In the 21st century, we all know a royal’s life isn’t exactly a fairytale. But back in the ’80s, before instantaneous communications and social media, everyone believed in storybook love. Nevertheless, then, as today, reality was far from “happily ever after.”
Even though their marriage ended more than 20 years ago, it seems like Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s whirlwind romance – and how it ended – has never been more relevant. Meghan Markle’s recent experiences aside, Netflix’s The Crown brought everything to the forefront again. The show, however, isn’t a documentary. This is the truth of what happened between Charles and Diana, and how it all went so wrong.
Doomed from the start
In 1992, Buckingham Palace wrote the final chapter in a storybook marriage that went horrifically wrong. With just seven sentences, the Palace announced that the Prince and Princess of Wales’s marriage was effectively coming to an end, 11 years after they tied the knot in front of the eyes of the world.
Though no one seemed to realize it at the time, we now know their relationship had no hope from the outset. So how did it all go so wrong? Well, Diana wasn’t actually the first Spencer girl Charles had his eye on…
Dating her sister
Charles and Diana’s relationship doesn’t actually begin with Charles and Diana. Instead, it begins with Charles and Lady Sarah Spencer, Diana’s older sister. The two dated, briefly, until Lady Sarah got a little too candid with the press. Besides laying bare her personal demons, she told reporters she wouldn’t marry Charles whether he was the garbage man or the King of England.
Suitably furious, Charles ended the relationship soon after. While they were still together, however, he visited Althorp House, the Spencers’ residence since 1508. There, he met 16-year-old Diana for the first time.
It began with the light switches
Everything began innocently, not only because Charles was dating her sister but also because in 1977 he was 29 and Diana was still a teenager. The future king arrived at the 1,500-acre Althorp House for a weekend of hunting, and would later recall “what fun” Diana was
Diana, for her part, was smitten, telling her piano teacher, “I’ve met him at last!” She even gave Charles a tour of Althorp’s art gallery, because she knew where the obscured light switches were and Sarah didn’t, leaving her older sister incensed. It was a memory Charles would carry for years.
Charles wasn’t ‘very cool’
Despite clicking instantly – and their massive age gap – Charles and Diana would actually not really see each other for three years following that fateful guided tour. When they did next, it was in 1980. The timing wasn’t perfect – Charles’ great-uncle and confidant Lord Mountbatten had just been assassinated by Irish extremists.
Diana watched the funeral and felt so sorry, so she tried to offer the Prince comfort with some kind, heartfelt words. Charles, allegedly, responded by “leaping on her,” as Diana herself recalled. She’d never had a boyfriend before, but remembered thinking, “This isn’t very cool.”
Uncool or not, this is where the pair’s relationship really began taking off. A short yet intense courting period ensued, but it seems Charles wasn’t exactly a pro. When Diana took public speaking lessons from voice coach Peter Settelen, he videotaped her speaking about her private life.
The full tapes have never been released, but excerpts show how the future Princess of Wales evaluated Charles’s courting abilities. There were periods when he’d call her every day, she claimed, and others where they wouldn’t speak for three weeks. It was odd, but she relished each and every phone call
Whatever ‘in love’ means”
When Prince Charles, the future king, announced his engagement to Diana Spencer in 1981, not just the country but the world rejoiced. Diana, then still 19, seemed like she’d be a breath of fresh air in the stodgy Royal Family. Everyone looked at her and saw the future Queen Consort. Everyone – except possibly Charles himself.
During the very interview announcing their engagement, the reporter asked them about being in love. “Of course,” Diana instantly replied. “Whatever ‘in love’ means,” Charles added with a chuckle. Awkward gaffe? Possibly, but it would prove a sign of things to come.
Their wildly different takes on their first meeting
In fact, that same engagement interview contained another tidbit, which may have seemed insignificant back then. After all, any avid royal watcher knows that engagement interviews are usually a bit awkward. Regardless, there was one exchange that in hindsight fully displayed the abyss between the two. Asked about their first meeting, Diana said Charles was “pretty amazing.”
Pushed into proposing?
If Prince Charles really was so ambivalent about Diana and their relationship, why on Earth did he propose? Well, the closest we may ever come to a conclusive answer came from royal expert Robert Jobson. Charles, according to Jobson, told a friend that to withdraw from the relationship would’ve been “cataclysmic.”
He was over 30, after all, and still single. There were also allegedly external pressures. Charles’s grandmother the Queen Mother reportedly saw the timid Diana as the ideal wife, while his father Prince Philip “pushed” him to either propose or break up with her.
Charles reportedly told Diana he didn’t love her on their wedding day’s eve
The night before a couple’s wedding is supposed to be magical. It’s the final moment of loving calm before the explosion of excitement and festivities. According to one close friend, for Charles and Diana it was the exact opposite.
Speaking in a 2020 documentary, Diana’s friend and personal astrologer Penny Thornton claimed that Charles told Diana he didn’t love her on the eve of their nuptials, which understandably devastated her. Charles also reportedly told his friends hours before the ceremony that Diana was “a child” who didn’t look old enough to be out of school, much less married.
