In the fourth season of Netflix's The Crown, a new generation was introduced to the heartbreaking
Charles and Diana story. While the show is somewhat fictionalized, it does provide a
tantalizing look at the troubled marriage. Let's fill in the blanks with the full story
of why Prince Charles and Princess Diana divorced.
Prince Charles and Princess Diana's marriage was publicly portrayed as a fairy tale romance.
And at the time, Diana did think herself in love with Charles; as she told her biographer
Andrew Morton,
"I remember being so in love with my husband that I couldn't take my eyes off him. I just
absolutely thought I was the luckiest girl in the world."
Sadly, the truth of the matter was that Charles and Diana were practically strangers at the
time of their wedding. In fact, they'd only met a handful times before tying the knot.
In Diana's personal tapes, recorded with her voice coach Peter Settelen in 1992, she revealed
that she and Charles had, quote, "met 13 times and we got married."
Additionally, in these 13 meetings, Charles and Diana were rarely alone. As royal biographer
Penny Junor explained to History Extra,
"They really didn't know one another at all."
While Diana may have thought herself in love at the time of her marriage, it's fairly evident
that Charles didn't feel the same way. When asked if they were in love, Charles infamously
replied,
"Whatever 'in love' means."
At the time of their wedding, Prince Charles was 32, while Princess Diana was just 20;
she was 19 at the time of the proposal.
With more than a decade separating the couple, it's easy to see how they may have been mismatched
from the beginning. At the time, however, few people seemed perturbed by the age disparity.
Charles even joked about the age gap in an interview for The Guardian, saying,
"I think that Diana will keep me young, apart from anything else."
However, as time went on, it became clear that the age gap did cause some serious problems
in the marriage. Diana was, after all, remarkably young at the time of her marriage. The 12-year
gap meant that their personalities were poorly suited for one another. In fact, it's widely
believed to be one of the most significant factors in their eventual divorce.
Because of Princess Diana's youth and inexperience, she was woefully unprepared for the dramatic
life changes that came with becoming a royal. In The Firm, royal biographer Penny Junor
described Diana as being, quote, "little more than a child when she first arrived, totally
unprepared for the life that lay ahead and completely out of her depth."
While Diana was expecting to live a real life fairy tale, the reality of becoming a royal
was vastly different. As Diana once said to E! News,
"The day I walked down the aisle at St Paul's Cathedral, I felt that my personality was
taken away from me, and I was taken over by the royal machine."
It wasn't just the responsibility of entering the royal family that plagued Diana– it
was also the intrusive media attention that came with it.
Diana revealed in interviews that the non-stop media attention was a, quote, "isolating experience."
That pressure eventually contributed to her divorce from Prince Charles.
"The higher the media puts you -- places you -- the bigger the drop. And I was very aware
of that."
"As far as I was concerned, I was a fat, chubby 20-year-old, 21-year-old, and I couldn't understand
the level of interest."
Marriages rarely work when one party's affections lie elsewhere, whether royal or not. Notably,
Prince Charles had dated Camilla Parker Bowles in the early 1970s.
As journalist Jonathan Dimbleby put it, "he lost his heart to her almost immediately."
But by 1973, Camilla was herself engaged to Andrew Parker Bowles. Nevertheless, it seemed
that Charles was never able to get over his feelings for Camilla — after all, they eventually
married in 2005!
As Karen Mooney, who once worked in the royal household, said to The Sun, Charles was, quote,
"desperately unhappy" married to Princess Diana. She said,
"Obviously, he was in love with Camilla Parker Bowles at the time but he was the next in
line to the throne, so he had to find somebody to bear his heirs and he did what was expected
of him."
For Charles, the marriage was merely an alliance based on royal duty, and he was unable to
give Diana the love she craved in the early years of their marriage. Not surprisingly,
the couple later divorced.
Princess Diana struggled with bulimia, depression, and anxiety throughout her time with Prince
Charles. In 1995, she told the BBC the eating disorder was a symptom of the dysfunction
that was taking hold in her new marriage.
In her interviews for Andrew Morton's biography, she said her struggle with bulimia started
the week after she got engaged to Charles. As she recalled,
"My husband put his hand on my waistline and said something like, 'Oh, a bit chubby here,
aren't we?' And that triggered off something in me."
Within months of getting married, Diana's mental health deteriorated further, to the
point where she later recalled, quote, "I was about to cut my wrists."
"When no one listens to you, or you feel no one's listening to you, all sorts of things
start to happen. For instance, you have so much pain inside yourself that you try and
hurt yourself on the outside."
She sought treatment, seeing multiple psychiatrists who reportedly put her on high levels of medication.
But as Diana later put it, "time, patience, and adapting that was all that was needed."
Reportedly, Charles didn't deal with Diana's mental illness well. According to the Daily
Mail, he didn't understand her emotional outbursts and tried to seek out help. Charles was reportedly
so distressed by these events that he ended up seeing a therapist himself for 14 years.
According to Princess Diana's interviews, Prince Charles was rarely there to support
her throughout their marriage. When it came to her struggles with mental health, Diana
alleged that Charles said she was, quote, "crying wolf."
She recalled one instance where she described herself as sad, desperate, and crying her
eyes out. When Charles ignored her, she threw herself down the stairs. In response, she
said,
"Charles went out riding."
Diana also claimed that Charles and the rest of the royal family offered no support when
it came to the aggressive and intrusive press attention. As she recalled, there were often
over 30 photographers waiting outside her home:
"I got no support from Charles or the press office. They just said, 'You're on your own."
It's easy to see how Charles' lack of support could lead to tension within the marriage,
and eventually a divorce.
