with her four-year-old son, Prince William. She invited Sarah as her lady-in-waiting, and the press turned out in full force to photograph them. Fergie was startled by the media clamor.

"G.o.d, what's this all about?" she said with a gulp as photographers pressed in.

"Keep smiling," whispered Diana as she held her son's hand. "Whatever you do, just keep smiling."

The Princess later invited Sarah and Andrew to spend private weekends at Highgrove, where the housekeeper remembers Fergie's pocketing the crested stationery and asking for more. "I've just got to send some letters on Highgrove paper," she said, giggling. "I promised a friend, who will be so terribly terribly impressed." The housekeeper brought her extra stationery along with her clean laundry. "Every time she came," the housekeeper recalled, "we had to wash and iron all her dirty clothes." impressed." The housekeeper brought her extra stationery along with her clean laundry. "Every time she came," the housekeeper recalled, "we had to wash and iron all her dirty clothes."

Most of the courtship was conducted on weekends in the privacy of friends' country estates, where guests remember an unmistakable physical attraction between the couple and incidents of exuberant horseplay. On one winter weekend in 1985, during a game of hide-and-seek, Andrew hid under a table, and Sarah, who was blindfolded, crawled around the floor looking for him. When she found him, she pinched his behind-hard. "Steady on!" he shouted. "You're not allowed to squeeze the royal bottom yet!" yet!" That evening he proposed. That evening he proposed.

Sarah replied, "When you wake up tomorrow morning, you can tell me it's all a huge joke."

The next morning Andrew proposed again and gave her a $37,000 ruby ring.

Sarah immediately called her father. "Dads, he's asked me to marry him," she yelled. "I made him propose twice, just to be sure." She cautioned her father not to say anything until Andrew received the Queen's permission to marry.

Intent on ingratiating herself with the royal family, Sarah spent weekends at Windsor when Andrew was home on leave. She took morning horseback rides with the Queen, something Her Majesty was never able to do with Diana, who was afraid of horses. Diana had been thrown as a child and broken her arm; since then she had not ridden. Unlike Diana, Sarah enjoyed playing charades and all the card games that Her Majesty liked. "Sarah cheats even more than my mother at Racing Demon," the Queen told Sarah's grandmother. The Queen called her future daughter-in-law by her Christian name. "It was never Fergie," recalled an aide, "always Sarah." Her Majesty enjoyed the spirited rapport between her son and his fiancee and observed approvingly, "He's met his match this time." Trading barbs with Prince Philip, Fergie laughed uproariously at his off-color jokes and asked him to teach her his favorite sport of compet.i.tive open-carriage driving. "I think she will be a great a.s.set," Philip told the press. Prince Charles agreed. "She's so s.p.u.n.ky, so enthusiastic," he marveled. "Delightful company. Just delightful."

Andrew was clearly besotted. "I know that the decision I made to marry Sarah was, and always will be, the best decision I have made, or ever will make in my life," he said. He felt especially rea.s.sured when she announced plans to take forty hours of flight training so she could share his career as a helicopter pilot. "She'll be a great navy wife," he told his family.

In Andrew, Sarah had finally found a man who treated her respectfully. "The most important thing that I felt... is his amazing ability to make one feel like a lady, like a woman.... I just couldn't get over how in my life outside, as I call it, there were so many men strutting around thinking that they were so smart while they were being so foul to women."

Eager to prove herself, Sarah offered to accompany Andrew on one of his few royal duties. As the couple walked through the corridors of a convalescent home, she spotted the pool used for physical therapy and flippantly suggested that Andrew take a dip. She knew he was afraid of water and had not learned to swim. He smiled at her remark but looked slightly embarra.s.sed. "Oh, dear," she told a patient, "he thinks I'm getting too excited."

