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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 July 2014
The investiture of Charles as Prince of Wales was a magnificently staged pageant, as most of the 500 million people who saw it on television will attest. Two hundred thousand pounds went into the making of the extravaganza of July 1, 1969, an event that Queen Elizabeth had promised to her Welsh subjects as far back as 1958, at the close of the Commonwealth Games at Cardiff. But no date had been set for the Caernarvon investiture until July 1, 1967. Predictably, the timing of that announcement has been seen as politically motivated, as a direct response to the emergence of Plaid Cymru (the Welsh Nationalist Party) as a threat in two recent by-elections in Wales.
The investiture ceremony was itself a matter of much contention within Wales. Most Welshmen, to the distaste, even disgust, of the minority separatists, welcomed the event: as a royal occasion, a boost to tourism, and as a state celebration in which they, as Welshmen, were to take pride of place. It was to cost too much, true, but then the Welsh are not alone in questioning the cost of maintaining Royalty. And it is true that Charles was an English prince, but he had behaved himself admirably while a student at University College, Aberystwyth, and had even learned some Welsh during his stay in the Principality. He was, in that respect, the first “English” prince of Wales to identify himself with the Welsh in so intimate and endearing a way. Some memories on that July day, 1969, were directed to the first “English” Prince of Wales, a baby son of Edward I who was born at Caernarvon in 1301 and presented to the Welsh as their prince to replace the defeated Llywelyn. Edward II, it turns out, not only grew up to speak no Welsh, but used French more than English as his own language. It is from this precedent that English monarchs have, ever since, named their first-born son and heir Prince of Wales (it is not itself strictly a hereditary title in the sense of being passed from the Prince to his first-born, but reverts to the crown in the event of the Prince's death; nor has there ever been a Princess of Wales).
Paper read at the Pacific Northwest Section of the Conference on British Studies, Eugene, Oregon, March 1973.
1 Conolly, L. W.. “Politics and Royalty: Welsh Nationalism and the Investiture of the Prince of Wales, 1969,” Queen's Quarterly, 76:3 (Autumn, 1969):412–423.Google Scholar
2 Ibid.
3 The Times (Election Supplement), June 20, 1970.
4 The Western Mail, Sept. 25, 1968.
5 Fitzgibbon, Constantine, The Life of Dylan Thomas, (Boston, 1965), p. 11.Google Scholar
6 “The Tutelar of the Place,” Agenda, 5:1–3 (Spring-Summer, 1967):21–22.Google Scholar
7 “Wales and the Crown,” Epoch and Artist, (New York, 1963), pp.47–48.Google ScholarPubMed
8 Not that he brought flowers, (London, 1968), p.30Google Scholar. See also “Loyalties” on the Investiture, p. 31.
9 Song at the Year's Turning, (London, 1955), p. 63.Google Scholar
10 Ibid., p. 61.
