>>>Do you really think that behaving badly in a marriage--through lack of affection and cheating, not through physical abuse--is really the same as abusing children? >>>
Of course not! But you have given him a ride on acting poorly, ruining a young woman's life with lies, ruining another man's life by having an affair with his wife and made the excuse of how he does not live in 'this world'. MJ could use that same excuse.
I'm not giving him a ride. I think he treated Diana like crap. I also think that if I couldn't marry the woman I loved because she wasn't a virgin, and was all but forced to marry a bipolar, underaged emotional succubus because of who my Mom was, and if I had no prospect of leading a meaningful life until the age when most men are contemplating retirement, I'd be a terrible husband, too.
I blame the ridiculous rules the 20th Centuy royals have created for themselves. That's why I say it's a tragedy. Charles is far from the only member of the family to have had a bad marriage. Look at the list:
* The Duke of Edinburgh whored around on his wife, who simply accepted it as the price of duty
* Princess Margaret lost her first love to "the rules" and became an alcoholic with a string of unhappy relationships to follow, including one with a much younger man who turned out to be gay
* Prince Charles, enough said
* Prince Andrew's marriage should have been happy, but it collapsed under public scrutiny because his wife couldn't fit in and he was always away
* Princess Anne, divorced, forced to dress up and spend time with two-footed mammals much more often than she would like
* Prince Edward, should be leading a nerdy homosexual life somewhere in obscurity, but instead has a fake, embarrassing "filmmaking" career and a social-climbing fake wife straight out of central casting
So I don't hate Prince Charles for mistreating his wife, although he could have done better by her. Who wants to imagine being trapped in a loveless marriage and having the whole world think you're happy? I think they are both terrible victims of a public relations scheme that should be retired.
I'll be up front with my own biases: my father treated my mother pretty shabbily when I was a kid and then divorced her when I was 14. At the time, I hated him for it. As I got older, I saw that they were never meant to be together and were both much happier with other people. I used to blame him, but the fact is they got married too young for the wrong reasons and sometimes there is no painless way out of a mistake.