Building a Better Prince : His Wife Hates Him. His Mother’s Mad at Him. His Subjects Think He’s a Wimp and That Maybe the Royal Family Is Obsolete. Can a New Team of Spin Doctors Save the Man Who Would Be King?

In the fullness of time, historians may point to Jan. 26 as the day the waning fortunes of Charles, Prince of Wales, began to improve--and with them the outlook for the British monarchy.

Until then, the monarchy and Charles’ claim upon it were undergoing a severe crisis: The prince was deeply unpopular; he was separated from one of the world’s most idealized women, Princess Diana; he was widely reported to be having an affair with a married woman, and speculation was rife that he might eventually step down as heir to the throne in favor of his elder son, William.

A long-planned royal tour to Australia was supposed to pump up interest in the beleaguered scion, but it got off to an underwhelming start, with small crowds and little interest. As one radio broadcaster described it, “Indifference is rising to a fever pitch.” Prime Minister Paul Keating made it clear that he wished to take Australia out of the Commonwealth, headed by Queen Elizabeth II. And Keating’s wife, Annita, declined to curtsy to the royal prince.

Then it happened. As Charles prepared to speak in Sydney’s Tumbalong Park, a 23-year-old Australian-born Asian named David Kang, in a fuddled attempt to protest Australia’s immigration policies, stumbled onto the stage and fired two blanks from a starter pistol. He was quickly subdued as Charles, impeccably tailored in a dark, double-breasted Savile Row suit, fingered his cuff links and kept calm. “His Royal Coolness,” headlined the Daily Mail, in a typical newspaper reaction. The tour, said the Times of London, was “an unqualified public relations success. His image, which a year ago was looking tarnished, has been noticeably polished.”

In retrospect, some skeptics suggested that Charles remained onstage simply because he didn’t realize what was going on: He always fiddles with his cuff links. At public events, the prince often projects an uptight image, complete with many nervous mannerisms--fingering his signet ring, adjusting his tie--all of which suggests a certain royal insecurity in the outside world. This despite the fact that at 45, Charles Philip Arthur George, Duke of Cornwall, Duke of Rothesay, Earl of Carrick and Baron of Renfrew, is one of the richest men in the world. He has the staffs of several palaces ready to do his bidding, the queen’s aircraft poised to whisk him off to ski in the Alps, and the royal yacht Britannia available for vacations in warmer climes. Yet amid all the privilege, his perpetually pained expression suggests that life has been unkind--and perhaps it has.

Charles might well complain that it’s not easy being the heir apparent, spending your life being groomed for a job that has become, as one observer cruelly put it, waiting for your mother to die. Whatever the exact job description, Charles has, if the opinion polls are any guide, botched it. Until his Australian tour, he had been running at an all-time low for any member of the royal family, a feat that begs the question: Does the monarchy have any future after Queen Elizabeth II, now 68, leaves the scene?

After a vain attempt to ignore the situation, the palace has sought help: genuine spin-doctors and public-relations professionals hired by Charles’ private secretary, former navy commander Richard Aylard, who have launched a full-out campaign to remake Charles’ image into a more caring, warmhearted king-in-waiting.

For any group of aides, advising a Prince of Wales heading toward the 21st Century would be difficult. There are no real guidelines and certainly no shining role models. The previous two princes of Wales were generally considered failures. Edward VII was a wastrel who made his way through a string of mistresses before he ascended the throne in 1901 at age 60, when his mother, Queen Victoria, finally died. Though a charming man-about-town, Edward VIII was a pro-Nazi weakling who gave up the throne to marry American divorcee Wallis Warfield Simpson in 1936.

And Charles’ new staff has one more obstacle to contend with--the prince himself. Charles patently and publicly refuses to acknowledge that his image needs refurbishing--or that it even matters. In an April interview in the Sunday Mail, Roy Hattersley, member of Parliament and former deputy Labor Party leader, asked Charles if it is important to be liked. “No, I don’t go out of my way to court popularity,” replied the prince.

“The idea that I am searching to redefine my job is rot,” Charles told the Financial Times late last year. “It is just that, since the day I got married, people have chosen to ignore the things I continue to do, day in and day out.”

