Prince Philip Felt ‘Guilty’ for Pushing Prince Charles and Princess Diana Together, Source Says
It’s no secret that the union between Prince Charles and Princess Diana was no love match. In addition to their major age gap and their lack of mutual interests, the prince was in love with his now-wife, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall.
However, at the time, the British royal family was determined that the prince settle down. In time, Prince Philip would come to feel guilty for his role in pushing the Wales together.
Prince Philip thought Princess Diana was perfect for Prince Charles at first
Princess Diana was not the first woman Prince Philip tried to match with his son. Initially, he advocated for a marriage between Charles and his second cousin, Amanda Knatchbull.
The prince and Knatchbull actually got along well, but when it came time to propose, the young woman turned the prince down flat. She had no interest in the royal spotlight. Later, when Princess Diana came into the fold, Prince Philip, in particular, was quite taken with the Lady Spencer. He and the princess were actually really close for some time.
“When Diana first joined the royal family, it was Philip who came to her aid, sitting next to her at black-tie dinners and chatting to her while she learned to master the art of small talk,” royal expert Ingrid Seward writes in her book Prince Philip Revealed: A Man of His Century obtained by The Daily Mail.
Prince Philip pressured Prince Charles into marrying Princess Diana
In his early 30s, by the time Princess Diana came along, Prince Charles was being pressured to settle down and produce an heir for the sake of the royal line.
However, the Prince of Wales was still very much in love with Camilla, who was married to her then-husband, Andrew Parker Bowles. In the end, the prince proposed to Princess Diana because his father put his foot down.
“‘You’ve either got to marry her or let her go. You can’t string a … young girl [along]. She’s only 19. You can’t string her along,’” Seward wrote in Prince Philip Revealed via Us Weekly. “And all the press is saying, ‘Oh, this is going to be the next queen.’ You’ve got to take a stand and say that this is not going to work, or you marry her.”
Seward explained, “Charles…he was frightened of his father, and he probably thought, ‘Well, OK. I’ll marry her if that’s what you want me to do.'”
Prince Philip felt guilty for pushing Prince Charles and Princess Diana together
In the end, the Wales’ marriage was simply not a good match. Things became so dire between Charles and Diana that the Duke of Edinburgh would come to feel guilty about pushing them together.
Royal biographer Philip Eade explained that Prince Philip felt “guilty” because of his role in bringing the prince and the princess.
“There was a lot of epistolary exchanges with Diana, he was trying to act as an intermediary between her and Charles,” Eade said in the documentary, Prince Philip – At Her Majesty’s Service via Express. “It might have been because he felt somewhat guilty. He and the Queen had pushed a lot for the wedding to go ahead.”
