PRESIDENT KOSTUNICA yesterday opened the door to a
return home for the Yugoslav Royal Family, exiled in Britain since
the Second World War.
After the ignominy of being ousted from his job, Slobodan
Milosevic now faces eviction from his official residence: his
successor has insisted that the Belgrade mansion known as the
White Palace be handed back to the Royal Family.
The country's new leader, a self-proclaimed monarchist, has let it
be known that he wants a referendum on the return of the house of
Karadjordjevik, which ruled Yugoslavia from 1918 to 1941 and
were kings of Serbia before that. But aides have given warning
that restoring the White Palace to the family would set a dangerous
precedent, as many other families would demand the return of
property seized by the State during the Second World War.
Crown Prince Alexander — whose father, King Peter, fled the
Nazi invasion — said at his London home in Dover Street, off
Piccadilly, yesterday that it had always been his dream to return to
his homeland, but he would do so only in the proper way. He had
not yet received an official invitation.
It must be done in a way that does not hurt the people, but is for
the good of the people, the Crown Prince, 55, said, adding that
the huge social problems and great poverty in Yugoslavia were far
more pressing issues than the return of the monarchy.
The Crown Prince was born in Claridges Hotel in 1945 — in a
room briefly declared Yugoslav territory — and has lived in Britain
almost continuously ever since. He has been a longstanding
opponent of Mr Milosevic and several years ago gave up his
career as an international insurance broker to concentrate on ways
of helping his homeland.
Over ten years I worked hard to get rid of that awful man, he said.
In the past year he has organised several conferences inviting
opposition leaders to discuss how to defeat Mr Milosevic. This
did galvanise them, and the most important thing I tried to do was
to ensure unity. Vojislav Kostunica has my full support. But what
concerns me now is that the 18 members of the coalition stick
together.
The Crown Prince, who is related both to the Queen through
Queen Victoria and to the Duke of Edinburgh through the Greek
Royal Family, last visited Serbia in July, for the funeral of his uncle
Tomislav, who fled with the last King during the war to become an
apple-grower in Kent.
Growing up to speak only halting Serbian, Prince Alexander first
visited his homeland in 1991 after the death of Tito; half a million
people lined the streets to greet him.
He opposed Nato's bombing of Yugoslavia last year, and spoke
of a tragic turn of events which should never have been allowed to
happen. Last year he flew with his wife, Princess Katherine, to
Montenegro, where he held talks with President Djukanovic and
political leaders.
Prince Alexander is cautious about the prospects of returning as
King. He believes a constitutional monarchy would be a good way
of holding Yugoslavia together, but there is little support among his
potential subjects for the idea.
~*~
Does this book really betray the
Princes?(UK Times)
LUDOVIC KENNEDY
Prince William tells the press that he feels betrayed by what
Patrick Jephson has written about his mother, Diana, Princess of
Wales, and says that his brother, Harry, feels the same. This is
perfectly understandable. But what about the rest of us? What
about freedom of expression, as guaranteed by the newly arrived
Human Rights Act? It's a dilemma that most of us who put pen to
paper are faced with from time to time. In my autobiography I had
some very rude things to say about the headmaster of my prep
school who was a sanctimonious bully. But he had been dead for
many years and it had never occurred to me that what I had said
would lead to a comeback from his family. However, when I was
signing copies of the book in the Army and Navy store, I spotted
in the queue a pretty but serious-looking girl who, I noticed, had
not bought a copy.
It turned out that she had already read it. Why did you write such
horrid things about my grandfather? she exclaimed angrily. He was
a perfectly darling man! I replied as best I could that we were
judging him from different standpoints, she as a loved and loving
granddaughter, I as a former pupil who had suffered (he was an
enthusiastic flogger) at his hands. This in no way satisfied her and
she stomped off home, doubtless to reassure the family that she
had nobly defended their honour.
Was I right in writing what I did? Was she right in saying what she
did? I believe we were both right. In the same way, because the
two Princes and Jephson were speaking from different premises, I
think they also were right. Yet I wouldn't be saying that if I didn't
think, from the extracts that have appeared in The Sunday Times,
that I — and I hope others — have a deeper understanding of the
Princess than I had before, and that she was as much sinned
against as sinning.
Consider. Here was a girl of no noticeable attainments, shy and
with the background of a troubled childhood, who was chosen by
the heir to the crown to be his bride and to share his throne, but
who in the end suffered rejection from him both as wife and royal
consort. It does not require much imagination to accept what this
double blow must have done to her already fragile self-esteem,
and from then her sense of being an outcast, unloved and
unappreciated grew like a cancer inside her.