During her relationship with Prince Charles, Princess Diana became one of the most popular
royals in history. "Di-mania" gripped the nation, and even the world.
As Ingrid Seward, editor of Majesty Magazine, explained to Time, her fame was astronomical,
to the extent that, quote, "No one in the Royal Family had experienced it before."
Eventually, Diana became known as the "People's Princess."
As Diana revealed in her 1995 interview with BBC's Martin Bashir , when the couple were
out on public tours, the crowds would be clamoring to get a glimpse of her.
"Now, if you're a man like my husband, a proud man, you mind about that if you head it every
day for four weeks. And you feel low about it instead of feeling happy and sharing it."
She also explained that Charles couldn't share her happiness at being loved by the public.
In fact, he made it hard for her to enjoy any of the public affection.
"With the media attention came a lot of jealousy. A great deal of complicated situations arose
because of that."
Of course, one of those situations was their eventual divorce.
Eventually, things became so strained and unpleasant between Princess Diana and Prince
Charles, they sought love and affection elsewhere; both parties are known to have had affairs
throughout the marriage.
Four years into their union, Diana fell in love with her bodyguard, Barry Mannakee. She
also had an affair with Officer James Hewitt, who was reportedly snuck into Kensington Palace
in the boot of the princess's car.
In 1986, Charles reportedly began an affair with Camilla Parker Bowles. It's clear that
this affair put a serious strain on the relationship, and led to Diana becoming suspicious and jealous.
As she revealed in private interview tapes for Andrew Morton, Diana once confronted Camilla
at a party, where she later recalled saying,
"I do know what is going on. Don't treat me like an idiot".
Charles eventually admitted the affair in 1994.
Winning over the mother-in-law can be tough in the best of times for anyone. As for Princess
Diana, she found it almost impossible to feel like a part of her husband's family. In fact,
she often felt actively excluded.
In her interviews for Andrew Morton, she recalled one instance where she felt particularly and
painfully left out: Prince William's christening. Diana recalled to Morton,
"He was only six weeks old and it was all decided around me, hence the ghastly pictures."
Diana went on to explain that no one consulted with her about when to hold the event; in
the end, they picked 11:00, which was an awkward time for the baby.
Diana even felt that she wasn't included in the pictures. She remembered, quote, "endless
pictures of the Queen, Queen Mother, Charles, and William," all without her. It felt to
Diana as though she was merely there to feed and comfort the baby in between pictures.
No wonder the princess felt that her role in the royal family was unsustainable. And
no wonder she ended up divorcing her husband.
It quickly became clear that Prince Charles and Princess Diana were poorly suited as a
couple due to their vastly different interests and hobbies. Karen Mooney, an ex-employee
of the royal household, described their mismatched personalities to The Sun, saying,
"They had nothing in common, and as time went by, that really showed."
As biographer Sally Bedell Smith wrote in her biography Prince Charles: The Passions
and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life, Diana, quote, "hated all of his hobbies — his polo,
his paintings, his gardening, even his love of Shakespeare."
In the 2007 biography Charles — The Man Who Will Be King, Howard Hodgson asserted
that Charles' love of nature proved to be "impossible" for Diana. While he loved spending
time at Balmoral , she allegedly associated the rural estate with, quote, "solitude and
boring loneliness". With their divergent interests and hobbies, it's no surprise that by 1986,
the couple were living separate lives.
In Princess Diana's tapes, recorded for biographer Andrew Morton, she revealed that tensions
rose between her and Prince Charles after the birth of Prince Harry, her second son.
Surprisingly, the couple had been going through a relatively calm period prior to Harry's
birth.
She recalled to her biographer Andrew Morton,
"Charles and I were very, very close to each other the six weeks before Harry was born,
the closest we've ever, ever been and ever will be."
She went on to describe that as soon as Harry was born, her relationship with Charles began
to fray once again -- this time for good. As she put it, quote, "The whole thing went
down the drain." After that, it seemed divorce was imminent.
Diana explained that she was convinced that Charles had been disappointed not to have
a daughter. According to Diana, Charles only wanted two children -- and he also wanted
a girl.
It's clear that Harry's birth marked a turning point for the worse in the marriage.
After years of tension and unhappiness, Prince Charles and Princess Diana officially divorced
Queen Elizabeth recommended that they do so. The couple had separated in 1992 after years
of tabloid speculation about the state of the marriage. So it seemed like a fairly natural
next step.
However, in 1995, Diana gave her infamous Panorama interview on the BBC – and she
revealed that the separation was not her idea.
"I come from a divorced background, and I didn't want to go into that one again,"
She then explained that she didn't want to divorce because of the effect it would have
on their children. That same year, The New York Times reported that the Queen had recommended
an official divorce and that Charles was in full support.
While it's evident that a divorce was not what Diana had wanted, with the Queen's recommendation
it became inevitable. On August 28, 1996, the divorce was finalized and the couple went
their separate ways.
After their divorce, Prince Charles and Princess Diana's relationship settled down, becoming
placid and more friendly. As Sally Bedell Smith alleged in her biography Prince Charles:
The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life, Charles would often visit his ex-wife
and chat with her about Princes William and Harry.
In the book The Diana Chronicles, author Tina Brown claimed that the relationship was, quote,
"definitely calming down" after the divorce. As Brown wrote, the two spent time together
talking about their philanthropies, and once the sting of betrayal had softened, Diana
even came around to accepting Charles' relationship with Camilla.
Sadly, this new friendship didn't last. Diana was tragically killed in a car crash in Paris
in 1997, and Diana's friend Simone Simmonds claimed Charles was distraught to learn of
the accident. As she told the Daily Mail,
"Charles only realized he loved her after she died."
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