Some days, when I really think about it, I do hope that Princess Diana’s ghost haunts Prince Charles and Camilla for the rest of their lives. While I think Charles and Camilla are happy and relatively un-haunted, it does piss me off that Diana’s life is being rewritten to fit a certain Charles-centric narrative. Maybe that was always going to happen after her death. But it feels like now that we’re coming up on 20 years since her death, fewer people are questioning the Charles narrative. As we discussed over the weekend, there’s a new biography out called Prince Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life by Sally Bedell Smith. The excerpts are very “Charles did his best to protect and help Diana,” and yet the subtext is always “Charles saw Diana as a mentally ill broodmare and he was still madly in love with Camilla.” So here’s an additional excerpt/interview with the author:
How Charles felt after Diana accepted his proposal: “He was obviously anguished, and he said she was someone I could learn to love,” Bedell Smith tells PEOPLE. “He looked to his grandparents, which wasn’t a love match at the outset and thought if they can do it and build a good marriage then I can do it too.”
Diana barely knew Charles: “I was stunned when I combed over the chronology they had only been together 12 times [before their engagement],” Bedell Smith says. “After they got engaged, he went away for six weeks. He was dutifully plunging ahead with his schedule and she wanted him to be around and available and support her. There she was in Buckingham Palace, which is more like a big office building than anything and forbidding for a 19-year-old.”
Charles wasn’t cynical about love: “I don’t see him as a cynical person, he thought he could learn to love Diana as his grandmother and grandfather learned to love each other and had a great marriage. But because of their fundamental incompatibility and the age gap and her emotional turmoil, it was doomed before they walked down the aisle of St Paul’s Cathedral.”
Duchess Kate was better prepared: “If she had had Kate’s confidence and solid upbringing and nurturing family and academic success – all the things that have helped Kate integrate so seamlessly,” Bedell Smith says.
I don’t think Charles was cynical about love either, but that’s the only part I really agree with here. He was neither cynical nor romantic. He was used to Lord Mountbatten setting him up with eligible girls and reportedly, Charles had proposed – and been turned down – by several women before he even met Diana. He wasn’t looking for true love, he was looking for someone who would just be willing to take the job. As for Kate and all of that… like, I don’t believe that Kate has managed the transition to royal life, because William is too busy transitioning to Middle-Class Middleton Life.
Photos courtesy of WENN, Getty.
I wonder how William would be if Diana would be still alive.
For some reason, I don’t think Diana would have gotten along with Carole Middleton.
I could see William rebelling against her as much as Charles.
The Middletons strove to be royal from middle-class roots. Diana longed for middle class normality for her sons, although they were royal. Each family idolises and romaticises the other side of the fence – and met in the crossing over. But you can’t say on the fence forever: William will have to realise he is royal. If he wants to continue as a member of the royal family, he will have to give up the trappings of middle-class comforts: privacy, intimacy & no obligation to public duty. You can’t be both middle class/private and royal/privileged/rich – there will be a tipping point.
Diana didn’t raise them to be “normal”, She wanted them to have everyday experiences (theme parks, corner shop) while also raising them to be aware of their position and requirement to do royal work.
What William is today is part of his upbringing and character. Also things that happen in life shape us in a way or another. Maybe he would have rebelled against her also, maybe gotten well or falling apart. Who knows?
As for the marriage of Charles and Diana, I can assure you that things like that happen in every class royal, middle, low etc. My parents were 19 and 29 when they were first introduced and after 42 years of marriage and 3 kids they still talk about their first encounter worse than what Charles said : “Whatever love means” . They didn’t love each other at first sight, it was just that they were very good looking but albeit very very different characters. My father thinks he is the smartest guy in the world and my mother doesn’t think he is all that LOL. They stayed together though with little ti no drama
You don’t “learn to love”.Sorry, Chuck.
Actually, you can learn to love. Couples have done it from the beginning of time. However, it takes both people having the desire and making the effort. This couple didn’t have a chance due to completely different personalities, different goals, infidelity on both sides and both of them being damaged and emotionally stunted. A Charlie foxtrot all around.
Didnt the infidelity on her side only begin after she realised he had never given his mistresses up and never would? It was certainly after a period of a few years into the marriage during which her mental health had deteriorated from the loneliness of living in a goldfish bowl surrounded by hostile emotionally unavalable husband and staff members doing his bidding. The point being that by the time she found some affection for herself there was zero hope of a healthy marriage.
CTGIRL you’re correct. Up until very recently people married for convenience and a desire to start a family with someone who had like values. My grandparents did this and were married til death did them part. A lot of Africans and Asian/Indians still do this. When I went overseas on an exchange program in college, the family is stayed with in Korea were going through a screening process of choosing a wife for their eldest son. And this was 2009!
@Craven, I understand your point but, for me, two wrongs don’t make a right. Just because your spouse cheats doesn’t mean that it an excuse to cheat in return. With Charles and Diana there were no villains or saints. Both of them were flawed humans who made really poor choices without any self awareness.
I agree that life rarely gives us villains and saints. But that doesnt mean that we shouldnt examine situations with more compassion for the person who had the least power. The thing that maddens me about Charles is that he has never seemed to acknowledge the immense power imbalance in that relationship even though he exploited it to the hilt. Yes, stealing is wrong. But theres a moral difference between the man who steals because it titillates him and persists in stealing even as his victims beg him to stop, and the man who was conned of everything and desperate to regain his dignity, steals from his conman.
@Craven, the power in that marriage shifted through the years. At the beginning Charles had the power of position and wealth. By the end of the marriage it was Diana who had the power through the press. By her public persona, looks and her position as a young mother who’s husband did her wrong, she was imminently more sympathetic than Charles who was bound to tradition and stodginess come hell or high water. Diana retained her power after the divorce.
Diana lost a great deal of power and goodwill with her post-separation antics.
I tried. I was crushed after the end of a passionate and tormented five year relationship, and decided to marry my friend who loved me. I thought I could treat it like an arranged marriage that I arranged for myself and learn to love him as a husband.