Sarah raved to her father about her weekends at Windsor Castle. "She's either in love with Andrew or in love with the royal family," Major Ron told the press, "and I think it's the latter." The royal family welcomed Sarah Ferguson into their midst, but other people questioned her suitability. Some patricians felt she would make royalty a roadkill. "Mark my words," predicted Ruth Fermoy, lady-in-waiting to the Queen Mother. "Nothing good will come from that common girl."

At least one Fleet Street editor agreed with the straitlaced aristocrat. "Fergie will topple the House of Windsor," predicted Brian Vine of the Daily Mail. Daily Mail.

The fashion press took Sarah to task for being "stout," "full figured," and "Rubenesque." One columnist called her "the future d.u.c.h.ess of Pork." Another said, "She's as hearty and down-to-earth as a potato."

"I am not fat," she said defensively, "and I do not diet. I do not have a problem. A woman should have a trim waist, a good 'up top,' and enough down the bottom but not too big-a good womanly figure."

When hers was displayed at Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum, the sculptor, who had taken her measurements, would not divulge them. So one newspaper gleefully estimated 39-49-59 and said: "Here comes the bride, 41 inches wide." During a ride up an escalator, the wind blew Fergie's skirt above her knees as photographers snapped away. The picture was published over the caption: "Her Royal Thighness."

"Fergie is a jolly hockey-sticks type of girl," said one fashion editor. "A breath of fresh air. Lots of bounce. Yes, bounce. Very bouncy. Rather like a bouncing ball."

Without makeup and her hair in a ponytail, Fergie looked like the country cousin lost in the city. Sn.o.bbish fashion designers considered her a disaster-all freckles and frizzy hair-but the public embraced her freshness and accepted her oversize dresses and run-down heels. So did the Queen, whose only advice to her future daughter-in-law was to wave more slowly. Fergie imitated the Queen's wave, which she called "s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g in lightbulbs." But she was as herky-jerky as a week-old puppy, never learned restraint. Instead she bounded into crowds like a glad-handing politician. "Hi ya, hi ya, hi ya," she would say, pumping hands and collecting bouquets.

By then the Princess of Wales had become the darling of the British fashion industry, and in her designer clothes she radiated so much cinematic glamour that she was called the popcorn Princess. Reader's Digest Reader's Digest called her "The World's Number One Celebrity." An international survey of magazines in 1986 reported her face graced more covers than that of any other woman, including Jacqueline Kennedy Ona.s.sis. Fergie in her baggy jumpers and horizontal stripes was relegated to covers of called her "The World's Number One Celebrity." An international survey of magazines in 1986 reported her face graced more covers than that of any other woman, including Jacqueline Kennedy Ona.s.sis. Fergie in her baggy jumpers and horizontal stripes was relegated to covers of Saddle Up Saddle Up and and Weight Watchers. Weight Watchers.

"Some of the clothes Sarah wore were awful," admitted her father, "but she would not be told." Understandably, she was wounded by the unkind fashion commentary, especially the comparisons with the Princess of Wales. "I don't want to be a Diana clone," she wailed.

"Not to worry," retorted British Vogue. Vogue.

Fergie tried to pretend she didn't care about being svelte and elegant, but she begged her wedding dress designer Lindka Cierach to make her look beautiful. She felt the pressure of five hundred million people who would be watching the wedding on television.

On the morning of the wedding, July 23, 1986, the Queen invested her son with the t.i.tles of Duke of York, Earl of Inverness, and Baron Killyleagh. His bride, Sarah, became Her Royal Highness the d.u.c.h.ess of York. The t.i.tle had not been conferred since 1936, when the previous d.u.c.h.ess of York became the consort Queen. She was now Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, and at the age of eighty-six she remained the most beloved figure in the country. Sarah's sudden elevation to royalty ent.i.tled her to be addressed as Your Highness and to receive a respectful bob of the neck from men and deep curtsies from women, except for the only three in the realm who outranked her-the Queen, the Queen Mother, and the Princess of Wales. Fergie said she was "blissed out" by the t.i.tle.

