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Diana, the ghost at the royal wedding feast
For Charles and Camilla, Princess Diana will be the ghost at their wedding feast.
For Prince Charles and longtime lover Camilla Parker Bowles, Princess Diana will be the ghost at their wedding feast on Friday.
Could it be sweet revenge from beyond the grave?
"Diana always said her marriage was a bit crowded because there were three people in it," said Judy Wade, royal correspondent for Hello celebrity magazine.
"I think there will now be three people in Charles' second marriage."
The wedding plans have dissolved into a comedy of errors with the venue changed from Windsor Castle to the town hall because of a mix-up over marriage licences. Constitutional experts also questioned the legality of a civil ceremony.
"Diana would be laughing at the chaos and the damage it has done to the monarchy," said Wade. "She must be orchestrating it from on high -- all we need is for it to rain on the wedding day and we will know she is pulling the strings."
Tabloid reporters who followed every twist and turn in the tragic soap opera that was her melodramatic life believe Diana would in the end have wished Charles well for finally tying the knot with Camilla.
Daily Mail royal correspondent Richard Kay, who last talked to Diana just hours before she was killed in a Paris car crash in 1997, said: "I think she had reached a point in her life where she had come to accept that Charles would be married.
"But she would find it hard to accept Camilla taking her place in the royal pecking order. She had anticipated them ending up together but with Charles standing aside and letting his son William take his place in the line of accession."
Daily Mirror royal reporter James Whitaker, who broke the story of her romance with Dodi Al Fayed, said: "Funnily enough, I think Diana would be quite happy about it. She understood towards the end that Camilla was the love of Charles' life."
But he felt that Diana's influence would still be all-pervasive on Charles and Camilla's big day.
"Comparisons are odious but they will be made. I do think she will be the ghost at the feast."
