Farce is the old French word for “stuffing”. Some courtiers are convinced this is the fate that awaits Sir Michael Peat for scripting the most humiliating royal comedy of errors in recent times. “The Queen believes he has to go,” says one.

But the Prince of Wales’s urbane private secretary is not yet trussed up on a silver salver after the cascade of miscalculations in his boss’s wedding arrangements. On Friday he surfaced outside an employment tribunal — it was a royal servant’s case, not his own — in south London to tell bemused reporters that everything was going swimmingly.

Asked about the wedding’s embarrassing switch in venue from Windsor Castle to the town’s Guildhall, he said airily: “It will be a great improvement. It had been in my mind for ages. I really don’t see what all the trouble is. The wedding plans are right on track.”

Barely a fortnight ago, the 55-year-old public servant, known as “the Axeman”, was telling the media that “all the ducks were in a row” for Charles’s wedding to Camilla Parker Bowles. Cue for a production of improbable twists and lightning scene changes, to the accompaniment of doors opening and slamming.

It has left the audience aghast, the Queen furious, Camilla humiliated, Charles “hurling abuse” at advisers and a mood of recrimination between the royal household and the government. Fingers of blame point at Peat, who as the prince’s most senior adviser was responsible for making the wedding go like clockwork, as royal ceremonials always do.

There is no doubt Peat was caught wrong-footed when the Evening Standard broke the story eight days earlier than planned. Bowing to the inevitable, he announced the happy event — before consultations on obtaining a licence for the castle to stage marriages were completed.

Ironically, it was Peat’s obsession with leaks that limited outside discussions and kept planning to a tiny coterie, it is claimed.

First, the civil ceremony had to be moved to Windsor town hall, since obtaining a licence for the castle might lead to it having to admit hordes of couples for another three years.

The next act revealed that legal niceties had not been thoroughly investigated, either. Experts chimed in to pronounce the marriage illegal. Lord Falconer, the lord chancellor, was obliged to explain the arcane reasoning for his official approval to parliament. By then, the Queen had refused to attend the civil ceremony, prompting talk of a snub.

On Thursday, a Clarence House spokesman was insisting that Peat would not resign. “Nobody is resigning,” he said.

However, the following day Peat acknowledged the precariousness of his position. Asked at the employment tribunal if he was “still” the prince’s private secretary, he replied: “As far as I am aware, yes.”

The tribunal did not spare Peat’s feelings, accusing his office of “misleading” or “disadvantaging” the case of a former personal assistant claiming sex discrimination and unfair dismissal. It was another chapter of below-stairs discord for the top aide whose ascetic, egg-head appearance and immaculate dress symbolise a very British blend of charm and ruthlessness. His tongue, it is said, “can suddenly turn from oily to fiery”.

The historian David Starkey assigns most blame to Tony Blair as the monarch’s chief constitutional adviser. “It is his job to be at the centre, consulting, advising, warning and shaping,” he said. But he accuses the prime minister of sharing “historical illiteracy” with Peat. “He is an accountant, for God’s sake.”