Imagine this love story.

Quirky looking son of a famous, wealthy family falls in love with a slightly older married woman who is in the same social circle but at a decidedly lower rung.

The couple begin a torrid love affair. But the boy must find a suitable woman to marry and does find a woman who is as charismatic and beautiful as he is boring and plain. She sets the world afire but they grow distant, divorce and then she dies in a terrible car accident.

Years pass. The son finds that the world has turned against him. His aging mother refuses to step aside and let him run the family business, leaving him to perform a host of meaningless chores and public relations ceremonies but yielding no real power. The world holds him responsible for the breakup of his marriage and the death of his first wife. People make snide comments behind his back. He is a laughingstock.

All this time he secretly continues his affair with the older woman who divorces her husband. One day, he realizes he can’t wait any longer and proclaims his love for the older woman and asks for her hand in marriage.

But trouble’s afoot — his mother doesn’t support the marriage. The church isn’t fond of divorced marriages. People whisper of a scandal that she’s an older woman.

When nothing more can go wrong, a world leader dies and the mother demands the son attend the funeral which forces the delay of their wedding by another day.

Here is a great story of love triumphing over all, of love over the years, of love between an older woman and a younger man, of a couple that has to overcome the forces of its society’s rules and norms.

If this is such a great story, why couldn’t Charles and Camilla make it work?

They needed a good PR person to spin the story and put it into bigger themes that people could relate to and agree with. Wouldn’t every older woman love this story? Wouldn’t every divorced person relate? Wouldn’t people who bowed to convention instead of their hearts be enthralled?

Of course they would.

And it wouldn’t hurt if Richard Gere and Julia Roberts were cast in starring roles.