I also tried to fall in love with someone who loved and cared so much about me. It hurt us both after a couple of years of thinking I could “learn to love” but never did. My friends and therapist explained love comes naturally and isn’t something you should have to try to make happen or learn to do
Beth: it depends on your definition of love. We all choose to love and be loved in different ways. Some people don’t think romantic love is necessary and are happy to settle for friendship, compatibility, companionship, shared values etc. These may not come with romantic love, but they can produce a successful, long marriage and somewhere you discover that you love each other rather than ‘being in love’ with each other. And that may be enough.
I’m interested to read these perspectives, because my own is that you can be madly and passionately in love with someone, and that fade and die, and then what matters is what is underneath: are you good friends, are you kind to one another, do you prioritise that relationship over others and see loyalty to that person as essential (and I don’t just mean fidelity, either). Do you have respect for their morals and their mind, and do you have at least some shared interests as well as shared goals.
I’ve fallen in and out of love with my husband several times, but the friendship love and familial love has been a constant. After twenty years, I’m expecting that to be what gets us through the next twenty as well, because life isn’t easy for anyone, and romance isn’t reliable in the way devotion is.
Of course you do. Otherwise arranged marriages wouldn’t work.
I have several Indian friends born in the US who have done it and are happy.
OH, it can happen and has. Marriages were arranged for centuries and many developed into true love.
It didn’t happen for UpChuck and Di, though.
Haha. I’d forgotten about UpCHuck and Di!!
This notion that arranged marriages work so well overlooks the fact that cultures with this system don’t exactly allow for divorces without serious social consequences.
AV: No one is saying that every arranged marriage works well. Some do and some don’t.
Then again, divorce is high among couples who marry when “madly in love”, too.
I think you can learn to love, but for those that are young (as Diana was) and seeking that magical first love feeling, it is not going to end well. Even SBS (and others, including Tina Brown) opined that in the last year or so of Diana’s life, she and Charles grew to appreciate each other and the bond they forged through shared experiences. To me, “learning to love” also involves maturity, growth, etc., that 19 year old virgins who’ve never really dated….don’t understand.
Did Prince Charles approve or give interviews for this book? The world knows that Charles and Diana did not have a fairytale marriage. But I can’t help but think of how William and Harry must feel to have this in the news again and even worse to hear how their father really felt about their late mother.
I agree. She’s been gone for so long. I wish people would let this go. Even though they are grown, they are still her children. I can’t imagine what they have dealt with through all of this.
If he had approved it, I think someone in the royal family would have said so.
I thought Ingrid Seward and Jonathan Dimbleby were acknowledged as his biographers.
This book doesn’t make him look good, so I honestly don’t think he would have approved it.
Charles and Diana had a terrible marriage, but the dynamics of that marriage and why they couldn’t make it work when they both had a lot to offer is the most interesting thing about the royal family (other than George’s facial expressions) so I think books are going to keep on coming. I don’t think it’s a train that can be stopped — Diana makes money for the media, Kate and William don’t. On the one hand, I can understand William’s frustration with everyone’s fascination with his mother. On the other hand, he is pretty dullsville so…let’s go back in time! (I mean, I’m sure that’s the way the media looks at it anyway).
This author wrote a well received biography of the Queen. It’s not inconceivable that ‘sources’ felt comfortable with her to assume she would write a positive biography of Charles.
Despite the Diana click bait, the biography gives a negative portrait of Charles overall.
I think sources would have agreed to talk (for whatever reason — a lot of the information sounds familiar anyway), but usually the royal family seems to outright state outright when a biography has been authorized to some degree. They’re not usually mysterious about that kind of stuff.
This book feels like it could have been written in 1995. Who nowadays would be shocked by the info that Diana and Charles had only met 12 times before marriage? I’m sure there’s an old People magazine from the ’90s that probably has the same info.
The 12-13 times meetings prior to engagement are definitely not new. Every biography about them, individually or collectively mentions it. It’s even in their engagement souvenir magazine (my mum was a fan) though sold as evidence of their true love. The 6wks away was also not hidden because he took the press with him on tour like all tours.
I think the royal men before Sophie were thoughtless about the touring because one of the biggest reason for the demise of Sarah and Andrew was his absence for most of that marriage. According to her autobiography, he was around for about 10th of the 6years they were married.
Didn’t Fergie say she and Andrew had 6 or so weekends away together before their engagement was announced?
LAK – doesn’t Diana talk about the dozen meetings during the conversations she had with the guy who taught her public speaking? I’m sure those are up on YouTube somewhere.
Ultimately, this had been the norm in their circles for a very long time. Most aristo couple right up until after WWII were similar. They had such a limited pool to choose socially acceptable life partners from and I would look at marriage in their circles as not that far from arranged marriages. Like eHarmony with extra social closure! Many happy marriages came from it and also many less happy marriages combined with happier swinging set ups. That’s how they always rolled.
I think it was just unfortunate for Diana and Charles that it happened to them just at the point the aristos were beginning to catch up with the times, as everybody else already had. The marriage was doomed by a combination of the two of them and by the way it came about becoming out-of-date for even their set (well out-of-date for everybody else) at the time it happened.
I will have the book on Saturday!
B: I want to know if it mentions Kanga at all. She’s been effectively written out of the story, hasn’t she? Good thing she’s dead and can’t contradict the new version of events.
I will report in, LAK!
I would love to hear if Kanga is mentioned as well. She, and her family to date have denied the story of an affair. UTube has a long story about her when it comes to detailing the Prince Of Wales lovers, so, or alleged. It is a very interesting story about a woman who died in some sort of royal tantrum – it’s very sad. Diana wore one of Kanga’s designer gowns, and trusted her, at least according to the biography of Lady S Collins? (sorry can’t think of her name, and I threw all the books away about Diana, when I moved… Kanga is a mystery to me, at this point. She rode horses with the Queen…
This is an important detail, about Charles, that is ignored.
