Fairy tale of a happy prince
Arguably the best episode of The Crown has to be Tywysog Cymru where Prince Charles is sent to Aberystwyth to learn the language in preparation for his investiture as Prince of
Wales. When Charles is shunned by his fellow university students, his tutor, the Welsh nationalist Dr Ted Millward, takes pity on him and invites the miserable English royal to a home-cooked meal.
We see a lonely prince enjoy the warmth of ordinary family life, and watch him learn the language till his pronunciation is good enough to deliver a set investiture speech, which he secretly modifies to acknowledge Welsh nationalism.
What a pity the Welsh story for Charles ended there. As the Queen approaches the end of her reign and Charles is about to ascend the throne, let us imagine an alternative life for Prince Charles had he stayed in the bosom of the Welsh . . .
After his investiture, Charles returns to the University College of Wales in Aberystwyth, where he becomes fluent in Welsh and attends the Eisteddfod festival, where he meets Angharad, a warm-hearted Welsh poetess. He returns to Cambridge to do a PPE (philosophy, politics and economics) degree that ambitious politicians undertake as the prince prepares to become The Philosopher King.
Making his home in North Wales, where the language is strong, he gives low-key, non-controversial speeches in Welsh and is reunited with Angharad. Charles refuses to listen to his interfering great-uncle and parents, who are dead set against the marriage on the grounds that the gel is not from the English aristocracy.
Charles and Angharad marry at Westminster Abbey and Mary Hopkin sings Plaisir d’amour as the happy couple take their vows in both Welsh and English. Their wildly successful union produces an heir – Caradog (with normal-sized ears) and two spares – the twin girls Rhiannon and Teagan, all offspring raised bilingual and sent to Welsh schools and universities.
Under pressure from his family to do a stint in the military, Charles passes through Sandhurst, and rises to the rank of colonel-in-chief in the Welsh regiment after doing actual active service.
As part of his training for future king, Charles becomes involved in the wider affairs of the United Kingdom, making regular visits to the Western Isles of Scotland, the Orkneys, and Cornwall. These highly publicised visits, plus his eccentric penchant for hunting the imaginary Twrch Trwyth (that enchanted boar King Arthur once hunted) over the hills in Wales, gives him the unofficial title of ‘‘Prince of the Celtic Fringe’’.
Charles develops a close and strategic relationship with the Bishop of Monmouth, one Rowan Williams, who later becomes the Bishop of Wales, then the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Angharad publishes a best-selling book of verse based on the Mabinogion, the earliest prose stories of Britain written in Middle Welsh, and receives an honorary doctorate from the Aberystwyth university.
So enamoured is Charles with all things Welsh that he makes a controversial speech in Welsh in which he invokes the spirit of the great military resistance leader Owen Glendower, a folk hero who was the last native Welshman to hold the title of Prince of Wales, in the Middle Ages.
Charles also apologises for the damage done to the Welsh by Edward I, he who suppressed two Welsh rebellions before subjecting the Welsh to English rule.
In his mature years, before Charles ascends the throne, the Prince of Wales and his beloved wife Princess Angharad take up residency at Caernarfon Castle, built by Edward I in the 13th century. Surrounded by fields, Charles converts the castle grounds into lush organic gardens, which far surpass Louis XIV’s Garden of Versailles.