HE TALKS TO THE DEAD... TO KEEP THEIR SPIRITS ALIVE
BOTH Charles and the Queen are consumed by the Irish political situation and are known to talk about it privately for hours — in minute detail.
The Queen is known to have an almost obsessive interest in the subject.
‘She is a bit of an anorak about Ireland,’ said one former member of the Royal Household. ‘She has found many a government minister wanting when she has challenged them on a particular aspect of the peace process or Irish history.’
As for Charles, he avidly reads anything he can on Irish history and the resolution of the ‘Troubles’.
He dreamed of being able to cross from Northern Ireland into the Irish republic — though he honestly believed that no member of the royal family would be permitted to do so within his lifetime.
The speed of the peace process has meant that his cherished ambition has been realised.
In his view, his mother’s historic visit to the Republic of Ireland in April 2011 was the crowning moment of her reign, her lasting achievement. Whenever he has been asked directly what he believes the Queen’s greatest legacy will be, he does not say, as some might expect, her role as Head of the Commonwealth but, unequivocally, ‘Ireland.’
He believes her visit set the seal on the full normalisation of Anglo-Irish relations, and the warm response to her speech at a state banquet at Dublin Castle showed that she had pulled off one of the most successful state visits of her reign.
Even Gerry Adams, the face and voice of the political wing of the IRA, Sinn Féin, lauded the Queen for her ‘genuine’ expression of sympathy for victims of Ireland’s troubled past.
Praising a British monarch is something Adams probably never thought he would ever do, but those four days in spring 2011 were of immense symbolic significance in showing that Britain and Ireland were, as she said in her speech, ‘more than just neighbours’.
The most significant moment came on the first day of her visit, when she bowed her head — in respect to those who died for Irish independence — after laying a wreath at the Garden of Remembrance in Dublin.
After all, she had lost members of her family, too, not least her cousin Lord Louis Mountbatten and one of his twin grandsons, Nicholas (aged 14), and local boy Paul Maxwell (who was 15), who were killed when a bomb planted by the IRA exploded on their leisure boat in Mullaghmore, County Sligo, on August 27, 1979.
Another passenger, the Dowager Lady Brabourne, aged 83, died from her injuries the day after the attack.
Prince Charles was devoted to Lord Louis, his mentor and great-uncle and one of the most influential figures in his early life. Understandably, the Prince was profoundly affected by his murder. At the time he said that it ‘made me want to die, too’.
To this day, in quieter, solitary moments, he talks to his departed loved ones, and in that way keeps Mountbatten and many other dearly departed spirits alive in his heart.
Just over three years ago, Charles made a pilgrimage to the spot overlooking the bay where his great-uncle was assassinated. Surrounding him was a small knot of well-wishers and villagers, for whom memories of that tragic day were also painful.
‘It’s been a long time,’ Charles whispered to one of them, referring to his long-held desire to visit the spot. ‘I never thought it would happen.’ Later, he told an audience in the nearby town of Sligo: ‘At the time, I could not imagine how we would come to terms with the anguish of such a deep loss.
‘Through this dreadful experience, I now understand in a profound way the agonies borne by others on these islands — of whatever faith or political persuasion.’