Charles and Diana

[Osipi]

One thing that is for certain is that both Charles and Diana found each other to be totally different types of people from what they had expected from such a short and oftentimes very brief courtship. Each had their own opinion on what was to follow after the marriage and they both got it completely wrong.

The first year of marriage is the hardest one where a couple needs to adjust to the other person along with maintaining their own individuality and likes and dislikes. Charles had always had a life where people deferred to him, called him "sir" and things mostly always went the way he wanted them to go. With that mindset, it would be easy to just assume that a wife would follow suit and follow his lead, enjoy the things he does and conform into what a Princess of Wales should be like in both her private and public life. Diana, with a mindset of a young adult, romanticized her future marriage and, IMO, believed that she would be the have all and be all in Charles' life and he would put her first before everything else. Both had expectations that were a far cry from reality.

Charles grew to resent her demands on his time and she even (if what I've read is to be taken as truth) arranged things to exclude those that had been important in Charles' life up until the marriage so as to put her in the management seat. I can sympathize with Charles perhaps feeling that his life wasn't his own anymore and that Diana was trying desperately to do a "makeover" on his person to suit her idea of marriage. Diana, on the other hand, found out quickly that she needed to defer to the Prince of Wales role and found out that Charles, the man, being the introverted soul that he is, needed his books, his garden, his paintings, his walks in the woods and his alone times to breathe. This is what made the two of them so unsuitable for each other. She was city, he was country. She was nightlife and he was solitude. She enjoyed the crowds and meeting different people whereas he preferred small group gatherings of his friends.

They also had William quite soon after the marriage and that was one area that they were both in synch with each other. Their ideas of parenting and being hands on parents were strong in the both of them and that perhaps was the glue that kept them together until after Harry's birth.

Its quite easy to see why the marriage fell apart and its blame is to be laid at both of their doors. They just weren't capable of forming a strong foundation to base the marriage on. It happens. Couples either grow together or they grow apart. Marriage takes work.

 

[Mirabel]

One thing that is for certain is that both Charles and Diana found each other to be totally different types of people from what they had expected from such a short and oftentimes very brief courtship. Each had their own opinion on what was to follow after the marriage and they both got it completely wrong.

Absolutely. And I think each expected the other to adapt.
But it would have required a complete personality change that neither could manage.

In the long term they simply could not bridge the gap.

 

[Dman]

The media has been rewriting the Charles and Di saga for years. It's a story as old as time, and we know stories are never the same after people tell it over and over again.

 

[Katrianna]

If you are working in the kitchen of the palace trying to prepare food, you really don't need a Royal trying to chit chat with you. It's your butt that's going to be fired if you can't finish your work.

Just use Downton Abbey as an example, the Earl and Countess never went into the kitchen and Mrs Pattimore was perfectly fine with it.

Yes, but if your kitchen staff who would be the one to tell a Princess of Wales or future Princess of Wales to leave so the work can be finished.

 

[MARG]

The media has been rewriting the Charles and Di saga for years. It's a story as old as time, and we know stories are never the same after people tell it over and over again.

You are so very right but on this board we have people who are older than Charles and watched the whole thing unfold and those whose only reference is that which is repeated annually and fell in love with the fairy tale Princess. It started with hope and joy and having seen them on their trip to NZ nobody will ever convince me that they were not "in love".

But marriages take time to mature and has it's seasons as the divorce rate both then and now attests. But it seems that only when it comes to Charles and Diana that even now there are people who think him the devil incarnate and her, literally, and Angel.

Diana has been dead for almost 20 years. It makes no sense that people talk about her in the first person as an Angel among us and talk with hate about Charles and Camilla. Great heavens, Hewitt was interviewed earlier this year and announced (shock, horror) "he was not Harry's father. Charles and Diana had separated in Dec 1992, divorced Aug 1996 years ago and Diana and her lover died Aug 1997.

Even she was moving on. Why can't we.

 

[Duchess Sophie]

One thing that is for certain is that both Charles and Diana found each other to be totally different types of people from what they had expected from such a short and oftentimes very brief courtship. Each had their own opinion on what was to follow after the marriage and they both got it completely wrong.

The first year of marriage is the hardest one where a couple needs to adjust to the other person along with maintaining their own individuality and likes and dislikes. Charles had always had a life where people deferred to him, called him "sir" and things mostly always went the way he wanted them to go. With that mindset, it would be easy to just assume that a wife would follow suit and follow his lead, enjoy the things he does and conform into what a Princess of Wales should be like in both her private and public life. Diana, with a mindset of a young adult, romanticized her future marriage and, IMO, believed that she would be the have all and be all in Charles' life and he would put her first before everything else. Both had expectations that were a far cry from reality.

Charles grew to resent her demands on his time and she even (if what I've read is to be taken as truth) arranged things to exclude those that had been important in Charles' life up until the marriage so as to put her in the management seat. I can sympathize with Charles perhaps feeling that his life wasn't his own anymore and that Diana was trying desperately to do a "makeover" on his person to suit her idea of marriage. Diana, on the other hand, found out quickly that she needed to defer to the Prince of Wales role and found out that Charles, the man, being the introverted soul that he is, needed his books, his garden, his paintings, his walks in the woods and his alone times to breathe. This is what made the two of them so unsuitable for each other. She was city, he was country. She was nightlife and he was solitude. She enjoyed the crowds and meeting different people whereas he preferred small group gatherings of his friends.