Too late for Diana to back out now
Whether or not Charles truly confided his true feelings to Diana, it seems she had plenty to be worried about regardless. Camilla Parker Bowles, whose name will obviously be appearing here a lot, was a longtime flame of Charles’s. She and Diana were initially friends, it seems, until several incidents piqued her suspicion.
Two weeks before the big day, Charles reportedly gifted a bracelet to Camilla bearing the letter G and F – for Gladys and Fred, their nicknames for one another. Diana was distraught to the point she supposedly told her sisters she couldn’t go through with the wedding. Their reply? She had no choice.
At the time Charles proposed to Diana, the two had only gone out 12 or so times. Still technically a teen, Diana found it difficult to cope with fame, reportedly bursting into tears at the wheel of her car. “I know it’s (their) job, but sometimes I do wish they wouldn’t,” she sadly commented.
Camilla won the final moment with Charles
As if being put under a magnifying glass by the press wasn’t difficult enough, there was another moment that Diana herself said “broke (her) heart.” Just a month after proposing, Charles was getting ready to leave on a five-week tour of Australia and New Zealand.
Diana was reportedly in tears at the prospect of bidding Charles farewell, when suddenly they were interrupted by a phone call. It was Camilla, and the conversation grew so tender that Diana felt obliged to leave the room. It was yet another moment in which she felt she could never compete for his love.
Overhearing Charles’s phone conversation
When Charles and Diana got engaged, Diana left her tiny apartment, which she shared with several roommates, and moved into Charles’s royal residence of Clarence House. Eventually, she left that place as well to move into Buckingham Palace. It was a place of “dead energy,” she recalled, and she felt desperately alone.
Wedding day bliss?
On July 29, 1981, the big day had finally arrived. With 3,500 people in attendance and 750 million watching around the world, Diana Spencer became the Princess of Wales – and Charles’s wife
Can’t escape Camilla
Apparently, even their actual wedding ceremony wasn’t free of heartache. For whatever reason – feel free to speculate – Camilla was invited to attend the wedding. Diana, already aware that something wasn’t kosher in her soon-to-be husband’s relationship with the married woman, not only knew Camilla was there but actively sought her out.
Even speaking years later, she vividly recalled seeing Camilla sitting there ashen gray while she was walking down the aisle. Maybe it was seeing her rival that caused Diana to mix up Charles’s names, calling him Philip Charles Arthur George, instead of Charles Philip…
The fall while pregnant with William
Less than a year after tying the knot, Charles and Diana welcomed their first child, Prince William. The birth of a first child, and the pregnancy that precedes it, are supposed to be some of the happiest times in a couple’s life. Charles and Diana once again bucked the norm
Diana’s butler Paul Burrell remembered hearing a racket one day while Diana was four months pregnant, and found the Princess halfway down a wooden staircase. He was sure she did it on purpose… and in 1992, we found out she had. Apparently, she’d thrown herself down the stairs in a desperate attempt to grab Charles’s attention.
Diana’s postpartum depression
Giving birth to William, it soon turned out, didn’t do much to improve Diana’s spirits. She’d suffered from something many go through, but few dare talk about – postpartum depression. Even the Princess of Wales herself couldn’t bring herself to talk about it in real-time, only revealing it 13 years later.
The Australian tour that changed everything
In 1983, at only 21, the Princess of Wales embarked on her first overseas tour as member of the Royal Family. In fact, it was the first time she’d ever been abroad, period. The 40-day tour of Australia and New Zealand was painstakingly recreated in season four of The Crown, and with good reason. It was a milestone for both the couple and the Royal Family.
A wedge forever driven between them
Before the tour was over, it was clear Diana had gotten her long-held wish – becoming a “queen of people’s hearts.” One expert estimated that she shook hands at least 6,000 times during the tour – and this wasn’t lost on Charles. Reportedly, when the crowds saw him coming to their side of the street during a walkabout, they complained.
Hope for the future of their relationship
When Diana became pregnant again in early 1984, it seemed like there was actually hope for her relationship – for once. In the weeks leading up to the birth, Charles and Diana reportedly became “very, very close” and had been working on their marriage.
Charles’s awful jokes during Harry’s birth
According to Diana herself, their newly-found marital bliss lasted exactly as far as the birth of the baby who would be Prince Harry. Upon seeing Harry for the very first time, Charles’s first comment was, “Oh God, it’s a boy.”
Charles and Diana alone at the Taj Mahal
In early 1992, the entire world got a signal that the Prince and Princess of Wales’s marriage may be on the rocks. While on a royal tour of India with Charles, Diana was snapped sitting alone on a bench on front of the Taj Mahal – one of the most famous symbols of romance.
Diana’s secret involvement in the book that would end her marriage
Whether or not Diana was abusive, Charles was or to some extent they both were, one thing’s clear – if Diana truly wanted out of the marriage, speaking to Andrew Morton would’ve done the trick. There’s no downplaying the explosive Diana: Her True Story, the 1992 tell-all that left no bean unspilled about Diana’s life and relationships.
Originally, the book contained scandalous details attributed to anonymous royal sources. It was only after Diana’s passing in 1997 that Morton revealed the true source – Diana herself, who sat down for six covert taped interviews under the Palace’s nose.
