UNDER THE CROWN : OK, So Maybe They’re <i> Not</i> the Average Family Next Door

Thank goodness that little charade is over.

Charles and Diana will henceforth be living at separate postal codes. Andrew and Fergie were already kaput before her poolside Lady Godiva act. Anne is divorced--like her aunt, Princess Margaret, before her--and is remarrying on Saturday. But her grandmother may not be there because Anne is marrying a servant-- well, a onetime naval aide to the queen.

And all I have to say is . . . bravo! The Royal Family is finally acting royal again: selfish, intemperate, high-handed, eccentric. No more of the middle-class keeping together for the sake of appearances.

The rich being unarguably different from you and me, the royal rich are about as different from you and me as a mugwort from a palomino. And what’s the point of being rich and royal if you aren’t different? They’re expected to be larger than life. Like Madonna, with less jewelry.

Yet for decades, here they went, posing as your average family next door, who, if it weren’t for this regrettable little barrier of blue blood, would love to sit down and chew the fat with you over these delicious-looking, uh, what are these? Right, TV dinners.

It was the century’s most brilliant advertising campaign--OK, nearly the most brilliant, after the one that elected Ronald Reagan President. But it stands exposed at last by the Charles-Diana pffft .

The Royal Family, middle class? I mean, really. How many of you still have, oh, the shirt your great-great-great-etc. grandfather was beheaded in? How many of you get to beg off PTA duties with, “Gee, I’d love to, but I have to open Parliament this week”?

Monarchists bought into this charade, always cooing over the common touch: the queen, sending Charles out into the south 40 to look for a lost dog leash, because “dog leads cost money” . . . her grandfather, George V, having his hairbrush re-bristled over and over instead of getting a new one.

That’s not middle class. (How do you think the rich stay rich?) The middle class would say, “Screw it,” buy a new leash and take it out of the kid’s allowance. They’d throw away that grotty old brush and get a new one that’s easy to clean.

If the Royals were really middle class, then what’s all this heredity nonsense? Britain could just as easily choose its sovereign with a bowling tournament or a bake-off. If they were really middle class, Charles and Diana would be carping at each other on “Oprah,” with a 900 number at the bottom of the screen so viewers could vote by phone for whom they believe.

Queen for a Day was middle class; Queen for Life is not.

Much of the masquerade began with Queen Victoria--and her husband, Albert the Good. (I didn’t make that up, they really called him that.) The carryings-on of her “wicked uncles”--taking up with actresses, fathering illegitimate kids, slaughtering Highlanders, running up gambling debts--was not the example to set for England’s emerging middle class, she starchily believed.

But what truly sealed the fraud was World War I. Cousin Nicky, Tsar of All the Russias--executed by Bolsheviks. Cousin Willie, Emperor of Germany, King of Prussia--deposed by radicals. The English Royals felt the blade on the backs of their necks and looked around wildly for protective coloring--and went to ground in the middle-class pose. They even took a real last name, Windsor. Like you could find them in the phone book.

And when Edward VIII abdicated the throne in 1936 to marry an American divorcee, they practically ripped his picture out of the family album. Shockingly un-middle class. ( He stayed married for 36 years, the model of doting domesticity.)

As for the Waleses, we all wanted them to pull it off. The day they got married, I threw a rhinestones-and-pajama party. Had a cake with “Best of Luck to Di and Chuck” in tricolor icing.

A dozen years later, though, I read headlines like “Fears Grow That Charles and Diana Will Separate.” Oh my God, I thought, not them and Yugoslavia? In the same year? Oh, it’s too much. It just got too wearing. The fairy-tale wedding made for the masses has been shown for a pitiable phony. It was fun while it lasted, but jeez, even “Cats” will have to close some time.

Personally, I think the separation is a good sign. One more step toward letting the Royals be royal. Like a palace aide said when he confirmed that Charles was having an affair: “So what?”

That’s the spirit! So what if Charles talks to plants? His antecedent, King George III, spoke to oak trees--and there was a model tyrant for you.

Like the motto on the royal coat of arms says: “God and My Right.” Even when Prince Andrew showered me with white spray paint a few years ago, he was acting out the genetic command of centuries. Why should the heirs to Plantagenet, Tudor and Saxon rulers stand by and watch themselves outdone by baseborn junk bond kings? Unfurl the real royal colors:

William the Conqueror was illegitimate. Henry II locked up his rich, astute wife and fought with his sons. Elizabeth I executed her lover when he got too uppity. Charles II fathered half of the modern-day English aristocracy from the wrong side of the blanket. And everyone knows about Henry VIII. There was a guy who believed in separation, all right--separating his wife’s head from her neck.

There’s your divine right of kings talking. No more Prince Nice Guy. If anything, we need more flagrant, nose-thumbing aristocratic cutting-up. Some capricious abuse of authority. The Royals have been cooped up in England for too long. Give them something to conquer, someone to subjugate. That’s what makes for empire-building and wrenching church schisms and Magna Cartas and glorious revolutions.

So don’t go whingeing over the Charles/Diana split menage. If anything, this could make Charles more viable, throne-wise. Monarchs have to be as big as the monarchy if they’re going to last.

(Did, uh, anybody hear who gets custody of the Gold Card?)

Times staff writer Patt Morrison has watched the Royals . . . sometimes at too close a distance . . . for a number of years.