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Charles and Camilla quiet and formal in Washington

Posted on: Friday, 4 November 2005, 15:35 CST

By Deborah Zabarenko

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Twenty years after Princess Diana upstaged her husband with a White House dance with John Travolta, Britain's Prince Charles and his new wife Camilla made a quieter impact in the U.S. capital on a visit that ended on Friday.

"I think they did splendidly," said Eleanor Herman, author of "Sex with Kings," at the end of the royal couple's three-day Washington visit. "I think that Camilla has a very hard act to follow in Diana. Diana was like a Hollywood superstar and we Americans really go for that sort of thing."

Herman found Camilla better suited to the role of Charles' royal consort than Diana, whose glamour made her a favorite with Washingtonians, notably in 1985, when images of the princess dominated coverage of the couple's trip.

"She doesn't steal the show from poor Charles the way Diana did," Herman said by telephone. "She's got a good figure, great legs, but her style is more sedate."

The Washington Post's fashion columnist gave Camilla restrained approval for her ever-changing but decidedly unflashy wardrobe.

"Camilla took an aesthetic bullet," the Post's Robin Givhan wrote of the duchess' look for a White House dinner. "She looked plain and unremarkable -- except for those magnificent jewels ... -- ensuring that she did not distract from the prince in his nicely tailored tux."

On their last day in Washington Charles and Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, laid a wreath at the U.S. World War Two memorial on the grassy mall that runs through the heart of Washington and then calling at the Folger Shakespeare Library.

This was in keeping with a round of subdued and formal events that served to introduce Camilla to the U.S. capital on their first U.S. tour as husband and wife.

At the war memorial, Charles wore a dark suit adorned with medals, shaking hands with the hundred or so veterans gathered for the ceremony. Camilla moved through the line of veterans a few steps after her husband, her wide-brimmed black-and-white hat visible through the crowd.

In Washington the couple also visited a public boarding school, where the prince planted an oak tree, and visited the National Institutes of Health for a seminar on osteoporosis, the disease that afflicted Camilla's mother and grandmother.

They also had lunch and dinner at the White House and a reception at the British ambassador's residence.

The Washington leg of the trip followed a day in New York City. From Washington, the couple was headed to New Orleans to survey hurricane damage and reconstruction, and then to San Francisco. Their U.S. tour ends November 8.

Source: REUTERS

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