Exactly. The sons are adults now, but this must be wrenchingly painful for them to hear/read.
None of this is new. I’ve heard this stuff all before. Diana herself said that they had only met 13 times before getting engaged. I think the “learn to love” stuff from Charles comes from a letter that was leaked during the war of the wales’. Diana knew that C had loved before, knew that he didn’t love her and, in her Barbara Cartland view of romance, assumed that sex with her would fix everything. When the honeymoon proved to be so disappointing, D seized on Camilla as the reason why. Expensive gifts, btw, have long been the sign of ending an illicit relationship — sort of a “let’s be friends” for the rich. I do believe that C ended the affair when he married D, but that wasn’t enough to love D as fully as she needed.
There’s a very interesting piece in the New Yorker about this book (the accompanying cartoon is hysterical):
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/10/where-prince-charles-went-wrong?mbid=social_twitter
Great article – Thank you very much. Diana may not be here to continue or defend, but Charles is not a “bad” guy; often, merely ignorant, but he keeps on trying. That’s the best that can be expected from any one of us.
Charles should have stood up to his parents, he should not have married someone he didn’t love. This “let’s get married and hope for the best” was completely wrong. I blame him and the RF. Diana was a teenager, I can’t imagine what she felt.
After reading the Vanity Fair piece on Charles’ childhood, I have sympathy for him. His father was verbally and emotionally abusive and sent him to schools where he was physical abused, forced to undertake grueling activities and relentlessly bullied. Phillip chose his schools specifically for those attributes. When his father told him to make a decision about Diana I think Charles’ response is more emotionally complex than a simple yes or no question.
Me too.
There are many things to berate Charles for, but this wasn’t the black and white decision that can be tied up in a neat bow of true love/cynicism/hate.
And Charles was an impossible ditherer. It took him 20yrs to decide on Camilla. Would she be in her current position if other mistress hadn’t become ill and died?
Philip was better with Anne, Andrew and Edward. Or perhaps they had more robust personalities unlike Charles.
i agree. And at that point in time the Royal families were all much more conservative. It has only been more recent and maybe because this couple imploded, that the heirs were allowed to pick more unconventional brides (i.e Felipe in Spain). And I remember that there was a lot of pressure on Charles as he had waited so long to pick a bride. It must not have been easy to navigate the family pressure and also all the expectations from the public.
I come from an abusive home and let me tell you that I would never do half the things that thirty year old man did to a girl barely out of her teens. Charles had a million opportunities to turn the situation around over the years and didnt. Instead he behaved like an entitled baby prince to be humored by all around him even as he slowly destroys a fragile human being. No empathy, no compassion just entitlement. I agree with Kaiser, he and his staff are on a mission to sell his self serving bs narrative over the grave of a deadwoman. How entitled can one get?
Craven: Diana was not the fragile woman of popular imagination. See her stepmother, Raine Spencer.
I cannot see Charles approving this, nor the BRF. Too much effort has been spent putting all of this aside to bring it up again now.
Along with whatever Charles spin there has been, there is the ongoing, increasing “Diana was a saint” narrative. Far too many people refuse to see her for the way she really was. If she had lived, she’d be far into Fergie territory by now. Alluding to what ArtHistorian wrote so beautifully on another thread, the passing of time has allowed people to create a very rosy picture of Diana that just wasn’t true.
Craven. 100% with you. Diana was 19 and lived with “inlaws”. What chance did she have without the love and support of her husband. Her husband had the whole establishment behind him. If I were her, I would have been even more insane. It is different to his grand parents. His grand father love and support the woman he married.
Craven – I think it’s hard to say what someone would do in someone else’s place. Even if many situations are similar – people are wired so differently that there’s no way to say that things would have been completely different.
Oshin, they lived at Highgrove not at BP or Windsor. Bertie wanted Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, it is questionable whether she wanted him or his brother David/Edward.
LAK, I think a lot is down to Philip’s childhood too. He may have been a prince, but he came from a hard-scrabble life. He probably thought learning to survive was something Charles needed to do.
I think Edward is as sensitive and artistic as Charles. But by the time Edward came along, Philip was 43 and had figured out his role after the bad-patch. This wasn’t the son he had to toughen up as future king, nor was he HM’s favorite Andrew who got so much of her time. Edward was the kid he could be much more free around, with time, attention, and sensitivity. I’m surprised there isn’t more resentment of Edward from Charles, who seems to point most of it at Andrew.
@LAK, Seriously. She was ignoring her trust fund and title, lived with two other girls, working as a nanny and cleaning lady and taking care of herself at 18/19. She was not some frail, delicate English flower who knew nothing. She’d grown up knowing the royal family as well. I believe she did fall for Charles in a certain young, naive way, and that such a thing was something they took advantage of, but I also don’t think she went in blind and fragile. She wasn’t a super genius or anything, but she was a quick learner and became savvy as Hell. She could stick up for herself and often DID, especially after the divorce. It’s not as if she was forced to marry him, either. He’d been turned down before, including by her sister.
Charles was more of a delicate English flower, in many ways, than she was. His childhood was basically a parade of state and family-sanctioned abuse. He took after his grandfather a lot, and there are a lot of similarities with how they were treated as kids. I can tell you from personal experience that abuse can lead to a lot of emotional immaturity, indecisiveness, and difficulty paying close attention to others (because you’re constantly looking out for the next attack. The slightest things can be terrifying. Even someone, say, shutting a door loudly puts you in defense mode and every argument, criticism, correction, and even attempts at help and instruction feel like a precursor to an attack). Did he do a lot of stupid, inconsiderate shit? Yes. But I’m sick of the “Diana is just the ultimate victim and Charles is the evil, insensitive bastard.”