Whatever Charles’ views of himself, almost everyone else agrees that his image needs plenty of buffing. It reached a nadir 16 months ago when, in rapid succession, Buckingham Palace first announced that he and Diana, by far the most popular member of the royal family, were officially split. Popular opinion quickly took the side of Diana, now 32. Then came Camillagate, when, in January, 1993, the tabloid press published a transcript of a taped telephone call between the prince and Camilla Parker-Bowles, an old friend and wife of Brig. Gen. Andrew Parker-Bowles of the Household Cavalry, an elite army unit. It was an intensely private lovers’ conversation, embarrassing to read. But read it the public did--all 1,574 words, including the prince’s awkward wish to become a Tampax in order to remain close to her. One commentator called it the most widely read royal document since the Magna Carta.

Charles’ exchange with Camilla caused howls in pubs and posh drawing rooms around England and, for that matter, the world. The Italian press immediately dubbed Charles “Principe Tamponcino,” Little Prince Tampon.

In his book “Behind Palace Doors: Marriage and Divorce in the House of Windsor,” Nigel Dempster, Britain’s leading gossip columnist, reported the private reaction of a close friend of Charles: “It was a terrible moment, the worst moment of his life. He wanted to be taken seriously. He sincerely believed he had important things to say. And in six minutes of private conversation, a conversation that was nobody’s business but his and the woman to whom he was speaking, his reputation was ruined. . . . He really didn’t deserve to be destroyed so publicly and so cruelly.”

So Charles faced in 1993 the fury of his parents, the scorn of his wife and the laughter of his future subjects--a humiliated object of derision; in short, a royal wimp.

The scandal also inspired widespread examination of once-unquestioned tradition. Britain’s largest-selling daily, the Sun, editorialized: “People are asking if we really need a royal family at all. And why we bow and scrape to them, treating them as demigods when many of them behave no better than the rest of us and in some cases a whole lot worse.”

And former Conservative member of Parliament and social commentator Matthew Parris declared, “Royalty in Britain is the single most potent symbol of class, and all the unfairness and all the waste of human potential that goes with it.”

Even the queen could not ignore such widespread criticism. Although she maintains a steadfast public stoicism, sources close to the palace say that she has issued private warnings to all of the royals to clean up their act. Further, these sources say, if there were ever any hints that she might step down to give her son a decent reign as king, such thoughts are no longer considered.

So now, instead of the traditional courtier staff, Charles has a group of professionals who operate out of St. James’ Palace, a dark brick, crenelated castle between London’s Pall Mall and St. James Park. The central figure on Charles’ staff is Aylard, 42. Bright, personable, knowledgeable and, most important, worldly, he is a departure from the usual inbred courtiers. “He is the architect of the new policy--a good man, enthusiastic, a believer in the potential of the Prince of Wales,” says Richard Kay, royal watcher for the Daily Mail. “The downside is that he fails to see the negatives of Charles.”

Under Aylard are a deputy private secretary, Stephen Lamport, 43, a former political novelist who looks after the majority of foreign tours, and two assistant private secretaries: Matthew Butler, 34, who handles the prince’s business and industrial interests and formerly was corporate affairs manager for Vickers Defense Systems, and Belinda Harley, a highly regarded former literary agent and professional in public relations who oversees the background reports for the prince, with a hand in speech writing.

Crucial to the new staffing is Allan Percival, 42, the press secretary, a career civil servant who has an engaging way with the media. He is assisted by Sandy Henney, 42, a former press officer for Scotland Yard, who helps schedule Charles’ appearances to make him, as royal reporter James Whitaker puts it, “user friendly.” Still, PR assistance to Charles, says Whitaker, has to be subtle. “The prince needs to be gently persuaded; some might say conned.”

Often, Aylard or Percival will call a strategy meeting with the prince’s other advisers, including his personal friends of many years’ standing, who range from pleasant, comfortable people like Lord and Lady Tryon to the more sophisticated Nicholas Soames, Conservative Party parliamentarian and grandson of Winston Churchill. Then there are confidants like explorer Sir Laurens van der Post and environmentalist Jonathon Porrit, to whom he turns for more philosophical insights. All want to improve the prince’s popularity and with it the image of the monarchy, and they want to do it at once. Because, as Anthony Holden, a Charles biographer and author of “The Tarnished Crown,” has said, “This is his make-or-break year to win the hearts and minds of the British people.”

