Man who's lost his 'guiding light'

No figure was more troubled, no face more bleak.

Not even the consoling presence of his sons could ease his sorrow.

Yesterday the lacerating grief of the Prince of Wales was there for all to see.

The Queen, whose desolation was surely as great, wore her loss impassively and with composure.

But watching Charles at Westminster Abbey was to see a man in torment. One gloved hand gripped his sword so tightly you feared if he let go he would fall to his knees. The other clutched limply at his order of service.

His lower lip trembled and tears pricked at his eyes. Every time her name rang out in prayer or eulogy, it would trigger a reflex in her grandson, a twitch or a grimace.

All the time his gaze never left his grandmother's coffin, touching distance away on a catafalque in the Abbey quire.

Twice now the Prince has lost the two most pivotal influences on his life. Twenty-three years ago it was Lord Mountbatten, his adored 'Uncle Dickie' who was blown apart in an IRA bomb.

His death left him bereft. In his journal he described feeling 'quite sick' in the pit of his stomach and beset by 'agony, disbelief' and 'a kind of wretched numbness'.

According to friends, Mountbatten's death in 1979 brought on a kind of depression in the Prince. 'The grieving went on for a very long time,' said one.

For years, Mountbatten had been his linchpin, the figure who helped preserve his fragile sense of identity. But the one person who helped him overcome his loss was the Queen Mother.

His grandmother more than anyone provided the combination of compassion and criticism that no other relative or friend was able to offer. It was she who instilled in him the resolve to avoid the twin perils of royalty - vanity and selfcentredness.

Through her he has never forgotten the tragedy of the Duke of Windsor, who gave up an Empire for love and an exile of bitterness.

No one influenced him quite like the Queen Mother. No one understood him quite like her.

With his mother and father away so often on their world tours, it was his newly widowed grandmother who formed him and raised him in the early years of his life.

Later she offered him unquestioning loyalty and warmth when he considered himself unappreciated and misunderstood at home. It was she alone, he said, who had faith in his potential when others doubted it and she who lavished him with praise and encouragement.

All that and more was behind those sorrowful images of a mourning Prince yesterday.

It was from the Queen Mother that Charles learnt his love of music and his appreciation of art and architecture and from her that he developed a taste for the finer things in life.

Later on, whenever royal events demanded the family appear, the two would invariably share the same carriage, the same car and often the same outlook.

Now, I understand, he wishes to take on many of his late grandmother's formal royal duties. It will be his way of honouring her memory.

'To all intents and purposes he is a replica not of his mother but of his grandmother,' one of the Prince's closest aides said last night. 'She was his guiding light.'

They did not agree about everything. 'Often on matters of politics they would clash, but the relationship was so close, with such great trustandrespectoneither side, that nothing serious would ever come. But, equally importantly, thePrince knew not to push things which might not find favour with her.'

It is, therefore, all the more extraordinary that the deep love between them was able to embrace the one issue on which the Queen Mother did harbour reservations - Camilla Parker Bowles.

She provided them with sanctuary - Birkhall, her Scottish home on the Queen's Balmoral estate and where, last night, the couple were once again reunited.

But Mrs Parker Bowles was never formally received by the Queen Mother, nor did she ever invite her to anything. 'Her attitude was that it was happening but was none of her business,' said a friend.

However, the Queen Mother was happy for her grandson. And the Mail can reveal that in the last weeks of her life she confided about it to close members of her circle.

I understand she spoke of her satisfaction that the Prince had at last found what she called 'real happiness'.

A close friend said:'She let it be known she was glad he had someone who could love him in the way he wanted to be loved.'

It was this expression of goodwill that propelled Mrs Parker Bowles into being a guest at Monday evening's moving vigil and into a ringside seat at yesterday's funeral service. But protocol meant there was no place for her at her Prince's side at this, perhaps his most pressing hour of need. Now she alone must assume alone the burden of lover, confidante, muse and consort.

Yesterday, in his misery, it was his sons and his father who brought Charles princely comfort.

How strange it was to look on as William and Harry sat in close, concerned attention as their father was brought to the very brink of tears. Five years ago it was Charles who fulfilled that role for his sons on that terrible day of shock and sadness when Princess Diana was buried at another Westminster Abbey funeral service.

Outside the Great West Door as Charles, his brother Andrew, his sister Anne and father stood in a final salute to the Queen Mother's coffin, it was the turn of Prince Philip to succour his son.

Relations between the two have rarely been easy. Charles has never felt he received the favour of his parents so readily given to his siblings. Philip has always believed his notoriously thinskinned eldest son to be precious and lacking in confidence.

The briefest of gestures yesterday suggested that things just might change. Philip turned to Charles and touched him on the arm as if to say, 'Are you alright?' His son responded with a solitary shake of the head that said, 'No, but I'm trying like hell.'

Will Charles now at last reach out to his parents? For now each needs the other as never before. What is clear is that yesterday's funeral provided the very first glimpse of the new-look Royal Family - a premier league of the Queen, Prince Philip, Prince Charles and William and Harry.

They were the closest to the catafalque and the focus of the mourning.

Their seating plan was symbolic. It had been planned that Charles would sit alongside his father. But instead, William occupied that seat, with Harry flanking Charles on the other side. It has placed the boys formally in the front rank of the Royal Family.

So if the Queen is to look to Charles to support her as she nears her 80th birthday and old age, then the Prince is most certainly looking to his sons to help him.

How ironic that it should take the death of the Royal Family's matriarch figure to provide the first sight of how the slimmeddown monarchy that Charles has envisaged should appear.

In his grief Charles might find some comfort in that.