The marriage is dead; long live the marriage's signal achievement. Last Friday the announcement came of a final divorce settlement between the Prince and Princess of Wales. Diana gets a generous financial deal and retains several privileges, although not the right to style herself as Her Royal Highness. Charles rids himself of the difficult, crowd-pleasing woman he married in what seems another age. But while Charles and Diana's legal ties are being severed, they are still joined by their children, and whatever their failures as husband and wife, they seem to have made a success of their roles as father and mother. If the Waleses have damaged the monarchy terribly, they may also have provided its salvation in William, the bright, likable prince just emerging into young manhood and just beginning to capture the public's imagination. As the divorce brings one act of the royal drama to an end, another one begins, with a fresh and appealing star.

A lot is riding on the boy who will become King William V. The current generation of royals has been nearly catastrophic. At the time of his wedding in 1981, Charles was expected to update the traditional role of constitutional monarch, while Diana would be the charismatic popular symbol. But largely because of the competitive rancor between the heir to the throne and his wife, public acceptance of the monarchy is considerably weaker today than it was even five years ago. While the institution is not in mortal peril, discussion of a republic has become both vigorous and respectable rather than a left-wing fringe topic. The best possible scenario now is a three-act drama: long, long life to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, who is exemplary; a brief reign for Charles, who might be as old as 70 or so when he ascends the throne; and then the reign of Wills, the crown's last, best hope.

What kind of King might William make? At 14, he is at the age when many boys are trying to decide whether to dye their hair orange or green. But some judgments can be made about him. He is known as an intelligent youngster--he passed the test for Eton, a tough prep school--and he has poise beyond his years. In her Panorama interview, Diana said of her elder son, "That child is a deep thinker." She pointed out that it will be impossible to know for some time how the Waleses' shenanigans have strengthened or warped Wills' character.

Life started very well for Wills. His birth was an occasion of national rejoicing; the succession was secure and the perfect family established. Charles was crazy about him. In a burbling letter to a friend he wrote, "He really does look surprisingly appetizing and has sausage fingers just like mine." Dad took over baby-bathing duties enthusiastically, but when the terrible twos struck, the bathroom became a war room. Wills started breaking things, flushing his father's shoes down the toilet, and for the next few years was obstreperous and mouthy.

Back then Charles and Diana were at their best as parents. They were determined not to replicate the cloistered childhood that left Charles forever wary socially and emotionally. When Wills was five and brother Harry three, they were sent to ordinary playgrounds around London. They went to fast-food joints and amusement parks and attended real schools, albeit exclusive ones. Charles had been tutored at home until age eight.

As the fissures in the marriage deepened, it was easy to tell which parent was in charge on a particular day. Diana dressed the boys in baseball caps and jeans. When Charles took over, they wore proper jackets and ties and well-polished shoes. According to her biographer, Sarah Bradford, the Queen regards the sloppy mode as too casual for royal princes and has had words with Diana about it. Grandma does not share Charles and Diana's relaxed approach to molding a future King. Bradford reports that at the Balmoral royal estate in Scotland six years ago, Wills gave his groom the slip and came home early from a riding session. Alarmed at this irregularity, the Queen "tore a strip off him."

For a while photographers fed on young Wills' misbehavior. He picked a fight with a mite-size flower girl at the wedding of Prince Andrew and Fergie and made gloriously juvenile faces at little girls who were presenting flowers to his grandmother. By the time he was eight or so, he had calmed down and was generally more reflective than Harry. He also showed precocious self-possession. With his ancient great-grandmother he is a model little gentleman, helping to guide her down church steps and holding the umbrella over her head.

Especially since the separation, the boys' leisure life follows two strikingly different tracks. With Charles it's off to one of the family estates. Sandringham, a vast Victorian pile in Norfolk, is a plinker's paradise stocked with a variety of game birds. Like his father, Wills is an enthusiastic shot. At Balmoral, where an aggregation of royals spend the late summer, there are moors to explore. During these times, the brothers are looked after by Tiggy Legge-Bourke, a plump, cheerful young woman--"a jolly, hockey-sticks sort of person," as she has been described--who has aroused Diana's jealousy.

With Diana it's off on a grand trip--a redoubt in the Caribbean, white-water rafting outside Aspen, Colorado, a tour of Disney World. No one questions that Charles loves his kids, but Diana is far more demonstrative, hugging them often or throwing herself into their activities, whether it's shooting the rapids or schussing the slopes. But fun with Mum is a very public affair. She is the most photographed woman in the world, who may call the media before an outing.

A quarrel over the children in 1992 finally broke the marriage. Charles had scheduled his family to join him for a shooting party at Sandringham. Bored with country weekends and disapproving of the slaughter of animals, Diana backed out, proposing that she and the boys go to Windsor to stay with the Queen or to the couple's own country place, Highgrove. That was when Charles' patience finally snapped and he asked for a separation.