IN AN INTERVIEW WITH AUSTRALIAN TV, CHARLES ATTRIBUTED HIS COOLNESS in Sydney to a “thousand years of breeding.” But throughout the kingdom, many commentators have wondered about the end result of that millennium of breeding. For Charles is an unprepossessing specimen: medium height with sloping shoulders, jug ears, narrow, squinting eyes and a forehead usually set in a frown. He speaks in an adenoidal accent that sounds faintly forced and affected even to upper-class Brits. And while he can trace his lineage back to Anglo-Saxon kings, more recently his family has had an infusion of German blood: King George V in World War I arbitrarily changed the family dynastic name from the German Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor, after the town where they spent weekends.

The son of a distant, chilly father, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, Charles was raised in emotionless surroundings, his parents often absent or unavailable. However, he was the first royal to eschew education by palace tutors and attend private secondary schools and Cambridge University. He served in the armed forces, his longest hitch with the Royal Navy. But as Prince of Wales and heir to the throne, Charles could never be one of the boys. And he wasn’t. Even at the height of his popularity, Charles seemed aloof, distracted and distant from his subjects.

During the 1980s, Charles, in an effort to compete with his wildly popular wife, became interested in a series of worthy causes: the environment, architecture, organic farming, inner-cities improvement, and jobs and business opportunities for young people. It didn’t help. His personal staff, unversed in professional media relations, failed to unify Charles’ activities or coverage of them, and the whole effort seemed to drift. Supporters had difficulty discerning how the various enthusiasms tied together. Charles had an arrogant and stubborn side that was not helped by fawning palace courtiers. “They’ve all led sheltered lives,” comments a former colleague. “There are a real bunch of amateurs and incompetents in Buck House.”

Charles’ aides were baffled by their lack of success. The initial revolutionary idea of humanizing the monarchy--in “Royal Family,” a 1969 BBC-TV documentary on the queen at work--had been an enormous success. But while it allowed the populace to feel closer to Elizabeth II, it also opened the monarchy’s closed doors forever. No longer could it be secret, mysterious, private.

The public appetite for news of whatever kind about the monarchy and the royal family became insatiable, and the tabloid press has done its best to satisfy that craving. Newspapers and television networks maintain court correspondents, who attend daily briefings on the activities of the royals and accompany them on trips--all scrambling for the catchy or lurid headline bits that sell papers.

But in spite of the closer press scrutiny--or more likely because of it--Charles has failed to capture public affection. His enthusiasms draw criticism or provoke satire. In a long interview with ITV television in 1987 at his country estate, Highgrove, in Gloucestershire, Charles told interviewer Alastair Burnet that he sometimes talked to plants, “and they do respond in a funny way.” It was meant half in jest to show he was a caring gardener. But it promptly earned him the name “the loony prince” by some anti-royal British tabloid papers.

Charles’ enthusiasm for the environment again seemed a bit over the top when he wrote of 1,112-acre Highgrove, “As far as I was concerned, every tree, every hedgerow, every wet place, every mountain and river had a special, almost sacred, character of its own.” Rather than a serious heir apparent, he came to be portrayed as an eccentric.

Nothing he did seemed to go right. He was criticized when he espoused alternative medicine, to which the British Medical Assn. strongly objected. British architects complained about his distaste for contemporary design. When Charles visited Scottish crofters’ huts in the Hebrides and traveled to the Kalahari Desert in Botswana, critics pointed out the inconsistencies of a royal prince arriving by air with a TV team in tow and encouraging locals to live the simple life.

At the same time, his concerns seemed to veer dangerously into the political field--which is off-limits to the royals. Former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, for instance, was not happy with the prince’s statements on the plight of the inner cities because it smacked of support for the Labor Party’s criticism of the Conservatives’ inaction in this area. And in Paris, in December, 1992, the prince tactlessly defended French farmers--contrary to the official British position in the GATT trade talks.

