From PEOPLE Magazine
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Prince Charles celebrates his 26th birthday Nov. 14. As he enters his second quarter-century, he is clearly coming into a vigorous and self-confident young manhood but shows no sign yet of picking the woman who will be the next Queen of England. Instead he has concentrated on turning a gangly, jug-eared adolescent into a poised, lively apprentice king. "In this position you meet the most fascinating people in the world," he has said. "You would be absolutely crackers not to make the most of it." Last month he so successfully represented the Crown on an official visit to the Fiji Islands and Australia that newspapers began touting him to be Australia's next governor-general.
Charles is every inch a prince. Tall, elegantly handsome, and blue-eyed, he has an assurance and grace beyond his years. Once occasionally irritable, he now possesses a wry, self-deprecating wit. "After my investiture as Prince of Wales," he jokes, "I woke up in the middle of the night still waving my hand in bed."
Prince Charles's public presence seems to blend his mother's dignity with his father's élan. But more than either Queen Elizabeth or Prince Philip, he has sought to identify himself with the issues of the times: race relations, young people, the unemployed, and Welsh nationalism.
Charles's education is reminiscent of that of the previous Prince of Wales, his great-uncle David, who as Edward VIII abdicated his throne at age 42 in order to marry the American divorcee Wallis Simpson. Sophisticated and active men—Charles is an expert polo player and game hunter—they were both groomed by military service and extensive worldwide travels. His great-uncle did not ascend to the throne until he was 41. Since Queen Elizabeth is only 48, Charles cannot expect to become king for many years.
Like his great-uncle, Charles also seems to be slipping into a prolonged and somewhat isolated bachelorhood. Prince Charles has survived his early 20s unsnared by any of the scores of vacuous debutantes thrust at him by ambitious mothers. The few girls he has seen more than once have quietly dropped out of his life. Charles now tells friends that he has not yet met the girl he will someday marry. Once asked if the royal family was anxious for him to take a bride, he answered, "No, no, not at all. They never put pressure on me."
Prince Charles's peripatetic life does not encourage lasting romances. His kingly training is a full-time job: he works and studies up to 18 hours a day and has traveled to most of the Commonwealth countries. In his present tour with the royal navy, he has been at sea for as long as six months at a time. (Though not always with deprivation. He recently told a friend that during port call in Bermuda it was "jolly difficult to smuggle girls aboard for the night without the men knowing.")
If a girl catches Charles's eye at home, he is liable to ring her up on the telephone, identify himself as just plain "Charles," and ask for a date. (His dates always call him "Sir" until he requests "Charles"). On the appointed night, he gallantly arrives in his 140-mph Aston-Martin, picks up his date with courtly door-opening formalities, and heads off to a restaurant or Annabel's, his favorite London night spot. A detective sits unobtrusively nearby and will later wait outside if Charles squires the girl inside her house or flat.
His dates, unfailingly discreet, report that he is a charming conversationalist and good dancer. Says a former girlfriend, "He is no more of a ladies' man than any other red-blooded 25-year-old." A court source observes, "If the prince seduces the daughter of a duke, nobody is going to run to the police or papers with it. Rather, there is apt to be a sense of quiet pride, on the parents' part no less than the girl's."
So circumspect is Charles's love life that rumors fly whenever he so much as talks to a girl publicly. In fact, there so far have been only three important women in Charles's life. The first—and most serious—was Lucia Santa Cruz, daughter of the Chilean ambassador and three years his elder, whom he met at Cambridge. He escorted Lucia for three years, until 1972. She has since married another Chilean. The second was Georgiana Russell, now 25, a Vogue reporter who speaks seven languages, whom he dated for six months. The last and most publicized of Charles's romantic interests was Lady Jane Wellesley, 23, daughter of the Duke of Wellington and a childhood friend. He dropped her last January.
While Charles himself refuses to rule out the possibility that he might marry either a commoner or a Catholic (he is "Defender of the Faith" of the Anglican Church), he has said that he would prefer to wed someone who shares his aristocratic tastes. For some members of British royalty, that day can come none too soon. "Unless more youngsters are born into the royal family in the next five years," a court official says, "the number of official engagements now being carried out by royalty will undoubtedly have to suffer drastic cuts." From Princess Anne and her husband Captain Mark Phillips has come the news that she does not plan to bear children for at least another two years. The late Prince William of Gloucester, aware that death historically has robbed the British royal family of young males in the prime of life, is said to have remarked: "If only Prince Charles would marry and have lots of children—that would be marvelous."
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