Prince of Wales, king of heart

It has been a long wait and the Prince is 56 years old. It is a difficult wait, spending a lifetime rehearsing for a role that does not come. You and I would not know how it feels to wait to be a king. We wish to be kings knowing that it is only a fantasy that will not happen. But here is a man who is certain to be a king, but he does not know when it will happen.

Rest assured, you would not have liked to wait for any job this long. My guess is neither did the Prince of Wales. Still it was his destiny to be born in a royal house, and wait in line by virtue of primogeniture, to carry the mantle of monarchy into the future. He attended funerals, played polo, presided over charities and then, of course, slept with another woman other than his wife. Now he is going to marry the woman he slept with, both over the prime of their youths, reconciling at last that romance is more powerful than royal duty.

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It is kind of doozy to think that the future king of England could not sort out his heart at the beginning. Royals are also mortals and you do not want to blame them if they cannot escape the snare of love. In 1937, the Duke of Windsor, who was the former King Edward VIII, abdicated the throne to marry a twice-divorced American woman, Wallis Simpson. No member of the royal family attended their marriage in Paris.

Empires and treasures mean nothing to men who are madly in love. I do not know about you, but it sure brings me consolation that even the man waiting to be king had to wait for legitimate union with his love. But what annoys me is that the Prince of Wales, was prancing around all that time, going through a terrible marriage, being the butt of many jokes, sleeping with another man's wife and in the process undermining the sanctity and stature of his royal position.

If kings, queens and princes still exist, it is because they still uphold an institution that symbolises the lingering superlatives in our imagination. We admire palaces, thrones, crowns, gems and jewels, all that glitter and glory that transcend human condition to bring a supernatural lustre to it. Somehow Prince Charles has spurned that expectation as a future king.

Luck, lust and longevity set the limit of human conditions. Why Michael Jackson have to groom little boys to molest them does not make sense. Likewise, it does not make sense why Charles would leave a young and beautiful woman like Diana to court an older woman. If you have ever fallen in love you would know the secret.

Different folks, different strokes, and love inflicts human heart like fever is complicated by convulsions.

But why we still have to have kings, queens and princess, does not make sense either. It does not make sense why we have to talk so much about them, peeling off their life layer by layer under our glaring eyes. If their biological functions are similar to the rest of us, if their impulses and instincts are similar to the rest of us, why do we care to analyse them so much and not leave them alone? If destiny is compared to DHL service, kings, queens and princes are special packages that have been delivered to special addresses. Their birth is their biggest advantage.

Having said that, I would not say the same thing about Prince Charles. He has lived his life like a reflection in a shadow, always waiting in the wings to be called for his role in an unfolding drama. Come on, the man is 56 already, the time of life when you plan your retirement, many off your children and then long for some lighter moments with your grandchildren. He is still figuring out his private life, and then getting ready to do some more waiting to become a king. Given the strong genes in the family (the Queen Mother lived to be 102), he might still have to wait for another 20 to 30 years before destiny finally throws the job in his lap. The future king has a pretty uncertain future ahead of him. By then he might have to be doddered forth with the help of geriatric nurses.

If you ask me, I would not like to be in his shoes. Be a king or a regular human being, but never suspended between these two. Like the saying goes, uneasy lies the head that wears the crown. But think how uneasy lies the head that is itching to wear that crown!

Being a future king is not a full-time job. For those of us who work for living, it is like giving an appointment letter to someone and then asking him to stick around until his office is ready. It is even worse, because after some time a regular guy can go to court and ask for compensation. But not this prince, because how can he ever contest why his mother has lived so long!

Only class act in this whole drama is that a man and a woman have successfully vindicated their long cherished love. I have lot of respect for those who fight for love and Prince Charles has done it, braving the embarrassments, the wrath of his mother the Queen and the ridicule of the tabloids. He and his bride, both divorcees and adulterers, even acknowledge their 'sins and wickedness' in front of 700 guests at a religious blessing following their wedding. Not an easy thing for a prince, who has been cultivated in the ego of being a king.

Wars have been fought, empires lost and the course of history deflected time and again because men and women could not resist the fatal attraction between them. Prince Charles has been an exception. He could not marry the woman he loved due to protocols of royal blood that was inherited at birth. All said and done, I feel sorry for this prince, whose life has been a troubled compromise between desire and duty, a true lover's heart trapped inside a prince's body confined to a purported destiny of a would-be king.

If anything, I envy him because he finally broke out of the prison of his inhibitions and paid attention to his heart. It is possible that his mother might outlive him. It is possible that he might not become a king at all. Most Britons now want his son William to become the king. But why miss the kingdom that lives within a man, the shining kingdom of gems and jewels, thrones and crowns, where man reigns in the heart of a woman like a mighty ruler.

The famously unemployed man has done something noteworthy for the first time in his life. If nothing else, he will perhaps go down in history for publicly holding the hand of a woman he privately coveted for thirty-four years.

Mohammad Badrul Ahsan is a banker.