Word: di
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...that Queen Elizabeth II has asked Prince Charles to divorce Princess Di, he is saying that he does not intend to marry again. The news ends speculation that Charles would marry his longtime paramour, Camilla Parker Bowles. The divorce looks to be as simple as the wedding was grand. Under British law, when there are grounds for divorce (and there are), and both people agree to go ahead with it, the couple has only to fill out the legal papers and pay a $60 fee. After a six week waiting period, the marriage is terminated...
...Charles' great-great-great- grandmother, Queen Victoria, who famously advised a daughter to survive the act of love by closing her eyes and concentrating on the British Empire. Marriage in this crowd is a patriotic duty, not a pleasure; and the consort--Philip in the case of Elizabeth, Di in the case of Charles--has always been in a rather awkward spot. In Di's case, the indignity was compounded by the fact that Charles already had a woman for purposes of companionship and love. Camilla Parker Bowles was his real partner, Diana just a means of reproduction...
...that it's easy to feel sorry for Di, since she's paid infinitely better than anyone else in the same line of work. A surrogate mother in the U.S. gets about $10,000 for the nine-month-long job of transforming some fellow's sperm into a viable infant--an amount Di could easily blow on cashmeres and facials in an afternoon. And while the surrogate mom gets shown to the door as soon as the baby's delivered, Di lingers on, posing for photographers and visiting hospices, at an allowance of up to $4,000 a week...
...lacked the courage to reject a loveless marriage; once in it, he lacked the discipline or grace to try to make it work. Instead of rebelling against his mother and the institution she represents, he seems to have turned his bitterness against his hapless bride. So the revenge Di now seeks fits all too well. If she succeeds in her campaign to have the crown bypass him and go directly from Queen Elizabeth to young Prince William, Charles will turn out to have been no less a reproductive "vessel" than Di herself--a royal stud...
...among hundreds of female volunteers in a kind of genetic Bake-Off--with the throne then being awarded to the most boring and phlegmatic child that resulted. The next step would be to take away the royals' allowances, which amount to $15 million a year for the lot. Princess Di, for example, likes visiting the sick, and she'd undoubtedly feel a whole lot better about herself if she had a job as a nurse's aide...