Read My Lips - the blog

Britain's royal nightmare

In an article appropriately titled "Bride of Chucky,", the Fort Worth Star-Telegram suggested that Price Charles' attraction for Camilla Bowles might be "a Freudian thing."

Oedipal Rex: Charles' nanny fantasy

Charles and Mabel were meant to be.

Er, we mean, Charles and Camilla.

Sorry, sometimes it's hard to tell the two apart.

Who is Mabel? Charles' childhood nanny, Mabel Anderson, that's who, and the spittin' image of his bride-to-be. The resemblance is a little creepy, actually. But according to author Suzi Malin, it's a stellar example of prima copulist coupling.

In short: It's a Freudian thing.

Malin's book Love at First Sight describes prima copulism as a person's attraction to someone who resembles their first love, i.e. Mommy or Daddy, or, in Charles' case, the nanny who, for all practical purposes, raised him.

Malin's 2004 book is full of examples of celebrity couples who share the same facial proportions (harmonism), the same facial features (echoism) or a resemblance to the other's parent (e.g., Madonna's father is a grizzled, elderly version of Sean Penn. Honest.)

In Charles' case, his young nanny and Camilla share not only the same facial shape, but the droop of their upper eyelids, the line of their noses and upper lips, and the curve of their chins are remarkably similar, Malin shows.

Whereas Diana and Charles simply shared harmonism, Charles' attraction to Camilla apparently pervades his psyche -- and once again confirms that Oedipal complexes exist outside Shakespearean plays.

-- Liz Stevens