Always a stickler for protocol, she had mastered the rudiments of form by the age of twelve, when she insisted her father dismiss a butler who didn't know the difference between knickerbockers and plus fours. In a television interview after her engagement announcement, she was asked whether her uncle, who worked as a servant, would be invited to her wedding. "Of course he'll be invited," she said. "How absurd. But he'll know the form well enough not to come." Her comment was edited out of the interview. To a writer, she chided Prince Andrew for his less than elegant language. "He uses words that simply aren't on," she said. "He must have picked them up in the navy: mirror instead of looking gla.s.s; phone, mantelpiece, heads for lavatory-at least he doesn't say toilet!"

As the d.u.c.h.ess of York, Sarah expected the salutation of Your Royal Highness upon introduction. After that she was to be addressed as ma'am. "It rhymes with Spam," she said.

She knew she was ent.i.tled to a crest, so she designed one with a b.u.mblebee and thistle and took the motto Ex Adversis Felicitas Ex Adversis Felicitas ("Out of Adversity Comes Happiness"). ("Out of Adversity Comes Happiness").

After her marriage, she insisted on receiving public formalities from her family, which meant her father had to bow and her stepmother curtsy. She exempted her friends but instructed her staff to advise strangers about royal protocol. On foreign trips, especially to the United States, she had a written sheet of instructions issued to those present before she made her entrances: 1. Do not speak unless spoken to. 1. Do not speak unless spoken to.2. Do not offer to shake hands unless she shakes first.3. Do not instigate any topic of conversation.4. Address her by her royal t.i.tle, which is not not Your Majesty, but Your Royal Highness. Your Majesty, but Your Royal Highness.

As Duke of York, Andrew received a pay raise from the Civil List to $100,000 a year in addition to his annual naval salary of $20,000. He also received income from a $1 million trust fund his mother had set up for him. But Fergie kept her $35,000-a-year job as a publishing a.s.sistant. The Queen paid for the $350,000 wedding and presented the bride with a diamond tiara, a diamond bracelet, and a diamond necklace. Her Majesty also gave the royal couple five acres of land and paid for the $7 million construction of Sunninghill Park, their forty-six-room mansion, which was five miles from Windsor Castle. "I did it for Anne," said the Queen. "So of course I'll do it for Andrew." The rambling ranch-style house that Sarah and Andrew designed for themselves had twelve bedrooms, plus a swimming pool, a bomb shelter, and a medieval minstrel's gallery. There were two master bedrooms and a master bath with musical toilet rolls that played "G.o.d Save the Queen." The circular tub set in the middle of a white marble floor was so big that the builders called it HMS Fergie. Fergie. Prince Philip said, "It looks like a tart's boudoir." The imposing residence was ridiculed as "a fifty-room pizza palace" and called "Southyork," after the Southfork ranch in the 1980s television show Prince Philip said, "It looks like a tart's boudoir." The imposing residence was ridiculed as "a fifty-room pizza palace" and called "Southyork," after the Southfork ranch in the 1980s television show Dallas. Dallas.

On the morning of the wedding, crowds began a.s.sembling early to watch the royal procession of coaches and celebrities. Major Ferguson marveled at the ma.s.ses of people, who were standing ten deep in some places along the streets. "Just look at all these people," he said, "come to see my smelly little daughter."

America's First Lady, Nancy Reagan, had been preceded into Westminster Abbey by twenty-two U.S. Secret Service agents. Cosmetics tyc.o.o.n Estee Lauder walked in behind movie star Michael Caine. Pop singer Elton John, in purple gla.s.ses and a ponytail, waved to the crowds, as did Prince Albert of Monaco. Minutes later Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher arrived, but she was booed for having sent in mounted police to settle a miners' strike.

