So which is it now? The crowning of a great love or a journey to hell? Even those involved aren't quite sure anymore. In lieu of a bachelor party, the graying crown prince took his sons skiing and insulted the press ("damn bunch"). The media quickly returned the favor, calling the soon-to-be-wed Prince Charles "Your Royal Irritability" ("Daily Mail").

The Prince and Camilla Parker Bowles plan to exchange vows this Saturday, but with the royal wedding only a few days away, British legal experts still haven't quite figured whether it's even legal. They've been scrutinizing the arrangement as if it were some insect in need of classification, but they don't seem to be terribly interested in the outcome.

A civil wedding for the heir to the British throne? Is it even valid? Why wasn't it possible earlier, and why is it now? Why is the Anglican Church giving its blessing to this liaison between adulterers? The only thing that is clear is that the bar has been significantly lowered for this marriage.

For inhabitants of the British Isles, the most disturbing aspect is that this wedding was only made possible by invoking the European Convention on Human Rights. Two things make this scandalous for Britons: Europe and human rights.

Europe, that backward landmass somewhere on the other side of the foggy English Channel, is a different issue altogether. But human rights? Since when, say the people, do the royals have human rights? According to the unwritten pact between the Windsors and their subjects, the British royal family essentially has no human rights. It has no freedom of religion, no freedom of expression, not even the right to vote. In return, it gets to keep Cornwall and massive quantities of jewels, and it gets to go skiing at the Klosters ski resort in Switzerland. But there are some things the Windsors can't do: they can't pick their noses when cameras are nearby, they can't, as Prince Harry recently discovered at a costume party, wear swastikas, and they are not allowed to express any opinion beyond those involving Corgi breeding. And the things they are supposed to say are written down for them.

For the past 53 years, Queen Elizabeth II has performed in this national theater with remarkable self-denial. With the Queen at the helm, the monarchy has managed to remain a bulwark of tradition and dignity, the envy of other countries and a shimmering echo of imperial glories in an era of growing vulgarization and disintegration.

One of the Queen's greatest accomplishments has been to free politics of the need for representation. For the British, France represents the epitome of a state whose ever more pompous president is forced to assume the role of king in a country that once took the imprudent step of abolishing the monarchy.

But the bastion of the Windsors has been showing a few cracks in the past 25 years. It's been a quarter century since the world witnessed a beguiling royal wedding in 1981, but the royal family seems to have been caught in a never-ending Stephen King nightmare ever since.

It's been a quarter century marked by shrill public accusations, private moments of despair behind gloomy castle walls, perverse secrets suddenly bursting open like festering boils -- in short, a quarter century of trials and tribulations for an increasingly unsteady royal family. And it was all because a young, spoiled girl was humiliated one too many times by two older, coldly calculating adulterers and now, from somewhere beyond her grave, is finally getting her revenge. Diana returns!

Almost as if under some curse, the Windsors have been forced to stand by as some of their darkest secrets are revealed to the public. Britain's royal theater has deteriorated into the videotaped confessions of a bulimic princess, pillow talk between the prince and his mistress, rumors of rape, greedy butlers, wheelers and dealers, traitors around every corner. The public sees its royals becoming more and more like Monaco's glitzy circus-like nobility, and itself becoming neurotic and undignified. Why pay for 91 servants for Prince Charles, one of whom is hired for the sole purpose of squeezing toothpaste onto the prince's toothbrush?

In the best of all worlds, two middle-aged individuals who have been in love with each other for the past 35 years, two people who are involved in charitable institutions and pursue harmless hobbies, will be married this Saturday at the town hall in Windsor, under a painting of Prince Charles' iron-willed mother, Queen Elizabeth II. But we live in a fairy-tale world, and this happens to be a dark fairy tale. It's a tale in which the mistress could someday ascend to the throne, the mistress who once helped break the heart of the princess of hearts. Seventy percent of the British people are against Camilla ever becoming queen. They feel like they have been taken for a ride by Prince Charles, who has said this would not happen. But that's precisely what will happen if he ascends to the throne. Camilla will stand by his side as Her Royal Highness.

And now there are even rumblings within the Commonwealth. Members of parliament in Australia and New Zealand are once again openly airing the possibility of republican constitutions, and this Saturday is likely to be a good day for the champions of republican government.