Jephson says she tried to cope with the stress of her situation in a
variety of ways: bouts of bulimia brought on by what he calls
comfort-eating of chocolates and other sweets; pills and potions of
every kind to try to attain the elusive peace of mind she always
sought; casual affairs; and even seeking a solution in astrology.
And then the commitment to the deprived and tempest-tossed —
as the embarrassingly self-styled Queen of Hearts — with whom
she could identify her own distress. They can talk to me, Patrick,
she told Jephson, because I am one of them. Yet because the
emotional strain of so much giving used to take its toll, on the way
home she would cruelly diminish her achievements or shock her
staff by relating dirty stories to ease the inner tension. At first, he
says, loyalty made him overlook her lack of self-control. A
damaged child he says of the Princess, yet one who, as time went
by, learnt how to manipulate the media. Who will forget the
famous picture of her, alone in front of the Taj Mahal, the
abandoned wife, or the emotive shots of her with Mother Teresa,
like herself another heroine/victim. Yet her two secret incursions
into the media world, helping Andrew Morton with his book and
the infamous interview on Panorama, which she thought would
win her sympathy, spectacularly backfired. There were times then
when the strain became too much for her and she rounded
unfeelingly on her staff. What were you thinking when you let me
agree to this? she would charge Jephson. Self-pitying again, too.
All anybody does is take from me. Take, take, take. There'll soon
be nothing left.
Could anything have been done to retrieve the situation? Jephson
thinks the Palace could have helped more, and that after the
separation, their failure to provide encouragement and reassurance
made it easier for the Princess to feel besieged. Whatever else I
learnt about the Princess's nature in eight years, I was quite sure
that when handled with honesty, respect and affection, her
response would be co-operative and loyal. But, he concludes, the
inordinate amount of indulgent handling the Princess needed would
have been alien to the Queen and others who prized above all else
their ability to control emotion and suppress spontaneity.
Jephson also speaks of her endurance in situations which would
have driven a lesser person round the bend. That was early in their
relationship. Later, it seems to me, she did go round the bend. A
letter from the Queen suggesting that she and the Prince of Wales
should divorce (the first letter she ever sent me, Patrick) was seen
by the Princess as another sign of rejection.
Then extreme paranoia took hold, and not even the acclaim paid
to her beauty and glamour could save her. She became convinced
that her house was bugged, that the brakes on her car had been
tampered with, and that a man with a gun in Hyde Park had taken
a pot-shot at her. She became as bitchy as only damaged women
can be, deluding herself into thinking that her sons' nanny, Tiggy
Legge-Bourke, had had an abortion after being made pregnant by
Prince Charles. At one party the Princess said to Legge-Bourke:
So sorry about the baby!, as she later gleefully told Jephson.
For him the last straw came when he received a message on his
pager, The Boss knows about your disloyalty and affair, which
was as untrue as the imagined pregnancy of Legge-Bourke, and
which he knew must have come from her. Getting a tip-off that a
national paper was about to print a story that the Princess had
sacked him, Jephson got in first with a statement that he had
resigned.
One can read Jephson's story in one of two ways; as the Queen
and Prince Charles especially, and regrettably, have done, as that
of a woman betrayed by her private secretary into revealing
deeply unattractive sides of herself; or, as I think Jephson has
done, as a desperately sick and almost demented creature for
whom one should feel pity not censure, so unbalanced had her
mind become. For many who still see her as rich, beautiful and
with the world at her feet, this assessment will not be easy.
The reaction of the two young Princes is more predictable, though
one hopes that in time they will develop a more mature
understanding. And they at least can take comfort in the
knowledge that, despite all her problems, she was an admirable
mother. Only in her devotion to them, says Jephson, and in their
unconditional love for her did she seem to find release.
What are the lessons to be learnt from this distressing and indeed
tragic story? Several weeks ago on this page when writing on the
inevitability of Prince William becoming King, I quoted Polonius:
This above all/To thine own self be true and asked if becoming
King was really what he wanted to do. There were no supporting
comments in the letters column, because the public, like the
Palace, thinks it is Prince William's duty to inherit the throne,
whether he wants to or not.
Prince William's father faced (or maybe did not face) this conflict
between Truth and Duty. Truth was that he loved Camilla and
should have stayed with her, and if he had, we would never have
heard of Lady Diana Spencer, Andrew Morton or Patrick
Jephson. But Duty offered the appeal of a virgin bride from a
noble house to continue the royal line, and so for the time being
Camilla could go hang. Edward VIII chose Truth and abdicated.
George VI chose Duty and it killed him. In the long run Truth
invariably wins, for Duty is a false god to which royalty feels
obliged to pay service.