The crowds erupted and cheered loudly when they saw the t.i.tian-haired bride, looking slim and lovely in her Victorian ivory gown. Royal trumpeters heralded her arrival as she stepped out of the gla.s.s coach. Trailed by 17 feet of flowing satin beaded with anchors and the initial A, A, she proceeded up the steps of the Abbey. She halted at the top, unable to move. She turned around and yanked at her gown. she proceeded up the steps of the Abbey. She halted at the top, unable to move. She turned around and yanked at her gown.

"Who the h.e.l.l is standing on my train?" she yelled. The wedding dress designer dropped to her knees and quickly rearranged the folds of the gown. The bride then moved forward and grabbed her father's arm.

"C'mon, Dads," she said, "let's show 'em how it's done."

Major Ferguson nervously began the long walk down the aisle of the eleventh-century Abbey with his daughter, who smiled nonstop. She made faces at one guest, gave a thumbs-up to another, and cracked jokes about the outlandish outfits she spotted among the 1,800 guests.

Major Ferguson was unnerved. "When we reached the archway leading to the chancel with the Queen and Prince Andrew gazing down expectantly," he recalled, "I had to say, 'Come on. You've got to be serious now.' "

Fergie tried to rein herself in, but the effort showed. At the altar, Prince Andrew stepped forward with his Falklands medals pinned to the breast of his naval lieutenant's uniform. "You look wonderful," he said.

"Thank you, darling," she said, smiling. "I forgot to pack my toothbrush."

"Never mind," said the beaming duke.

The Queen, who occasionally took deep breaths to control her emotions during the service, could not take her eyes off her son.

Princess Michael of Kent, who was married to the Queen's cousin, could not stop looking at the bride. "All that ghastly winking as she came down the aisle," she said. "So common."

The Princess of Wales seemed not to notice. Sitting with the royal family on pink-and-gold chairs, apart from the rest of the congregation, she looked sad and distracted, staring into s.p.a.ce. She brightened up only when she saw her son, William, one of the four little pages. Dressed in a sailor suit, the four-year-old Prince tugged on his cap, wound the string around his nose, chewed it like taffy, and then pulled out his ceremonial dagger to bedevil the six-year-old bridesmaid next to him.

Having brought Sarah and Andrew together, Diana had looked forward to having a friend as a sister-in-law and to sharing what she called "the royal load." But she was unprepared for sharing the spotlight. The sudden media attention directed at Fergie jolted Diana, who was accustomed to being the focus of press interest. She slipped into second place temporarily. She tried to make light of her reduced status by joking to reporters. "You won't need me now," she teased. "You've got Fergie."

Sarah and Andrew's royal wedding was characterized most amusingly by an Italian newspaper, Milan's Il Giorno Il Giorno: "And so to conclude, if it is true, as Flaubert a.s.serted, that to be happy, it is necessary not to be too intelligent, to be a little bit arrogant, and above all, to have good health, then there is no doubt that the future of Andrew and Sarah will be among the best." And it was. Sublime. For a time.

SIXTEEN.

The Prince of Wales was convinced that his wife was having an affair with her bodyguard. Barry Mannakee, a gregarious police sergeant, had been a.s.signed to protect the Princess in 1985 when the Waleses' marriage started falling apart. He accompanied her wherever she went, and as Charles spent more time away from his wife, she turned to her personal detective for company.

"He was like all the protection officers for royalty,"* said the former head of Scotland Yard, who received a t.i.tle when he retired. "They are selected for sensitivity and diplomacy. They're highly skilled at security and armed at all times, but they must also blend into any circ.u.mstance. This requires a range of social skills-skiing, sailing, horseback riding, hunting, even carriage riding. The royalty protection boys have expensive haircuts and wear Turnbull and a.s.ser shirts. They're handsome, charming, and seductive." said the former head of Scotland Yard, who received a t.i.tle when he retired. "They are selected for sensitivity and diplomacy. They're highly skilled at security and armed at all times, but they must also blend into any circ.u.mstance. This requires a range of social skills-skiing, sailing, horseback riding, hunting, even carriage riding. The royalty protection boys have expensive haircuts and wear Turnbull and a.s.ser shirts. They're handsome, charming, and seductive."