They're even garnering support from royalists and royal biographers, like Michael Thornton, who is renouncing his loyalty to the Queen -- all because of Camilla. Conservative columnists like the Times' sharp-witted Minette Marrin have denounced Charles as being hedonistic and spoiled, and as a man completely out of touch with the realities of his own country.

Yes, dark clouds are beginning to gather over the British monarchy. Modern mythologies may be powerful, but the past few weeks have at times seemed cursed for the royal family -- the Prince has managed to fritter away any remaining sympathy for his position.

The date of Prince Charles' marriage to his long-term mistress was supposed to have been announced on Valentine's Day, a move intended to inject a bit of romantic publicity into the whole affair, but the plan was quickly abandoned after it was leaked to the Evening Standard.

Charles' staff charged with planning the event was completely taken off-guard by the revelation that Windsor Castle was out of the question as a wedding site. For a long while there were no seating arrangements, and it began to seem as though any high-school prom committee was better organized than Charles' entourage.

At least Charles managed to make one popular gesture along the way, when he ordered his Christmas cake from a retiree, Etta Richardson, who he had met while traveling. The cake cost him all of £3.99 (€5.85) a piece -- a bargain.

The entire affair comes across as a shabby travesty of a grand wedding. The Queen let it be known that she was "horribly bored," royal code for precisely the opposite set of emotions: she's livid. Needless to say, she won't be attending the wedding. Charles' father, Prince Philip, announced that he'd be in Germany on the day of the wedding, that his schedule is already horribly booked up, but that he'd certainly try to make if the weather cooperated. And if his parents' cold shoulders aren't enough, Prince Charles and his bride are likely to be greeted by protestors and hecklers as they make their way from the town hall to Windsor Castle.

As they savor the brittle fruits of a long-forbidden relationship this coming weekend, Charles and Camilla will be confronted with disparaging looks and frosty smiles, the mocking catcalls of the tabloids and, more forebodingly, a rising storm of disgruntlement and oddly aggressive disinterest.

In London's Piccadilly Circus, souvenir stands are selling souvenirs that say "I won't be attending either."

The Daily Mirror has already come up with a suggestion for a new coat of arms for the couple: a dead fox above the crown, a crucifix wrapped in the tape recording of Charles' and Camilla's pillow talk, a pack of cigarettes for the former chain-smoker, a flower pot to represent conversation with avid gardener Charles and, below it all, the motto: "Tandem Legitime" -- Legal At Last.

The revenge of the eternal, inimitable princess of hearts could hardly be more complete.

It begins with her title, that of the Princess of Wales. It was once said that Camilla would never hold that title. But now it will automatically be hers, more a curse than a blessing.

A completely bewildered Charles is probably asking himself how all of this could have come about. Everything was proceeding as planned back then, when Camilla offered her lover her vegetable garden as the perfect setting for the Prince to propose to the then 19-year-old Diana Spencer. Her role, of course, was to provide heirs to the throne, beauty and a face to grace the covers of magazines. Shortly before his wedding in 1981, reporters asked Charles whether he loved his obviously smitten bride-to-be. He grimaced before awkwardly responding: "whatever love means." How on earth could anyone have thought it was about love?

But this is the story of the mistress, normally kept carefully hidden away by the royals. The person one doesn't mention. The person who is supposed to keep quiet, because no one wants to admit that she exists.

It begins with something Camilla said to Prince Charles at the polo match where they met for the first time, a line straight out of a screwball comedy: "My great-grandmother was your great-great-grandfather's mistress, so how about it?" It was funny enough to attract the attention of a hesitant and vacillating Charles, who still had plenty of other candidates to appraise.

The relationship cooled off as quickly as it began. He went off to the Caribbean to go sailing, she married, they stayed in touch, and then their passion was suddenly rekindled -- exactly the way things sometimes happen when a love affair is never truly consummated.

"What you bed, you don't wed." It was the traditional rule for royal infidelity, a rule Charles heard many a time from the mouth of his favorite uncle, Lord Mountbatten. One commits adultery, one doesn't talk about it, and one never marries one's mistress.

So the prince married the other girl, the younger one, the one full of longing. Meanwhile, his passion for the mistress was apparently revived in all its former glory. They gave each other small gifts, there were secret rendezvous, and all the young princess got was the royal cold shoulder.

It's now known that Princess Di was well aware of what she was getting herself into. It's also known that she found her own ways to enjoy herself. But she was still mortally wounded.