And one thing you can say for Charles is that despite what an awful husband he was, he did NOT repeat the cycle of abuse with his sons. Now, is it possible he’s coddled William a lot? Yes. But neither Will nor Harry show any sign of abuse, and Charles’s decisions as a father have reflected him being determined to not do to them what his father did to him. Charles and Diana didn’t leave the boys behind all the time, he supported sending them to Eton, he protected them from the press, and was there for them after Diana’s death. And that is majorly to his credit. At this point, I’d much rather hear about Charles as a parent than having all this Diana stuff yanked up again.
This biography is painting a negative picture right now, though, with the Diana stuff. But apparently it’s what everyone else wants to read, so…
WendyNerd, she may have “ignored” the trust fund, but she lived off it. She was living in a flat purchased with her trust fund and the flatmates were carefully screened and selected. She was working, yes, but she wasn’t supporting herself.
WendyNerd /Nota: yep.
Throw in her pushy family who had to enjoin with the royal family at all costs, who were very aware and proud of their lofty lineage.
So much has been written about the Windsors and Charles in this scenerio and the machinations of the Spencers is overlooked.
The hypocrisy of her brother’s eulogy when he had refused to help her when she asked……
“I’m surprised there isn’t more resentment of Edward from Charles, who seems to point most of it at Andrew.”
Edward doesn’t seem to be the screw-up that Andrew is. Andrew is straight-up embarrassing.
I meant more on the personal side. Charles seems to resent Andrew, often attributed to the fact that Andrew is the Queen’s favorite. Charles doesn’t seem to resent Edward, who is Prince Philip’s favorite.
Much of the work Charles does, especially with sustainable agriculture, is following in Philip’s footprints. If he does this in part to gain Philip’s approval, the fact that he doesn’t resent Philip’s favorite surprises me.
I am not sure why I feel I have to keep rehashing this ancient history, but it frustrates me that so many facts that were known at the time seem to be completely lost.
Diana and Charles did not “live with the inlaws”. After the first year of marriage, they moved from Buckingham Palace to Kensington Palace, where Diana lived until her death. Their country house was Highgrove.
If you can find and read Tina Brown’s Vanity Fair piece called “The Mouse that Roared”, it is a good read on the power dynamics in the Chuck/Di relationship. After the first year or so, Diana really started pushing her media narrative, and by 1987, she held most of the power in the relationship.
I am not sure why people keep wanting to turn her into a naive victim. For the bulk of her adult life, she was anything but. The Spencer family have always been crafty players, and she was the best of the best.
Charles is of course, hardly blameless. Lots can be laid at his door, too.
@ notasugarhere – Exactly. The flat was paid for and you can bet your life she couldn’t have afforded the upkeep of it out of her nanny’s wages. Even with flatmates.
Charles was in a difficult position because any bride he chose not only had to belong to his own social circle, she also had to be a virgin – that practically guaranteed that she would have to be a naïve, inexperienced teenager.
It’s interesting to watch the expectations of what morality consists of, shifting with this royal marriage. This comprises a shift, in all our thinking.
I must say I love Diana. Being an English princess, it did take some time. Her beauty of body and soul are extraordinary, in any one of us. Perhaps Charles could not love her, but her sons, and the rest of the world did.
Charles can’t change his story – lovers of Diana are everywhere. Perhaps we identify with her feelings of hopelessness – and the fierceness with which she attempted to continued her story. “Go, girl!”
However, the narrative of the Prince of Wales is that he was also a victim.
I understand – he was a victimized Prince…isn’t that his excuse? He was a victim of his parents and the entire royal system… I do have compassion for Prince Charles ignorance’s, He has tried to hard, ever since, to be a good person. I admire him, at this point.
Diana is lost to us, and we miss her.
This is serious – if the Prince of Wales wants to have healthy contact with his children, he needs to acknowledge her as a very decent human being.
Can I just say these throwback pics are such a joy on this cold Friday morning? Thanks Kaiser!
Seriously I don’t want to sound like a crazy Diana Stan, I know she had her issues…but damn, she was just otherworldly. And it wasn’t just her beauty, it was her aura. And she knew how to dress. My husband met her shortly before she died here in the states for one of her events and he said she glowed. Literally. And that her blue eyes were like nothing he’d ever seen.
Sigh. I had such high hopes for Kate.
Diana had an ‘it’ factor, you can see glimpses of it in Harry.
Any book about Charles is going to include a lot about Diana. I also don’t think he had anything to do with this as it makes him look bad and he is all about making himself look good.
It makes me so sad to see the old pictures where she is just beaming and he is so blasé. Maybe they had only met a dozen times, but she was a teenager and she obviously fell head over heels for him and had no idea what she was doing.
Adele, I too grew up watching Diana from the very beginning.
I was so young, it took a long time for me to understand, theirs was an arranged marriage.
I absolutely adored her. She seemed everything a Princess should be.
As an adult now, with my own children, I have of course, come to understand that very few real life fairy tales exist. They were both flawed humans , as we all are.
Charles was a 33 yr old Man when he wed her.
Clearly, he knew she was absolutely in love with him.
To this day, when I see photos of her especially film footage, I still tear up.
It’s strange. She had a huge impact on so many peoples lives. She was so compassionate. She too had suffered as a child.
My Mother, sisters and I cried for days following her death.
I also cried for Robyn Williams.
I have a contened and full life…but I do miss them. 🙁
It’s strange, the day that the person you love no longer has movement. The death of Diana was like a death in our own family. She was just that special.
So many call this a media image – but the rest of us know her as a woman, that we admired, identified with, and appreciated her willingness to always try hope. It’s difficult to be fighter – Charles became one, after her. But how can we not love this beautiful woman who tried so hard, with “love” confusing…all of us.
THANK YOU!!!! It ticks me off when people conveniently forget what a horrible douche he was with Diana. And Camilla will always be a pitbull to me.
Ugh why go there? What a jerk. And I don’t want to hear about how Diana had problems. She was 19 flipping years old. Let the mother of your children RIP. Accept responsibility keep your mouth zipped. Enjoy your life now. STOP!!!
Charles didn’t write this book. It’s doubtful he even authorized anything in it.
