Queen Elizabeth II: A Woman Who Is Not Amused
By Nicholas Davies
Birch Lane Press, 500 pages, $24.95
Being married to the monarchy may be slightly more reputable than being married to the mob, but it’s a lot less interesting, suggests Nicholas Davies in his new biography of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth.
Furthermore, Davies suggests that no mobster could be a worse husband than Prince Philip, to whom Elizabeth has been married since Nov. 22, 1947.
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As portrayed by Davies in “Queen Elizabeth II: A Woman Who Is Not Amused,” Elizabeth’s life consists largely of dull ceremonies at which her role is mostly to behave properly. She has few close friends, and her idea of rearing children was to see them briefly each morning and evening, and as they got older treat them as subjects.
The queen, says Davies, now spends much time trying to maintain some shred of dignity, or at least order, in her fragmented, dysfunctional family-a family in which her husband is so jealous of their oldest son, Charles, the future king of England, that Philip has not spoken to him since 1977.
While “Queen Elizabeth II” never loses sight of larger issues, such as the future of the monarchy, Davies spends much of the book detailing the missteps of the royal family.
“It is all quite entertaining,” says Davies. “And it’s absolutely human nature to keep watching.” He himself provides powerful binoculars with this book, as he did with his 1992 “Diana: A Princess and Her Troubled Marriage.”
Davies traces the paths by which the current royalty has arrived where they are today. Elizabeth, a dutiful daughter, promised her father, King George VI, that she would above all else uphold monarchy and the House of Windsor’s place in it, and so she has. Philip, who arrived for marriage with all his worldly goods in three suitcases, has in return for the perks of his position made a career of cursing the rest of the world, from the press to his wife.
Marrying differently, says Davies, would have been the only thing that might have significantly altered Elizabeth’s life.
“Had she married a man more loving and supportive, who recognized her duties and had taken on more of the task of raising the family, she would have led a much happier life,” writes Davies.
“The only responsibility Philip really had was to be a good father. And he failed utterly.”
Yet the royal family will soldier on, Davies predicts, with Charles dutifully becoming king. He will probably divorce his separated wife, Diana, whom Davies suggests is becoming increasingly self-absorbed and irrelevant. He will not marry Camilla Parker Bowles, says Davies, though their affair may continue.
Partly as a result of what has happened during his mother’s reign, Charles may ultimately have a reduced monarchy that is even more purely symbolic than it is today.
“I used to be a monarchist,” Davies muses, with a trace of a smile. After reading his books, it’s not hard to understand why his view changed.