![]() In even her most rueful moments, however, it sounded as though Diana never expected that much more from her in-laws-and she never directed her ire expressly at the queen, even while recalling feeling so alone while struggling with bulimia, severe morning sickness and postpartum depression. 6, 1981, after roughly seven months of sporadic dates.ĭiana infamously insisted later on that she received little guidance from anyone at Buckingham Palace-not Charles, not his family, not their staff-as to what was expected of her once she got engaged, and she said the queen's office provided no help whatsoever at taming the press mob that had become obsessed with the future Princess of Wales overnight.īut in the Morton book and her infamous 1995 interview with Martin Bashir on the BBC's Panorama, Diana placed the onus for her suffering on Charles: Early on in their marriage, she thought it fairly obvious that a little more attention from her husband would do the trick, but the Prince of Wales' true affections were directed elsewhere. At least up until July 1980 when, after reuniting with Charles at the home of a mutual friend, the prince "leapt on me practically." He ended up proposing marriage on Feb. (He assumed the top private secretary job in 1990.)Īs for the queen, Diana had "known her since I was tiny so it was no big deal" being around her, she recalled. Moreover, her sister Jane ended up marrying Robert Fellowes, then assistant private secretary to the queen, in 1978. "Look at the life they have, how awful," she often thought, per Morton. Charles' much younger brothers, Prince Andrew and Prince Edward, were among Diana's childhood playmates-and she felt terrible for them as well. In taped interviews that made up the meat of Andrew Morton's supposedly unauthorized 1991 biography Diana: Her True Story (reissued as Her True Story in Her Own Words after her death), Diana recalled her first impression of Charles when she saw him at Althorp, her family's Northampton estate, in 1977: "God, what a sad man."īoth of her grandmothers had served as ladies-in-waiting to Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, and Diana's father, John Spencer, was a viscount, so the family was British nobility and their social circle always included members of the royal family. ![]() 8 at the age of 96 after a 70-year reign, nudged her younger sister, Princess Margaret, away from her preferred love, their father's unhappily married equerry Peter Townsend, the old-fashioned bias against divorce didn't peter out with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor's generation. Her uncle King Edward VIII abdicated after less than a year on the throne so he could wed twice-divorced American Wallis Simpson, resulting in Elizabeth's father becoming King George VI and rerouting the line of succession in his eldest daughter's direction.Īnd considering how Elizabeth, who died Sept. That is, marriage to the right person, the queen-her own head-over-heels love match aside-having seen up close how consequential the wrong choice of mate could be to the entire family. But, Elizabeth loved him.Īnd when it came to ensuring that the monarchy had a bountiful future, the expected outcome for her eldest son, King Charles III, was marriage. The most notable exception to that rule may have been her own marriage, Prince Philip having hardly been the ideal suitor on paper as far as her family was concerned. So much of Queen Elizabeth II's life revolved around duty, loyalty and tradition, the choices she made were hardly ever dictated by her feelings in the moment, but by history.
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