He didn’t write the book but the rumor is he was amicable to the writers. If he leaked or allows his friends to leak he is truly a jerk.
This book makes him look very bad and undoes years of positive PR. I cannot see him approving this publication.
@suze +1 You could bet your bottom dollar that Charles would be more than happy if there was never another book written about them. I can remember when I heard the Diana had dies thinking that should would forever be the beautiful young person who never aged, and that he would never stand a chance against that, whatever he did.
@ suze +1. You can bet your bottom dollar that Charles would be more than happy if there was never another book written about them. I can remember when I heard she had died thinking that he would always be up against the never ageing memory of beautiful young woman who would never age.
I just think it is a great pity that he didn’t marry Camilla in the first place, because i think once they did it was the first time in his life that he has been really happy.
I agree with everyone. I believe petty Charles wants his version of things out there again because of the 20th anniversary of Diana’s death this year and William and Harry are planning ‘year long celebrations’ according to The Express.
He and Camilla always had their hatchet team to do their bidding in the press. She spoke to the Sun on a weekly basis, Penny Junor pushed the ‘Diana has a personality disorder’ angle etc. It is sick making. He is really pushing his tour of Italy with Camilla lately, the DM has tons of stories and pictures. He seems to have a bee in his bonnet and can’t help but think how great it is that Harry has taken up banning landmines issue from his lovely mother Diana.
I cannot seriously believe he has had anything to do with this book. Why should he, it just drags everything up again?
And the DM always has lots of RF stories.
Charles never cared about Diana’s needs – except as any stranger you might meet somewhere. He called her “into protocol”, to define their relationship, while certainly his relations with other women had nothing to do with protocol – they were “confidants” – protocol that perhaps as a 19 years old girl, she was not terribly familiar with .
Whatever — perhaps all modern women should take note on the pinnings of a truly wonderful marriage – which is all that Diana wanted – sexual peace and love. All Diana demonstrated in her life – was her need to love others.
I’m sorry, the only thing that is news to me here is that Kate has enjoyed academic success. She has? Because she finished uni? What?
I laughed my head off at that comment. Academic opportunity, yes, success, no.
I chuckled too! Its funny coming on the heels of an article from DM two days ago with the headline “Is Kate’s faithful flunkey set to take top job? PA could become Duchess’s private secretary after accompanying her at series of engagements” The gal, Sophie Agnew, has the exact same degree as Kate. “Like Kate, Agnew, 30, is a St Andrews history of art graduate, but she doesn’t seem to mind doing menial tasks. “
She got a 2:1 in Art History at St Andrews.
“Kate’s confidence” – Kate doesn’t seem to be very confident, she’s always hiding behind her long hair etc. jmo
The curtain of hair.
Well, Charles as the misbegotten hero is one way of looking at it. Diana as total victim is another. Both are extreme version of what probably happened.
The truth is more mundane, I am sure. It’s obvious that they were horribly wrong for each other. Each brought baggage into the marriage, each needed to be supported and cared for and neither was great at being the supportive one in a relationship. It was never ever going to work. They both sucked at that marriage, both of them. The only difference is Charles is still alive and his story is still being revisited, while Diana’s is fading. Which is not fair.
The thing that I think gets lost in all of this is that Diana was a spectacular Princess of Wales. She was utterly terrific at her job. She made Charles much better at his. And she dragged the royal family into the 20th century – 75 years into it. That narrative should never be lost.
But Charles was so much older. If they were both 19 I’d say dumb kids. But Charles was a grown ass man. He bares a lot more responsibility.
In the beginning, up to Harry’s birth, they were, if not over the moon happy, relatively functional, maybe even content. They always had underlying issues, but it wasn’t the War of the Wales from the beginning. There are lots of photos of the two of them actually enjoying one another’s company. The whole “fairytale marriage” wasn’t entirely true, but it was based on some good times.
By the time the real rift occurred and the marriage was beyond repair, both were grown ass people and can bear equal responsibility.
As Suze says they were happy(ish) until Harry was born, thats when the marriage started falling apart. Both Chuck and Di said this – they tried to make it work but there were emotional issues on both side and the age gap didn’t help.
@Suze, but if they were really happy (or even functional) in the beginning, why is there a story that Diana threw herself down the stairs, while pregnant & infront of the Queen, because Charles was still seeing Camilla? I don’t know if that story has actually been confirmed, so maybe it isn’t true, but if it is, Diana was obviously unstable (being pregnant hormones can also make that worse) & Charles wasn’t even trying to make things work if he was seeing Camilla on the side. I definitely understand that Diana wasn’t perfect & in the end made some pretty bad choices of her own, but I can’t help but wonder how things might have turned out if Charles had actually tried to make their marriage work & he definitely wasn’t trying too hard when he was keeping in contact with Camilla.
Char: that was a story Diana told that was an exaggeration at best or an outright lie at worst. Both things Diana was good at especially when she was out for revenge.
There are enough pictures about the interior design of Balmoral house to throw doubt on her version of events.
Or as one of her childhood nannies said, stop telling fibs Diana.
@Char, that story appeared in Andrew Morton’s book on Diana and was related to him by Diana. At the time it happened, everyone thought she just tripped and there was no dramatic “throwing oneself down the stairs.”
There has been a lot of rewriting of history by all the players in the drama, including by Diana and Charles. It makes sense that both of them would try to portray themselves in the best light.
@LAK thank you, I just heard that story last year, maybe even on this site, so I had no idea Diana was the one who told it. I definitely think they were not a good match, but I have the tendency to want to feel sorry for Diana more because of her age & Charles’ unwillingness to let go of Camilla (I mean, could he have made a marriage work to anyone other than Camilla, with the way he was seemingly obsessed with her?). But it is interesting to hear the other side of things as well.
@Suz, thank you, that is where I heard the story from- people talking about that book. & while it did make me feel bad for Diana, that Charles was seeing Camilla while she was pregnant, it also seems like a story she should have realized made her sound seriously unstable, that she would throw herself down stairs while pregnant.