The thirty-nine-year-old protection officer for the Princess of Wales was a married man with two children, so he got along well with three-year-old Prince William. "Barry was such a colorful and easygoing character," recalled the Highgrove housekeeper. "He was fun and everyone adored him. He was an ideal personal security officer for the Princess.... She hung on to his every word, flirted with him outrageously, and pulled his leg in a way that suggested the two of them were very close. There have been many rumors about them having an affair, but I am sure that is completely untrue. For Diana, Barry was simply a friend, someone she could rely on and trust."

The Princess's detective escorted her on her endless rounds of shopping and took her for long drives through the hills of Balmoral when her husband went fishing alone and she wanted to get away from the rest of the royal family. She turned to Mannakee when she was upset, which was often in those days, and he offered consolation and a strong shoulder to cry on. He comforted her when she became unstrung before public engagements.

"On one occasion, she kept saying she couldn't go ahead with it, and just collapsed into my arms," said Mannakee. "I hugged her and stopped her crying. What else would you have done?"

The policeman became the repository of Diana's secrets, including her suspicions about her husband and Camilla Parker Bowles. Diana told Mannakee she was convinced that despite Charles's promises to her before they married, he had gone back to his mistress. Diana said she confirmed her suspicions one weekend when she arrived at Highgrove and Charles was not there. His aide said he had left minutes before she arrived, roaring off by himself in his sports car. He did not say where he was going and didn't leave a number where he could be reached in case of emergency.

Diana went into his study and pushed the recall b.u.t.ton on his mobile phone, which rang the Parker Bowles estate. When the butler answered, she hung up. She checked Charles's private calendar and saw a "C" marked on that date. She searched his desk drawers and told her bodyguard that she had found a cache of letters from Camilla. Some were chatty and some extremely intimate, addressed to "My Beloved."

After that, Mannakee felt even more protective toward the Princess, who tearfully asked him why her husband had turned away from her. "He's a fool," said Mannakee, shaking his head. "A b.l.o.o.d.y fool." Diana was touched by her detective's loyalty, and his working-cla.s.s London accent made her smile. He became her close friend, her confidant, even her fashion consultant. She turned to him the way a wife turns to a husband, looking for approval. Servants recall many occasions when the Princess dressed for a public engagement and came out of her room to ask her bodyguard for his opinion.

"Barry, how do I look? Do you think these are the right earrings?"

"Perfect," he said. She twirled in front of him, smoothed down her evening dress, and applied more lip gloss.

"Are you sure?" she asked, looking in the mirror. "Do I look all right?"

"Sensational, as you know you do," he said with a laugh. "I could quite fancy you myself."

"But you do already, don't you?" she said flirtatiously.

Their easy banter disturbed Charles, who lived by a double standard: he confided in his gardener at Highgrove about the woeful state of his marriage, but he could not stand Diana confiding in her bodyguard. Charles accused her of lacking decorum and said her behavior with the staff was deplorable.

He was embarra.s.sed that their marital fights, which had gone on behind closed doors, were now being waged in front of the servants. He blamed Diana for the open warfare because she had started to talk back. In the beginning of their marriage, she had been too insecure to speak up. But she gradually overcame her shrinking deference, and as her confidence grew with her popularity, she was no longer willing to defer.

Usually restrained in public, the Princess let loose in private. She railed about her husband's "toadying" friends, his preoccupation with polo, his dinner parties with "boring old men who smell of cigars," and his solitary trips to fish and paint and ski. She said his excursions were simply excuses to get away from her.

The Prince responded that he needed the trips to restore his peace of mind after enduring her neurotic behavior. He taunted her about her eating disorder, which caused fainting spells in public. "You're always sick," Charles said with disgust. "Why can't you be more like Fergie?" During meals, he chided her. "Is that going to reappear later? What a waste."

