Brits want Prince to marry Camilla

<div class="section1"><div class="Normal">london: barely a week after the funeral of the queen mother, britain’s last royal link with victorian morality and tradition, the country’s best-selling tabloid says its 10 million readers want prince charles to make an honest woman of his mistress, camilla parker-bowles, with "a ring on her finger". with a screaming lead headline "marry" and an editorial advising the prince to "follow his heart", the tabloid says "it is no longer a question of if, but when".the paper, which quotes a recent opinion poll showing a hefty 57 per cent support for the marriage, says that royal courtiers are more concerned now about the choice of title for parker-bowles. the only consensus, suggests the tabloid, is that it will not be that of ‘queen’ or ‘princess of wales’, both of which would bring back too many memories of the adored diana and raise constitutional or religious objections. the <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">sun’s</span> endorsement is not final by any means but is evidence of the growing view across britain that parker-bowles should be accepted as charles’s wife, though not queen. with britain’s so-called "quality" broadsheet newspapers increasingly chronicling the activities of charles and camilla as if they were already man and wife, the opinion of the masses is regarded as crucial. the <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">sun</span>, which routinely and bombastically declares that it is the voice of the nation and "it is the <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">sun</span> wot won" tony blair the crucial 1997 general election after 18 years of conservative party rule, is seen as a blue-collar barometer. but its campaigns, such as over the single european currency and paedophiles, are generally considered a lot less attention-grabbing than the salacious topless page 3, which has become almost a byword for the tabloid. after the 1997 death of diana, the paper claimed to speak for all of britain when it whipped up republican sentiments by criticising the queen and lauding as a saint the princess it routinely photographed with and without her knowledge. now, says the paper, "backing has never been stronger" and it advises charles to "seize the moment" by marrying the woman he has loved for a quarter of a century. he could not do it while his grandmother, the queen mother was alive, says the paper, but her death was a turning point. parker-bowles’s presence as an invited guest at last week’s funeral and the queen’s unprecedented audience with her last month at buckingham palace are seen as pointers to the future. after diana’s death, barely one person in three had a kind word to say about the prince’s companion, while nearly half the population actively opposed the marriage. with the church of england contemplating a change in its rules against the remarriage of divorcees, constitutional experts increasingly believe the bells are likely to ring out soon enough for the most-watched royal wedding of them all. </div> </div>