Char: the Andrew morton book is full of fibs and Diana herself came to regret writing the book (Andrew was her ghostwriter). It was written at a lowpoint in her life. Emotional and seeking revenge for all the ills of her life at that moment. She wanted to ruin Charles out of revenge and that book did such a good job of her goal that Charles is still fighting off those fibs. Think of that book as Diana’s literary panorama interview complete with manipulation and fibs. It achieves it’s goals because no matter what bad thing Diana admits to doing, she presents herself as a victim who was driven to such extreme action by people who had set out to behave this way from the first day they met her, who’d never loved her and were incapable of such emotion towards her.
Diana,being such a publicly emotional and emotionally intelligent person, was believed with few people willing to see beyond this cry for help.
If you want to read a more balanced book on Diana, i’d recommend Tina Brown or Sarah Bradford’s books. They don’t absolve Charles, but they are more balanced in their presentation.
Yes to this. All of it.
LAK – it seems to me as though you are a Charles apologist. In my opinion, they both consider themselves as victims, which has nothing to do with what they have accomplished. It’s just victim theology.
There are real victims in life – and victor/victim both have a story to tell… Quite frankly, it is easier to believe Diana, because she was not part of the royal family, and was only thinking of herself, her children, and her dreams about how life should be played out. Perhaps we are all victims of our dreams – while we try to bring them into being. Honestly, we are wrong about so many things…
Wolfpup: Diana wasn’t a saint, and Charles wasn’t the devil. I refuse to rewrite history even if that seems like i write more positive things about Charles and keep pointing out Diana’s lies. She’s been diefied on those lies and that means she won even if she’s dead.
Diana wasn’t the victim of your imagination. She was sinned against AND sinned herself. Her victims have no redress because they are pitted against a saint. Everyone from Raine Spencer to William via nannies, friends, wives of her lovers, staff and yes, even Charles.
Yes to much of this. They were wrong for each other, destined to fail no matter what. They married the idea of each other, not the reality. Good princess material, royal white knight straight out of Barbara Cartland that couldn’t divorce her.
Charles was already well on his way to being a good Prince of Wales before she came along. Prince’s Trust was founded at 28, they married when he was 33. She had no interest (and was no support) in his big interests of employment, architecture, community planning, sustainable agriculture, organic farming – and those are the areas in which he has done great work.
Promoting a different image of royalty was positive and negative. Philip tried in The Royal Family documentary, which ended up showing them as “too normal”. Diana did bold things, including work with lepers and AIDS sufferers. She also acted like a celebrity, especially after the first few years. She liked the attention, was obsessed with it, and played many many PR games to get herself on the front pages Her Way. That has been detrimental to the BRF, esp with W&K acting like celebrities and forgetting that the royal life style comes with a requirement to work.
I love that she took the attention afforded her, and gave it to lepers, AIDS sufferers, and land mines.
I don’t see Charles as the “bad guy.” I think they just had different expectations of what their marriage would be from the start. Charles, being older and looking at things pragmatically, probably thought, “She’ll make a good Princess of Wales and I hope, in time, I will grow to love her.”
Diana, on the other hand, was a starry-eyed 19 year old who felt as though she were marrying Prince Charming. I’m sure she had all sorts of romantic notions in her head of what her life would be like. Her disappointment in the reality of marriage to a prince must have been tremendous.
We all, like Diana, wanted the fairytale to be true. Most of us know by now, tat life is not a fairytale; however, she did make a wonderful princess.
Unfortunately for Kate, she does not have Diana’s “it factor.”
Look at the many choices in her life – she cared for the poor among Us – which made her a very popular princess.
They were not suited for each other, and should have not married. They divorced as they should have, as neither loved each other. Diana wasnt a saint, Charles wasnt a saint. The early years was his fault as she was still very much a child. But let’s be honest, if the War of the Wales was able to play out till the end I think Diana would have lost. She was going to more and more extreme levels to get attention and using the kids. The press would have turned eventually (build them up to tear them down); royal press know where their bread and butter is. The sad and senseless way she died has made her an untouchable characature of herself. She was a great lady who did many great things, but she was human too. I don’t think wishing Charles bad karma is the answer to their awful marriage. And I doubt he got away with it as he gets negative press for Camilla to this day. See article.
I don’t wish him bad karma and had mostly forgiven him. But if he really did leak to the authors then he’s a grade a sleaze. How disrespectful to his kids and grandkids to rehash this stuff.
Its unlikely he leaked etc.. as it makes him look bad and he would never do or support anything that made himself look bad.
Goodness, leave the woman rest in piece! It’s been almost 20 years, we get that they had issues, we get that neither of them were saints, we get that Diana was paranoid because of what the royals would have done to her!
Why are they still trying to make a profit from her name?
The book is about Charles so it has to deal with his first marriage, at least to a degree. I don’t think this falls under the category of a Diana profit grab.
Diana was what may be termed a “superstar”. She raised the bar for the royal family – we still talk about her still, and royalty, because she was.
It was basically an arranged marriage, but without anyone actually thinking about things like “compatibility”. Charles proposed like she was the last marriageable girl on the shelf and he’d better not miss her.
Yep.
Further to your last point, it’s creepy as hell that the woman who accepted and withdrew from an engagement prior to Diana has/had a passing resemblance to Diana.
So whilst Charles picked Diana for various reasons, her physical resemblance to previous girlfriend always makes me pause.
http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/anna-wallace-a-friend-of-prince-charles-who-spent-the-news-photo/52119150?esource=SEO_GIS_CDN_Redirect#anna-wallace-a-friend-of-prince-charles-who-spent-the-weekend-hunting-picture-id52119150
Is it weird that I don’t actually find that weird? It just means he has a “type”. Or maybe I just have a high threshold for weird.
I just have a hard time getting super worked up on this subject. It was a marriage that went bad. She wasn’t a saint, he wasn’t a horrible monster. The whole “how dare he!” line of thinking is still so weird to me.