Diana struck back by accusing him of being selfish and stingy, and he yelled at her for being extravagant. "The meaner he got, the more she would spend," said interior designer Nicholas Haslam, a close friend of the royal family. "That meanness of his drove her crazy... but the royals love to play at being poor. Camilla is the same way; she can't abide spending money, and Charles adores that quality in her. They turn each other on with their stinginess. When Camilla comes in bristling about how much the cleaner costs, Charles becomes aroused and leaps in to exclaim about how much he had to pay for the same thing. Back and forth they go, banging on about the cost of having their clothes commercially cleaned. The two of them nearly expire with exasperation about having to spend their money on such a necessity...."

The Princess carped that his penny-pinching deprived her of a tennis court at Highgrove.

"You know it's the only thing I have ever wanted here," she told him.

Charles said he could not afford the $20,000 to build a tennis court.

"You cannot be serious," Diana shouted. "What about the thousands you pour into your precious b.l.o.o.d.y garden and anything else which takes your fancy? I don't think you realize quite the efforts I make to go along with what you want to do all the time. What about my wants?"

He shrugged and walked out of the room. Diana yelled at him through the closed door. That evening she did not show up for dinner. While he sat in the dining room waiting for her, she ate alone in the nursery, where she said she did not have to beg for love.

During their most heated arguments, they flung curses and objects. After one blistering row, Charles stormed out the door, jumped into his car, and roared out of Highgrove. Diana opened an upstairs window and screamed at the top of her lungs, "You're a s.h.i.t, Charles, an absolute s.h.i.t!" During another quarrel, she threw a teapot at him, stomped out of the room, and slammed the door, nearly knocking over a footman. She yelled over her shoulder, "You're a f.u.c.king animal, Charles, and I hate you!"

Soon Nigel Dempster, the Daily Mail Daily Mail gossip columnist, who said he socialized with royalty, denounced Diana in print. He called her a spoiled, fiendish monster who was making the Prince of Wales "desperately unhappy." gossip columnist, who said he socialized with royalty, denounced Diana in print. He called her a spoiled, fiendish monster who was making the Prince of Wales "desperately unhappy."

Her growing distrust of Charles and her jealousy over Camilla Parker Bowles marked Diana-in her husband's eyes-as irrational. Charles expected to do as he pleased-without objection from his wife. Her tearful outbursts about his long absences only convinced him of her instability. Worse, he was bored with her. He dismissed her interests-clothes, dancing, rock and roll-as trivial. He said her hospital visits were self-serving, and her humor, which he once found so delightful, grated on him.

A university graduate with intellectual pretensions, Charles was embarra.s.sed to be married to a high school dropout who he said did not know the difference between Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn. During the taping of a television interview at Highgrove in 1986, she poked fun at herself for failing the college entrance exams. "Brain the size of a pea I've got," she chirped. Charles insisted her comment be edited out. Diana said he should have edited out his own comment about talking to the plants in his garden at Highgrove. "It's very important to talk to them," he had told viewers. She had told him, "People will think you're barking [mad]." That was the last television interview the couple did together.

But Diana was right. Charles's remark made him look slightly eccentric, if not ridiculous. "He's really not the nut-chomping loony you read about in the papers," insisted his brother Andrew.

"Charles sometimes complained to friends about what he considered Diana's coa.r.s.e, even vulgar, sense of humor," reported journalist Nicholas Davies. "Once the couple were lunching with Charles's old friend, the South African philosopher Sir Laurens Van der Post. The two men were enjoying a weighty conversation about the problem of blacks and whites living together in South Africa when Diana suddenly put in, 'What's the definition of ma.s.s confusion?' "

The two men looked perplexed.

"Father's Day in Brixton [a predominantly black area of London]," Diana told them merrily.