He was also said to be spreading himself too thin: In November, 1986, he supported Inner City Aid with a great deal of fanfare but then turned his attention to other programs while the original project withered, raising only about $50,000 of its $15-million target. It was shut down two years later.

“In the public imagination,” says Ross Benson, author of “Charles: The Untold Story,” “he came to be regarded as arrogant and out of touch, a remote figure who speaks to his plants and treats his lonely, lovely wife with icy contempt.”

Harold Brooks-Baker, publishing director of Burke’s Peerage, adds: “As his admirer, I think his heart is in the right place. But I think he must avoid being represented as a boring crusader.”

In his younger years, Charles was billed as an “action man,” because of his intense devotion to activities such as parachute jumping and flying a helicopter. But polo, off-trail skiing and fox-hunting were not your average Briton’s pastimes. And as he grew older, he seemed to become accident-prone, breaking an arm at polo and nearly being killed in an Alpine avalanche.

What by all accounts has truly bugged Charles, however, was being upstaged by his glamorous wife. Unlike the late President John F. Kennedy, Charles did not delight in showing off his captivating spouse. In fact, he actively resented her popularity--crowds often ignored him as they sought to get close to her. The prince was not amused.

For her part, Diana was not above upstaging her royal husband. She knew all the right photo angles and the tricks to get herself into the papers. Used to being the center of attention all his life, Charles resented her fame. And just as he was often chilly and ill-at-ease in pressing the flesh, she was outgoing and warm. A picture of Charles cutting a ribbon at a factory would be accompanied by a picture of Diana cradling a sick child. A speech by Charles on inner-city business opportunities was pushed aside by Diana’s comments on AIDS. As author Anthony Holden says, “He keeps banging on about the environment while she visits hospitals and talks to lepers.”

When it became clear that the marriage was in trouble, and that Diana was stealing Charles’ thunder, the palace courtiers stonewalled, insisting that the monarchy represented the best of everything. Meanwhile, Charles began heeding the instruction his father reportedly gave him shortly after the wedding: Give the marriage five years, then if it was not working out, look elsewhere. Charles did so. As one familiar with the royal family explained, “All the princes of Wales played around. So, he thought, why shouldn’t he?”

The defining image of the Wales’ marriage was a photograph taken during their joint trip to India in February, 1992: the princess, sitting alone on a bench gazing wistfully at that splendid Mogul temple to love, the Taj Mahal. Charles had remained in Delhi to speak to a group of industrialists.

Inevitably, Charles turned to former flame Camilla Parker-Bowles, and she became an unofficial hostess at his country estate while Diana remained in London at their apartment in Kensington Palace. Friends and courtiers chose sides. Diana was furious that the queen continued to entertain the Parker-Bowleses in her box at Ascot and Windsor for horsy events. And palace sources, loyal to the family, began painting Diana as a spoiled, temperamental prima donna with no sense of responsibility--given to frequent rages when she didn’t get her way. Charles, friends told Ross Benson, realized he had made his “worst mistake” in marrying Diana. At one point he reportedly told his mother: “Don’t you realize, she’s mad. She’s mad.”

Diana’s friends encouraged author Andrew Morton to tell the princess’ side of the case, which he did in his best-selling book, “Diana: Her True Story.” It describes her frustrations and her illness with bulimia and claims she made halfhearted suicide attempts.

The book tore it with the family. The senior royals and their courtiers viewed what they considered Diana’s collaboration as rank disloyalty. They realized they were dealing with a princess who had no intention of knuckling under to their orders and instructions. Things were heading toward crisis.

At the same time, the Diana-versus-Charles theme was rivaled by the collapse of the marriage of his brother, Andrew, the Duke of York, and the duchess, Sarah Ferguson, better known as Fergie. As a bachelor naval officer, “Randy Andy” had enjoyed rough sailor humor and nights on the town. But as a husband, he turned to golf and TV and couch-potato takeaway suppers. His wife, in turn, spent much time on vacations during his absences, most of them underwritten by American millionaires. She finally compromised herself with a couple of Texas jet-setters, Steve Wyatt and John Bryan, which led to a royal separation in the summer of 1992.