I find it creepier that Camilla looks like Charles’s nanny Mabel, and Kate Middleton resembles Tiggy L-B.
I always thought Anna Wallace was his best looking girlfriend. I bet she feels she dodged a bullet, though.
Bridget: i understand that people have types, but i still find that creepy.
In the case of Charles and William, despite their efforts to go elsewhere, they both settled for women who resemble their nannies and that is creepiest of all.
Suze: i bet she does.
Anna Wallace has a great haircut – that is the only resemblance in a photograph to Diana – beside the tweeds. So who got it first, Anna, or Diana? And who cares about types – Harry should inform you all about types…
She was a naive child and he should have known better. He used her and then treated her like garbage. Learn to love her??????? She WAS loveable and deserved so much better.
Charles is still the entitled, self-absorbed man-child he has always been. True he is very cultured and educated, but he is lacking the ability to see beyond himself and take care of others personally. His choice of Camilla was based on many factors and her willingness to aide and abet him in any way that she could. Diana simply got caught up in this mess because she had her own issues and need to be validated. I bet a psychiatrist could write a treatise on all of the players in this drama. But at the end of the day, it still remains that Diana’s life was over prematurely and could have been so much more.
Her death is such a loss, for all of us. There have been few beloved women in time – every detail of history goes to men – unless we bring up Marie Antoinette or some such, and call them bitches. Patriarchy lives well, and tells our stories. Women are not treated well in historical reflection –
I read another long excerpt of this book, and it was about Charles and not flattering in the least, the opposite.
She fuckin’ fought tooth and nail, didn’t she?
How insulting to compare Diana to Kate. They truly are very different and Diana worked tirelessly for her charities, something Duchess Kate has not done and probably will not do.
I was actually just enjoying that line! I think it’s meant as shade to Kate, who came to the relationship as an adult with a much better education, etc. Diana was a teenager when she started and she did really wonderful work.
Off topic, but doesn’t it concern some of you that one day William Will be head of the Church and he isn’t religious or possibly believe in God? Was Diana religious? Did she believe in God?
Henry the 8th was the head of the Church of England too. And research some popes and their histories. I’m not an atheist but I think people who have any nostalgic notions about religious organizations and monarchies etc are niave.
That honeymoon picture is the happiest shot of them I’ve ever seen. And they both look great.
TBO I don’t care about the British royal families in general, including late Diana, but this seems to tacky. She’s not around to defend herself. Charles and whomever is publishing that book should feel ashamed of themselves.
I agree with all the posters who refuse to buy into the Pollyanish, rose-coloured-spectacles hindsight view of Diana. Her nickname, “Duch” (for Duchess), was given to her for a reason – even prior to getting involved with Charles, she could be arrogant, willful and condescending. The work she did, i.e. looking after little children and housekeeping, was pretty much what many young, rich, titled women did in those days as they generally didn’t have an education and needed to do something to fill their time before marrying. She was not “school” smart and barely passed her O-levels. She once described herself as “thick as two posts” but certainly rose above her intellectual shortcomings to utilize her charisma, ability to connect with people and her compassion for the have-nots.
But their marriage was a perfect storm from the get-go. Both of them tried to force each other to become something they weren’t. Charles was a cerebral stuffed shirt with his head in the clouds and Diana was emotional, demanding and wanted a fairy-tale love story of a marriage.
I’ve often thought that Diana suffered from Borderline Personality Disorder – she took her father’s coldness very personally and loathed her stepmother, which produced a fear of abandonment – the basis of BPD. Sufferers show a recurring pattern of instability in relationships, efforts to avoid abandonment, identity disturbance, impulsivity, emotional instability, and chronic feelings of emptiness, among other symptoms. They may even demonstrate self-injury behaviors (risky sexual behaviors, cutting, suicide attempts). Sound familiar?
You may be right, that Diana was distressed and showing the signs of BPE. Most modern psychiatrists now recognize there is a flaw in her support system, that would make her lash out so…
I don’t know how else to say this – STFU.
Who cares? It’s been 30 years and he was under pressure that none of us can imagine.
The bits about his grandparents “learning to love each other” is bollocks. His grandfather was desperately in love with Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon – he fell in love with her practically at first sight at a dance around 1920. She turned Prince Albert down twice before finally accepting his third proposal, but in the intervening three years, is when she probably realized what a decent man he was. And his mother had the man she had a passionate crush on sent out of the country so that Bertie, as they called him, had a clear path. Elizabeth may not have been madly in love with Prince Albert when she finally accepted him, but he remained totally in love with her for the rest of their lives. She also had enormous strength of character and was far more emotionally mature than Diana was. She was the main reason he made a success of kingship when his older brother abdicated. I don’t think there was a real equivalence between Prince Albert, who was at the time of his marriage to Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon the second son, and Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, who had had a very happy childhood with a close-knit family, and was clear-sighted and well suited to royal life. No equivalence in situation or characters, in my opinion.
As you admit yourself, she had to learn to love him. He may have been crazy about her from the start, but she wasn’t crazy about him. Long-discussed rumors of her thinking she should have landed Edward/David instead. Part of why she hated Wallis so much.
Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon is the ancestor who connects me to the throne. She was a drunk – no matter how her character and will is defined. Not that I am against the wine..she did a great job with her daughter, Elizabeth. She is the most believable person about the royal family – even though she was never a part of it – other than “Queen Mother”.
what rubbish for Charles to say that. he never stopped sleeping with Camilla and thought he could do as he pleased. life doesn’t work that way. you were an adulterer when you married a virgin and threw her on your trash heap by flaunting Camilla in her face. you will never be king
God will never allow you onto the throne
There is no such thing as the god you desire.
