DAN WOOTTON: After the Coronation, it’s finally time to accept Queen Camilla

Despite my concerns about his obvious vigilance and dangerous interventions in politics, I desperately want Charles III to succeed and, as a proud royalist, will gladly swear allegiance to our new king on Saturday.

I also believe that Queen Camilla is a kind and well-meaning woman with a good soul who has never asked to be pushed into the middle of royal history because of the man she happens to love.

But for those of us who remain faithful to the memory of Princess Diana, Saturday’s coronation poses an unprecedented moral challenge.

We know that until her last breath, the then most famous woman in the world, now an icon forever, vociferously opposed the idea of ​​Queen Camilla.

Her close friends have revealed that the mere mention of such a prospect filled her with fear of being punched in the gut, tremendous upset and deep-seated rage.

“I would like to be a queen of people’s hearts, but I don’t see myself as a queen of this country,” she declared in the now-discredited Martin Bashir Panorama interview.

Indeed, she told former newspaper editor Sir Max Hastings around the same time that her entire focus was on the crown being about Charles so that her young son William could succeed Queen Elizabeth II as monarch, no doubt largely because of her understandable hatred of the other woman in her ‘busy’ marriage.

While Diana’s broad base of tens of millions of fervent supporters may have softened over the past 25 years, with many accepting that it’s simply time to move on, Lord Ashcroft’s new poll this week for the Daily Mail reveals I’m not alone feels uncomfortable.

His overwhelming poll found that, days before the coronation, only 39 percent of Britons have a positive view of Camilla, making her the fourth least popular senior royal behind only Harry, Meghan and Andrew.

Despite the fact that the mainstream media has long since accepted Camilla, thanks in large part to her good personal relationships with reporters and editors, the public remains stubbornly unconvinced.

Therefore, the decision of an uncompromising king to place his reluctant wife at the center of his coronation is very risky indeed.

There are two ways to look at the scenario.

Charles has been on a journey with all of us and adjusted his position as public opinion softened to Queen Camilla’s idea.

Or we have been tricked.

I have not forgotten that Diana loyalists were pacified by assurances when Charles and Camilla married in 2005 that she would only be known as Princess Consort.

That formal position only changed last year when the late dying Queen publicly proclaimed, “It is my earnest wish that when that time comes, Camilla will be known as Queen Consort while continuing her own meritorious service.”

Again, the addition of Consort to the title offered some reassurance, although I was one of the few royal commentators to publicly admit that I remained wary of the prospect in a column for MailOnline.

After the late Queen’s death, the public wanted to support a grieving Charles, who helped reassure a shocked nation with a near-perfect performance in the days leading up to the state funeral (save for a tantrum over a nasty leaking fountain pen).

That wasn’t enough for Charles, however, with April’s revelation, confirmed by the official invitation to the coronation, that from this Saturday it was the King’s intention to simply refer to Camilla as Queen.

It raises the question of whether the late Queen believed Camilla would continue to be referred to as Queen Consort even after her son’s coronation. Maybe we’ll never know.

But in all honesty, I believe this outcome may have been Charles’ wish and plan, especially considering that formally referring to Camilla as Princess Consort would have required a change in the law.

I am not angry or even disappointed with this ruse, but reluctantly accept it with a degree of necessary pragmatism.

For the king to be successful in his role at his age, it is important that he has an almost equal in Camilla who can bear some of the burden.

For the past few months I’ve been trying to find out what Diana’s friends think of the outcome.

Jennie Bond, longtime royal editor at the BBC, recently revealed that in an off-the-record conversation in 1995, Diana told her ‘that she thought Camilla had been loyal and discreet and deserved some sort of recognition’, although that certainly didn’t mean she became queen.

Diana’s rock star and loyalist Paul Burrell, her former butler, told me that his favorite person in the world would have accepted Camilla long ago, even if she could never have called her queen.

“I think Diana was very kind. At this stage of her life, she would have found love and settled down. And I think she would have said, “Let them go ahead.” She didn’t hold a grudge,’ Paul explained.

‘One day William will be king – Diana’s son on the throne! We have to cross this bridge with Charles and Camilla; I’m a monarchist, we have to. But on the other side are King Willem and Queen Catherine.’

So while I admit it remains in my wake for now, I accept the King’s wishes and from this Saturday I refer to his dutiful wife as Queen Camilla.

That doesn’t mean I’m any less loyal to the memory of Princess Diana, who I doubt would have played a formal role as one of the greatest forces for good in the world, and we all know that it was a transformational queen like her marriage failed.

Most of the royal family and British establishment may want to erase her memory, but luckily her son, the new Prince of Wales, will never let that happen.

Like Di, I believe in the principle of our consistent and proud hereditary monarchy.

While it may take longer than the People’s Princess had hoped, King William is only possible if Charles’s reign is a success.

For that to happen, the king has made it clear that Camilla as queen is non-negotiable.