The events of the years that followed, and their effect on the boys, leave Charles and Diana with plenty to answer for. Life in a fishbowl is hard on anyone; for a child it is also very confusing. Wills has had to put up with volley after volley of mortifying revelations shouted from the headlines--the tabloids breaking the news, the "respectable" papers and TV reporting on the resulting scandal. Dad wants to be a tampon, the better to be close to his mistress. Mum was having an affair with that young riding instructor, who also taught Wills.

The Waleses were not the only offensive royals. The egregious Fergie, Duchess of York, was a scandal mill all on her own, with miserable sexual and financial escapades. The result has been a growing cynicism about the family. Commentator Julie Burchill expressed a common feeling when she said recently, "I hope for the best for Wills, but I would be very surprised if he turns out to be normal, because that's the maddest family since the Munsters. Every day there's something new. We wouldn't be shocked if he turned out to be a cross-dresser who wanted to marry a corgi. We all feel we know everything about them, and that's a very bad thing for a ruling family."

Diana started the revelation wars by tacitly cooperating with Andrew Morton on the book that revealed Charles' return to his old lover, Camilla Parker Bowles. Charles' approved biography, Prince of Wales, written by Jonathan Dimbleby, may make even more painful reading for Wills. In an apparent effort to puncture the Princess's popularity, Dimbleby is at pains to portray her as shallow, willful and dangerously unstable. He goes into detail about her depressions and bouts with bulimia, first revealed by Morton, and gives an unintentionally hilarious account of a trip to Italy in which the aesthete Charles tried to imbibe the culture while the vacuous Diana waited around to receive the adulation of the crowds. For a son it must be disagreeable fare.

Still, there are some things that Wills, as he grows older, can learn from his father's hard experience. One is that he cannot rely on others to be discreet. While Charles was a student at Trinity College, Cambridge, the wife of R.A. Butler, a Tory elder statesman and Master of the College, introduced him to Lucia Santa Cruz, the daughter of the Chilean ambassador. When the young pair hit it off, the Butlers boasted that Charles had learned the fine points of physical love from Santa Cruz. Another lesson is that however irresponsible his parents became, they at least gave Wills options and some say in his own life. Charles' upbringing was run by committee. One such panel decided to send him to Cambridge. More meetings followed concerning his career.

Wills will have plenty to say about what university he attends and what he does after that. Meanwhile, he might consider his father's royal duties. They are numbing. Charles shuttles from conference to opening, from funeral to investiture, from fund raiser to military parade. Wills' life will be one of wealth and privilege, but he will pay for it in an exacting round of obligations in which any spontaneous word or gesture will probably land him in trouble. Novelist Allan Massie, who is also a royals observer, points out that as Prince of Wales, William will have maximum opportunity to let slip things he'll soon regret saying. While a monarch's speeches are cleared with the government of the day, the Prince of Wales is free--or freer anyway--to say what he thinks.

There is one person close at hand who is ready and willing to instruct Wills in what is expected of him. "The Queen feels responsible and has great concern for him," says Bradford. Eton is close to Windsor--"he's right there in the bottom of her garden," as Bradford puts it--and William very frequently has tea with the Queen by himself on Sundays at 4 p.m. A car is sent for him, and they spend a couple of hours together. What do they talk about? Duties.

Much has been written, some of it bitingly critical, about the arcane ways of English public school education, but it has probably been a refuge for a boy for whom the limelight has become a laser. Wills has gone the conventional route, and that means he started boarding school at eight. The place was called Ludgrove, and it was an exclusive feeding station for Eton. To Americans the notion of sending so young a child out to board seems cruel, but those who have weathered the experience point out that if a child didn't start the English drill early, he'd never adjust to it or even get the point. American writer Paul Watkins, who grew up in the system at a school similar to Ludgrove and at Eton, has written a perceptive book about his experience, called Stand Before Your God. He says, "It's a singular existence, though you don't totally realize it at the time. It's like Alice going through the looking glass."

Eton is famous for its blue bloods and for the statesmen and men of letters it has turned out. The students there acquire an elegance and gloss. Sue Townsend, author of the satirical The Queen and I and no monarchist, says, "William has that Etonian look already. The boys are burnished; they are like angels, you know, and they float around the world." It is likely that during his five years there, Wills won't have too much time to think about his battling parents. His day is a strict drill. Up at 8, compulsory chapel after breakfast, classes all morning. A lengthy sports session follows, and afternoon classes start at 4. The traditional university prep subjects are required, but some outre electives like Swahili and cooking are offered. There is also counseling for boys whose parents are divorcing. Britain has the highest divorce rate in Europe, so Wills will get sympathetic understanding from many quarters.