Kate hasn’t integrated seamlessly. She is a waste of money and wasting a lot of money. She seems to be rather poorly educated judging by her comments and her lack of appreciation for arts or history or by her lack of speaking any foreign language somewhat fluently or by her lack of giving a presentation/speech. Seriously, this is Europe. Speaking at least 1 foreign language fluently is kind of the minimum standard. The minimum standard for A-levels or Abitur in most countries is speaking 2 foreign languages otherwise no university admission. If you consider that GB is part of the Commonwealth and that the Queen is head of the Commonwealth you really have to expect somebody like Kate to speak at least 1 foreign language fluently.
Kate hasn’t adjusted to Royal life but merely to living royally.
In 2004 the govt stopped making it compulsory for foreign languages to be taught up to GCSE level.
Miles out of date. With very few exceptions, almost all schools must follow the EBacc curriculum to GCSE – English, Maths, a science, History or Geography, a modern foreign language. Five required subjects of the 8-10 the kids will take.
(I won’t comment on how “fluent” in a language a GCSE makes you.)
Obviously, speaking in foreign languages is no longer a requirement to flout jewels and clothing – not that the duchess can do this well. She is a carbon coy of her mother, a wannabe – never royal. Pardon me, she had children from a royal, and therefore her pussy is now royal as well..
Omg that last picture is like me and my ex – she’s sorta happy and grabbing his hand, not very confident in her standing in this relationship, and he… he’s just physically there, pretty absent-mindedly. What a brutal reality it is, to wake up to the fact that he doesn’t love you after all
Yep – it hurts a whole lot.
Ironically, I just finished reading “Charles and Camilla: Portrait of a Love Affair” by Gyles Brandreth. It’s from 2005 – shortly after the marriage of the two. The author researched in depth all three of the principals in the Charles-Diana-Camilla triangle. Kanga, the other long-time mistress was mentioned briefly.
Charles and Diana were both described as being “extremely needy” people. He not having felt loved by either of his parents and she having felt abandoned by her mother leaving when she was very young and her father’s later remarriage. Neither was a source of comfort for the other. Ever.
Camilla was described as having come from a supportive and loving home – and with the humorously named, well-acknowledged family “f**k gene. Thus the “My great-grandmother was the mistress of your great-grandfather. How about if we have a go?” She was an “available” and non-demanding type. She “chased after” husband Andrew Parker Bowles in an on-again off-again relationship for seven years before they married. She had met and dallied with Charles during one of their “off-again” periods (so they said) but Charles went to sea for 6 months and she promptly got engaged to Andrew.
She and Charles hooked up again a few years later (if they ever really discontinued) and would attend balls and parties where they would “dance all night while French kissing” in front of all in attendance including her husband. Andrew had been a known bedhopper ever since Camilla met him. Apparently they must have had an arrangement.
Camilla was very involved in Charles choosing Diana as a wife. She thought Diana was a good choice and described her as “a mouse”. (Thus the Tina Brown story “The Mouse That Roared”.)
Very shortly before the wedding Diana finally figured out what was going on with Charles and Camilla. She had already developed “bulimia nervosa” over having to move into Buckingham Palace all by herself while Charles went on some weeks long official trip. About a week before the wedding she found evidence that Charles was still seeing Camilla and expressed to her sister that she felt like a “sacrificial lamb”. Her family told her she could not back out of the wedding. She was 19.
Diana was a virgin and apparently neither the wedding night or the ensuing honeymoon went very well. Diana later described Charles’ overall sexual performance as “woefully inadequate”. (We can presume Camilla was either not as picky or was being satisfied by her husband enough that it did not matter?)
In any case, Charles was calling Camilla from the honeymoon ship and continued to call and see her regularly despite Diana requesting that he not see or talk to her. He refused, saying, “But she’s my good friend.”
Years and years went by and Camilla and Charles kept on with their “good friendship”. Is there anyone here who, under these circumstances, would not have been driven half crazy? Who might not feel a bit of malice?
I think Charles (and Camilla) did a terrible, terrible disservice to Diana. And he wasn’t even all that nice to her. He was a self-centered jerk, basically, who surrounded himself with a bunch of lackeys. People who told him how outstandingly brilliant he is, when he is not. (Notice during the famous Camillagate tape where he expresses his wish to be a tampon, in other parts of that conversation Camilla takes the time to tell him what a brilliant, wonderful person he is. And she’s another one about whom he said, “she understands me like no other woman”)
I’m sure Charles is not all bad, but he did a rotten thing to Diana and was not nice about it when she had had enough. It was HIS friends putting out the rumors that she was mentally ill (she wasn’t per a psychiatrist who treated her for her eating disorder).
Diana did a whole lot more to help people, to bring attention to diseases, etc. than Charles ever did or even has now. He’s still known as a crank to this day. And I’d imagine there are a whole lot of Brits who don’t look forward to Camilla as their future Queen.
The tampon reference never fails to make me feel me like throwing up.
I must say that I’m really over the Saint Lady Diana archetype (God rest her soul). I think the media’s portrayal of her is like the glossy image that the media gave to Angelina after she started adopting kids and doing charity work. I think William can be really manipulative and controlling and he gets it from his mother. I think she crossed boundaries with her children because she was a really young unstable mother. She had bulimia throughout her entire first pregnancy and even threw herself down the stairs. Your children should never ever be your crutch, you are the parent at all times and can’t rely on a child for emotional support (it’s unfair).
Anyway, I think Charles did what he thought he had to do; Marry an eligible, aristocratic woman who would do what Catherine is doing right now (heir, spare, keep quiet). It’s unfortunate that he didn’t get to choose like William.
Perhaps I agree with you. One may never be a human being, only a super-hero when one has children. Diana is not an archetype at this point – too many try to harm her vision of life.
Parents do rely on their children for emotional support – unfair, maybe, but you get a live mother!
I really hate how men push this mental instability idea about former lovers. Its misogynistic and wrong. If a woman is unhappy, depressed, feels stuck or any of the above she is seen as mentally unstable. Of course Diana was crushed to find out her husband was in love with someone else & always had been! Who wouldn’t be? That doesn’t make her sick. It makes her sane. Chuck used her, abandoned her and was obviously an unsupportive tool then her life ended in tragedy. What a waste.