The breakdown of the Yorks’ marriage--precipitated by pictures of topless Fergie, her toes being sucked by John Bryan poolside in St. Tropez--dispelled the notion that the Windsors were one big happy royal family. As London Times writer Valerie Groves observed of the Windsors’ marital track record: “Great weddings; shame about the marriages.”

The queen, too, received a rude, royal awakening--as usual, she was unprepared by her own dim courtiers--when she found out her overtaxed subjects objected to one of the richest persons in the world not paying income tax. Then, when Windsor Castle was badly damaged by fire in November, 1992, a government minister quickly agreed to earmark $90 million in public funds to repair the structure. The offer was met by a hail of protest on the grounds the queen could afford to pay for renovations herself. Another columnist needled: “While the castle stands, it is theirs, but when it burns down, it is ours.”

Last year, the queen gave in and began paying income tax, at the same rate as her subjects. And she is paying for almost all of Windsor’s repair, since the public trust fund raised only a fraction of the renovation costs.

But the year held yet another scandal: the tapes of a telephone call between Diana and a young male friend, generally identified as James Gilbey, a well-connected used-car salesman, who referred to her by a pet name, “Squidgy.” Diana begins by answering his question about her day, New Year’s Eve, 1989, at Sandringham Castle: “I was very bad at lunch. And I nearly started blubbing. I just felt really sad and empty, and I thought: ‘Bloody hell, after all I’ve done for this f- - -ing family.’ ”

He calls her “darling” more than 50 times in the rambling dialogue. But the general context seems to be that of courtship confidants rather than lovers. The story was splashed by the tabloids as “Dianagate Tape of Love Reveals Marriage Misery” and “My Life Is Torture.”

The Squidgy tapes were soon overtaken by the devastating Camillagate recording. (Who made the Dianagate and Camillagate tapes is a mystery, but there is widespread suspicion that they originated in General Communications’ headquarters, a government office that monitors radio and telephone transmissions.) If Charles could have chosen one act, short of murder, to turn public opinion against him, it would have been this. All his attempts at good works were forgotten. As Anthony Holden put it: “No one listens to sermons about the rain forests by a man who is said to be two-timing the world’s most popular woman.”

“It’s incredible that he didn’t have the courage to give up Camilla,” comments one London insider with connections to the royal family, whose views were shared by many other women. “He thinks he’s living 50 years ago, when the Prince of Wales could get away with mistresses. But not with Princess Diana. I think he’s very, very wet, pathetic.”

A negative reaction was expressed by some of the Anglican clergy, since the British monarch is temporal head of the Church of England and defender of the faith. The sharpest response came from George Austin, archdeacon of York, who declared, “I fail to see how the church could tolerate somebody whose moral standards are of the kind his apparently are. . . . If his attitude to his vows was so cavalier, has he the right to be trusted?”

The adultery charges even managed to bring into the open the long-simmering relationship between the church and monarch. As commentators are fond of noting, the Church of England had its genesis when King Henry VIII decided to divorce and remarry but was refused by the Roman Catholic Pope in Rome. Many officials believe the Church of England should no longer be the established church, since only about 2% of the British population are regular Anglican churchgoers. Poll after poll showed that the esteem of the royal family was falling drastically; people were questioning the future of the monarchy in Britain.

No wonder the queen in November, 1992, described the preceding 10 months as an “ annus horribilis ,” a horrible year. She was promptly criticized in the popular press for using Latin rather than the good old Queen’s English.

AS HE ATTEMPTS TO BECOME a kinder, gentler prince, Charles must make several concrete decisions as well. Charles and Diana can petition for divorce like any other British subjects, but a divorced prince may not be allowed to ascend to the throne. If he wants to remarry, he would have to ask permission of the queen, who is supreme governor of a church that doesn’t approve of divorce, for permission. Charles’ remarriage, particularly to a divorced woman, would create a constitutional crisis, as was the case with Edward VIII, and he would probably have to renounce his right to the throne in favor of son William. Princess Diana could remarry without anyone’s approval, but she would assume the rank of her next husband.

