The latest episode in the British royal soap opera has that old reliable at its core - the wedding. Frank Millar writes on Charles and Camilla
This is a potentially problematic solution to a matter of the human heart entangled in the complexities of constitutional law, a hereditary monarchy and the future governorship of the Church of England.
Those complexities were underlined with every emerging detail yesterday of the compromise solution - negotiated by the leaders of church and state - to the problem of the divorced Mrs Camilla Parker Bowles as a "non-negotiable" part of the life of Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, and future king of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Many who care little about politics, the constitution or the church will think the solution a practical and obvious one to a problem seen as mundane in the early years of the 21st century. The prince and Mrs Parker Bowles are plainly in love, as they have been for the best part of 35 years, notwithstanding their marriages to other people in the interim. Not least because there were children born of those unions we cannot know if Charles and Camilla regret not having committed to each other in the first flush after meeting at a polo match when they were 23-year-olds.
We do know that Charles's early naval career took him away from home and that he was devastated when she married Andrew Parker Bowles. Camilla in turn approved when, 24 years ago this month, Charles announced his engagement to Lady Diana Spencer.
Although Diana would later claim "there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded", Charles maintains he did not resume his relationship with Mrs Parker Bowles until his marriage had broken down irretrievably.
In any event, Mrs Parker Bowles has long since divorced, Diana died in tragic circumstances leaving Charles a widower and, by all accounts, the children of both marriages - all now adults - are delighted that Charles and Camilla are finally to regularise their relationship.
Since they already effectively live as man and wife, many modernists will wonder why they feel the need. Even those for whom marriage should be indissoluble, on the other hand, might think it better that they choose to live their lives in the context of Christian marriage. Times change, after all - a reality reflected in the Church of England's relaxation of the rules about the remarriage of divorcees. So, a civil ceremony followed by a church blessing? Nothing could be more normal or more common really.
Which of course is the problem. There is nothing normal (still less common) about being a member of the House of Windsor and heir to the British throne, and this is not a tale of everyday folk.
Diana trapped in what she considered a loveless marriage was the fairytale princess; the shy girl who became a beauty of world renown; the tortured soul who brought comfort and succour to the sick, distressed and dying; the bitterly estranged wife who introduced the world (courtesy of Andrew Morton's famous book) to Mrs Parker Bowles as "the other woman"; the self-declared queen of people's hearts whose tragic early death in a Paris car crash provoked waves of anti-royalist sentiment which shook the house of Windsor to its foundations.
Hence the arrangements announced yesterday will have taxed the best legal minds in the country, with Queen Elizabeth herself intimately involved in a process of consultation and negotiation over many months, resulting in undisclosed compromises and leaving some questions as yet unanswered.
The queen is long thought to have opposed this marriage and to have kept Mrs Parker Bowles at arm's length because of her role in the breakdown of Charles's marriage to Diana. And - all other issues aside - it was the ghost of Diana which attended those consultations and negotiations and informed their outcome.
Upon the advice of her ministers, Queen Elizabeth has consented to her eldest son's remarriage, as required by law. The sovereign has also embraced Mrs Parker Bowles by bestowing upon her the title of HRH - Her Royal Highness - controversially withdrawn from Diana following her divorce from Charles.
However the judgment has clearly been made that the British public would never accept Mrs Parker Bowles as a successor to the Princess of Wales. Accordingly she will take her husband's second title and be known as the Duchess of Cornwall following their marriage on April 8th at Windsor Castle.
In an unprecedented procedure for a future monarch, Supreme Governor of the Church of England and Defender of the Faith, Prince Charles will marry Camilla in a civil ceremony to be followed by a service of blessing and dedication. While many evangelicals may be discomfited by this arrangement, it was warmly commended yesterday by the Archbishop of Canterbury, so inviting a closing of ranks by the ecclesiastical establishment.
The political establishment likewise pronounced itself happy with a constitutional settlement designed to avoid serious public division with the provision that when Prince Charles accedes to the throne, his wife will be known as the Princess Consort.
In other words Camilla will play Prince Albert to King Charles III's Queen Victoria. To make matters even easier, the indications are that this morganatic marriage - whereby the commoner spouse will not become monarch - lies within the royal prerogative and may not require legislation in the House of Commons or the parliaments of Canada, Australia or in any of the other 12 countries of which Charles would be king.
This, then, is the proposed solution to a problem which has troubled Queen Elizabeth since the Wars of the Waleses first provoked questions - inevitably returned to yesterday - about whether Prince Charles should stand aside when the time comes in favour of his son, Prince William. It is also one which allows the queen to meet her obligations as a mother to her son, while setting in place arrangements which should ensure there is no constitutional crisis upon her death.
It is to gamble of course with a public mood which until now has shown itself hostile to this union. However it is perhaps the sense of its inevitability, combined with both the humanity and the sheer ordinariness of yesterday's announcement, which may help it succeed. As Labour MP Mr Tony Wright, chairman of the Commons Constitutional Affairs Committee put it: "We've grown up now . . . This is life as lived."
As the best television soap script-writers know only too well, a fickle public loves nothing better than a good wedding.