Princess Diana Said She Felt Like a ‘Lamb to the Slaughter’ on Her Wedding Day Because of Camilla
Prince Charles married Princess Diana in what was dubbed the “wedding of the century” in 1981. Their storybook ceremony was watched by 750 million people around the globe. But the actual day she said her vows was not one of the happiest for the bride.
One of the late princess’ confidants has revealed why Diana said she felt a “lamb to the slaughter” on her wedding day and it had to do with Camilla Parker Bowles.
Camilla was a guest at Prince Charles and Diana’s wedding
Camilla and Princess Diana were not strangers before the former had an affair with the future king while he was married his first wife.
The women actually met after Charles proposed to Diana and were frequent houseguests of Camilla and her first husband, Andrew Parker Bowles. Charles and Andrew also got along well despite the fact that Camilla dated the prince prior to their marriage. The Bowles couple scored an invite to the royal wedding when Charles asked Andrew to serve as part of the security team that day.
“I knew [Camilla] was there, of course. I looked for her,” Diana said in her audio tapes to biographer Andrew Morton in 1991. “So walking down the aisle, I spotted Camilla, pale gray, veiled pillbox hat, saw it all, her son Tom standing on a chair. To this day you know — vivid memory.”
Princess Diana’s confidant said she felt like a ‘lamb to the slaughter’
The Daily Mail noted that former BBC correspondent Jennie Bond got to know Diana over the years and became one of the princess’ confidants. She revealed what the royal told her about her how she felt after seeing Camilla in the church.
“Diana told me much later in one of our private conversations that she had felt like a lamb to the slaughter as she walked up the aisle, which is very sad, but I think she knew that things weren’t quite right,” Bond said in the documentary Charles & Camilla: King and Queen in Waiting. “When she saw Camilla in the congregation she was immediately uneasy about it.”
That’s because just before the wedding Diana found a bracelet that Charles had purchased for Camilla. The discovery devastated the bride-to-be so to see her there at St. Paul’s Cathedral a few days later was hard to take.
Not happily ever after
The Prince and Princess of Wales’ marriage may have been doomed from the start. But, according to Diana, things really fell apart after their second son, Prince Harry, was born and she became aware that her husband and Camilla had started their affair again.
In 1992, Charles and Diana separated. They divorced four years later.
Princess Diana died following a car accident on Aug. 31, 1997.
One April 9, 2005, Prince Charles married Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall.