If they don’t divorce, “Charles could remain Prince of Wales for another 20 or 25 years,” says Holden. “Will he really want to spend all that time being subject to satire and criticism, becoming king at 70 for 10 years? Or step aside, return to Highgrove full time and marry the woman he loves?”

Meanwhile, Diana pursues a subplot in the royal soap opera. Currently she has cut back on public engagements, partly because, she has said, she needs to recover her privacy, but also, according to friends, because she doesn’t want to be accused of upstaging Charles as he creates a new image. She is aware that she retains her popularity and hold over the British public in a way that Charles can’t. She knows that many Britons agree with Tory MP Terry Dicks’ view: “She would have made a far better queen than he will make a king.”

Diana is also concentrating on raising her boys, 11-year-old William and Harry, 9, helping them to adjust to contemporary life despite living in the royal fishbowl. “One of the reasons she is leaving public life,” says Ingrid Seward, editor of Majesty magazine, “is her concern over William. He’s in a very sensitive, pre-adolescent growing period and has become much more introverted since the troubles.”

More skeptical observers like Holden believe that once the Prince of Wales has had his year of new imagery, Diana will return to the public eye. “She can come back as mother of a future monarch,” he says, “a cross between a magazine cover girl and Mother Teresa. This could be bad for him because everything she does makes him look absurd and eccentric. As if he still believes in the divine right of kings.

“She is the one who captures the public’s fancy with her real-life concerns. Diana is nobody’s fool. She will continue to show the born royals the kind of royalty Britain wants, in a style they seem quite unable to master or even comprehend.”

Charles’ PR staff is hoping the new prince will fill that public desire before Diana makes her move. Charles and his aides are working on public appearances that will peak in July with the 25th anniversary of his investiture as Prince of Wales. The ceremonies will tie in with a BBC-TV documentary and an authorized biography, “The Waiting Years,” both by Jonathan Dimbleby. These are expected to be flattering, depicting Charles as mature and purposeful, and will emphasize what his friends say is his “charming and witty private side,” often lost from public view. The events are also intended to show that the monarchy, as a symbol of national continuity, is worth keeping.

How well the British public will warm to the orchestrated attempt to present the Prince of Wales in a more caring and coherent light remains to be seen. A recent BBC poll in Wales on the eve of Charles’ visit showed that more than half of those polled thought the prince was not doing a good job--nor would he make a good king. Perhaps more ominous for his spin doctors’ hopes was a recent BBC feature pegged to his March visit to Wales.

Looking pained yet earnest, in response to a query on what was his goal, Charles rambled: “I think, more than anything else, what I’m trying to do is to encourage a more holistic approach to many of the issues which I think are important. I happen to feel that since the 1960s, a great deal of destructiveness has taken place in terms of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, in many of the things that matter, certainly to me and I think to an awful lot of other people. All I want to do is put the baby back, which got chucked out in the process. Which is one of the reasons why, for instance, I started my institute of architecture. Why I took an interest in architectural matters. Because again, I think it needs again a more holistic approach. Same thing with agriculture. I believe that a great deal needs to be done there to create a more holistic approach. Same with medicine. So I believe that all these things are part of my particular approach to trying to bring the baby back with the bathwater having chucked the bathwater out.”

“I think the TV program was a disaster,” says the Daily Mail’s Richard Kay. “And people at Buckingham Palace agree with me. He’s not a natural TV performer. He came across badly. He went off on a tangent, and many in the audience didn’t know what he was talking about.”

Social historian David Cannadine may have pinned down Charles’ essential problem and therefore that of his handlers. “The difficulty with the 20th-Century British monarchy,” he says, “is that it’s more about ‘being’ than ‘doing,’ and every now and then someone has come along who wants to do things rather than just be--and that’s obviously true of Charles. On the whole, people don’t want British royals to do things, they just want them to be things, and the more Charles wants to do things the less likely he is to succeed, and the less likely people are to like him. The tragedy for him is that the harder he tries to do the job the way he understands it, the less public appreciation he’s getting.”

Perhaps. But in the April interview with Hattersley, after all the embarrassing phone taps, loony ramblings and adulterous exposes, Charles shared this view of royalty: “The people want an institution that can be looked up to. If you become like everybody else, what is the purpose of having a monarchy?”