Excellent hazeleyes
Hate this duplicious behaviour.
G
Thank you Getafix!
It is duplicitous, but it has helped the Windsors survive the past century. The Queen Mother was an excellent tutor in public relations for Charles and I remember reading at one point, she took Charles on a walk during one of his Balmoral vacations during the breakdown of his first marriage and told him not to underestimate his first wife. It was at this point that their relationship slightly cooled because she berated him for 1) embarrassing the position 2)cavorting publicly with Camilla (she hated airing dirty laundry) and 3) for going against her advice. Her and Louis Mountbatten were constantly at passive-aggressive odds with one another over Charles. Charles did not take kindly to that and then a month later, the infamous interviews from both sides aired.
While the QM, in private, hated the scandals that were being dragged out publicly, she ALWAYS supported Charles publicly and that is something that Charles does with his own sons. HM for the longest time stuck her head in the sand and did not support anyone in public, until the last couple of years. Charles may hate what goes down in private, but he will always back up his sons in public. However, unlike HM, Charles has taken a page out of the Queen Mother's book: he will give the public scraps to complain about, because having a Stepford-like approach to their lifestyle raises more eyebrows and causes more tongue-lashings in the longer run.
For example, when the QM wanted to hide from the press how much money her household was getting from the government via personal expensive compared to the Queen (who was much more frugal), she would go to the poorest sections of London in decent wear, but would always wear fur, pearls, and white gloves. That alone would dominate the papers and only a few sentences would be put in about her budget. Charles does the same--he advocates one thing, and then shows a little glamour to offset it, but not enough to really raise eyebrows about what he does as a cumulative effect.