There are rules for everything, and punishment is automatic. If a boy is late for a class, he has to get up early the next morning and trudge to the office to sign the "tardy book." Eton has upgraded itself academically in the past 10 years and is considered not just a training ground for the rich and titled but one of the best schools in the country. Wills seems equal to the rigors. Says Bradford: "If he were not up to it, they would not have sent him."

Sports are important and encrusted in custom, a different color jersey for each one. In the summer term a student is either a "wet bob" (a rower) or a "dry bob" (a cricketer). Some sports are unique to the school, like the Wall Game, in which it is virtually impossible to score because the players are huddled in a permanent, muddy scrum against the wall. The last goal was recorded in 1909. Uniforms are complicated. There are variations on the famous black swallowtail coat. Seniors who belong to Pop, an elite self-elected group of academic and sport leaders, have their own version. So do "tugs," the academic upper crust.

Watkins thinks the school is just the place for Wills. "Eton is extraordinarily well suited for a boy like him--for dealing with someone who has a public future. He must make his name within the school. He can't flex his money. There is no personal expression through clothes, and cars are not allowed. Wealth or personage outside the school mean little." In this self-contained world, titles confer no privileges, and the prince is probably not the only boy with a bodyguard. Foreign leaders' children and scions of Greek shipping magnates bring them along too. Says London School of Economics historian David Starkey: "William is as near to normal at Eton as someone in his position is wont to be. Many people there are richer than he is. There are many people whose family relationships are even more complex than his."

In the next couple of years, the young prince's life will become a lot more public and more complicated, and his personality will be more sharply defined. He is already going to the dances favored by adolescent aristocrats, and already the girls are asking for kisses. By his female contemporaries, Wills is rated as "snoggable," Britspeak for sexy. That attribute has made him a pinup in teenage fanzines, where he has quickly gained a following. Wills is nearly as tall as Diana, and like his mother, he seems to have the best of Spencer good looks. A few years will tell.

The press has in general honored the pleas from the palace and the Press Complaints Council to leave the boy alone. Unlike the requests that the Queen made on behalf of Diana early in the marriage, these have been honored. Just an occasional picture of Wills and his pals strolling the Windsor streets has appeared. But that is not the whole story. A few photographers are stalking Wills part time. They are royals specialists who know what every shot is worth. As long as the papers refuse to buy the film, Wills is relatively free. Similarly, Eton has promised to expel any student who speaks to the press. In fact, a couple of inside-Eton manuscripts have been shopped in London, but none has been sold. It's a fragile situation. The photographers who stake out the school are hoping that something so "big" will happen that it is automatically of public interest. Not a good state of affairs for an adolescent.

Wills and his brother are down on the media and may blame the press for the breakup of their parents' marriage. When he was little, the impish prince didn't mind the cameras in the least and mugged for their benefit. But as he became surrounded by Diana's ever increasing army of professional admirers, Wills changed. Says a photographer: "Wills is happier with Charles. Physically you notice the difference--he is relaxed. It's clearly an easy relationship. But when William is with Diana, it's heads down." To add insult to annoyance, chroniclers are now busily opining about Wills' relations with each of his parents. At the moment, many royals watchers argue that as Wills matures, he will look more to the Windsors, the joys of rural life, to shooting parties and to the blessed absence of the prying press. According to the same argument, city-bound Diana will have less influence on, or even contact with, her sons.

That's questionable. William shows affection for both his parents--chumming up with Charles and protecting Diana. It is likely that he has learned from her as well as the Windsors, and that would be to his advantage. Especially in his early years, she led the way to a more open boyhood and to some contact with the nation's disadvantaged. As Diana moves into her 40s, some of the media attention will focus on handsome, eligible Wills. Says Edward Pilkington, who writes on the royals for the Guardian: "The monarchy needs someone who is seen to be as popular as Diana--and I think he probably will be. And it needs someone who is prepared to change it, bring it into step with other institutions of the next century."

Just one of the problems he will probably face is raised by Yale's British historian Linda Colley: "Whom will he find to marry him?" She notes that over the past hundred years, the monarchy has recruited women like Queen Mary, George V's consort, who epitomized royal womanhood's acquiescence and sense of duty, and the present Queen Mother, who has been just as responsible and effervescent as well. Diana was very young and inexperienced, sexually and otherwise. Where, Colley asks, are such young women to be found in this age of independence, blossoming careers and cohabitation?

Wills will have a powerful role in shaping the monarchy in the coming century, and as Starkey points out, Buckingham Palace is beginning to make use of him. He cannot afford to stumble. The burdens are enormous, but at least he is surrounded by billowing gusts of goodwill. He may be that stable leader who is so badly needed to strengthen a besieged but valuable institution.

--Reported by Barry Hillenbrand/London for TIME Magazine.

July 22, 1996