Did Princess Diana Find Prince Charles To Be Boring?
For years, people have seemed a little perplexed by Princess Diana and Prince Charles’ marriage. Whether it was the fact that they didn’t always seem to have much chemistry or the way Princess Diana spoke publicly towards the end about being unhappy in the marriage, there has been no shortage of speculation about what exactly was going on between the two to turn things so sour.
Even after Princess Diana’s death, people still seem to have a lot of questions about what went on between the two behind closed doors and why things didn’t work out. Recently, People published some insights from the diary of the late Kenneth Rose, a long-time journalist who was privy to what life was like for the royals behind-the-scenes.
Among the insider info he shares, there is one question his work raises that will pique the interest of any royal watcher: Could the main issue in the couple’s rocky marriage really have been that Princess Diana found Prince Charles to be too boring?
Princess Diana and Prince Charles’ marriage didn’t get off to a great start
Many remember how gorgeous Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s 1981 wedding was, but the fact is that their marriage started off on the wrong foot. Over the years it has come out that Prince Charles was never actually in love with Princess Diana, not the least of reasons being that at the time he proposed. He was still in love with his former flame Camilla Parker Bowles, whose last name was Shand at that time.
Both because she wasn’t aristocratic enough for the royal family’s tastes and because she got married when Prince Charles was away in the Royal Navy, the option of marrying Parker Bowles was off the table. Still, the family wanted Princess Charles to get married sooner rather than later.
Thus, Princess Charles was pressured by his father Prince Phillip into marrying Princess Diana despite having only met her a handful of times before the proposal. Tragically, Prince Charles was so against the wedding that he apparently wept the night before the ceremony.
For her part, Princess Diana didn’t seem that into it, either: she privately wrote to her secretary that their honeymoon was “a good time to catch up on some sleep”…yikes!
Princess Diana and Prince Charles ended up divorcing a little more than ten years later
After starting off on such uncertain terms, it’s honestly kind of surprising that the couple made it a decade at all. Scandals and infidelity rocked their relationship, and as we all now know, Prince Charles’ longing for Parker Bowles never fully went away.
In fact, Princess Diana discovered Prince Charles’ secret affair with Parker-Bowles a full four years before they ever divorced. But she didn’t want to break-up their marriage because she genuinely loved him and wanted to try and make things work, even if only to keep the family intact for her boys.
However, after she started talking to the press in 1992 about the sad state of her union with Prince Charles, the Queen made it very clear to Princess Diana that she would have to get on board with a divorce.
Did Princess Diana find Charles boring?
It probably isn’t true Princess Diana found Prince Charles boring, per se, but there’s no doubt she was bored in her marriage. Both her husband’s indifference towards her and his tendency to leave her alone while he went on hunting and fishing trips meant that she was often sitting around bored with nothing to do in his absence.
Rose wrote about a retreat at the Scottish property Balmoral, saying: “The Prince goes out at nine to shoot or fish, and [Diana] does not see him again until seven.”
Whether or not this was because Prince Charles simply liked spending time doing his own thing or because he actively avoided spending time with a wife to whom he was indifferent, it’s clear that he couldn’t deal with being married to a different woman than the one he actually loved. Consequently, it does seem like their unhappy marriage was unfortunately marked by a lot of boredom for Princess Diana.