They also had William quite soon after the marriage and that was one area that they were both in synch with each other. Their ideas of parenting and being hands on parents were strong in the both of them and that perhaps was the glue that kept them together until after Harry's birth.

Its quite easy to see why the marriage fell apart and its blame is to be laid at both of their doors. They just weren't capable of forming a strong foundation to base the marriage on. It happens. Couples either grow together or they grow apart. Marriage takes work.

You make some good points. And things were further complicated by friends and staff not accepting Diana or finding her weird to do things not the Royal way. That caused anxiety and paranoia in her, that was further fuelled by her marriage breaking down and Charles eventually going back to Camilla.

 

[Denville]

Several posters seem to think that Diana knew all about Charles's dalliances and his affair with Camilla Parker Bowles during the dating period before the engagement. In fact, from all that I've read, it only dawned on her just how close he and Camilla were when they were engaged and she became extremely upset about it.



Also, Charles did not have the sort of 'friendship' with her sister Sarah that he had with Camilla, nor did they have a close friendship after their romance ended and certainly not after Sarah married.

Good Lord I lived in Ireland, and I knw about Camilla.. how could she not know?

If you are working in the kitchen of the palace trying to prepare food, you really don't need a Royal trying to chit chat with you. It's your butt that's going to be fired if you can't finish your work.

Just use Downton Abbey as an example, the Earl and Countess never went into the kitchen and Mrs Pattimore was perfectly fine with it.

I doubt if she was hanging around while they were working.. she popped in for coffee breaks. I woudlnt' use Downton Abbye as an example for anything.

It's all very well to say that Charles expected/wanted his young wife to read and discuss his books with him. Did he ever bother to find out if she was interested in the works of psychology etc that he loved during the time the couple dated? Most couples discuss likes and dislikes in films, music, books etc quite early in the relationship.


.

I think that Diana gave him the impression that she thogtht he was terribly clever and that she loved ot hear him talk about things, and he not unreasonably felt that she was very young but that she was at an age where she would problaby like to learn about things of the mind, even if she hadn't taken much interest in school.
Diana DID speak of Charles as being very "deep" and brainy, so I think that Charles thought that she might not have done well at school but that she was intelligent enough to learn and that their honeymoon would be a good time to get to read up on stuff.
they had several weeks not just a week or 2 and I don't think that it is unreasonable that Charles believed Diana's admirinlgy saying "oh you're so brainy" and that it meant she was receptive to sharing his interest in reading. Just as she had watched him shooting and fishing, so he thought that she liked the outdoors and country sports, yet when they were married she abruptly went off this which had seemed like a shared interest.

 

[Mermaid1962]

Diana also apparently liked to read "Private Eye", which sometimes mentioned Charles and Camilla. There's that famous commentary by Nigel Dempster, in which he said that if he saw Prince Charles' Aston Martin outside Camilla's place while Andrew Parker Bowles was away, his duty was to report it.

Good Lord I lived in Ireland, and I knw about Camilla.. how could she not know?

 

[Curryong]

^ So, Denville, your contention is that while Diana was dating Charles she knew that Camilla and Charles were lovers and probably continuing their affair while she (Diana) was seeing Charles?

In fact, that she was quite OK with the possibility that the affair would continue through her engagement and after her wedding, because she knew the couple were deeply in love and that's what married people in aristo circles did ? That would make Diana an extraordinarily cynical and worldly young woman, something she almost certainly was not. It would make her motive for marrying Charles one of worldly ambition and social climbing only. Don't believe that either.

Her whole actions and beliefs during her engagement and the early part of her marriage scream that she knew that Charles and Camilla HAD been lovers but that she hadn't known how deep the relationship was, how closely the pair were entangled. Nor did she ever envisage IMO a situation in which she knew her bridegroom was in love with another woman as he stood at the altar and made his vows to her. I certainly believe THAT was the case, and in fact Charles was lying at the altar both to himself and his bride.

 

[Osipi]

There are certain things in a marriage that no matter how much you try, you're never going to get your other half remotely interested in. Even in my "golden" years, I have yet to have a spouse get me interested in American football and after 20 years, if my hubby hasn't gotten the bookworm bug yet, it ain't going to happen. We're totally opposite in a lot of ways such as he's TV and I'm on the computer. He likes junk food and I love my salads. Those things are easy to adapt to with each other. On most things though, we're a comfortable pair of old shoes that just "fit" each other. It ain't been all rainbows and unicorns but it works very well for us.

Arguing the point about Camilla or James Hewitt or Hasnat Khan or anyone else outside the marriage isn't really pertinent to their marriage in my book. If the marriage had been a sound and secure one, none of the people outside of the marriage would ever have had any impact on it at all. There has to be a hole in the bucket for the rainwater to leak out.

 

[Daenerys Targaryen]

he was dating, like most men do. he had a few affairs with married women like a lot of men do. Every woman that he took out was nto a serious candidate for marriage, and didn't have to be.

Dating is not the word for having affairs with your friends wives.

 

[Curryong]

Exactly!! That is so very true!

 

[Ish]

Dating is not the word for having affairs with your friends wives.

It's not nearly as simple as an affair.

People like to classify it as just an affair, but the dynamic between Andrew Parker Bowles, Camilla, and Charles was not an affair.

There is a longstanding tradition in the British upper classes of men and women marrying based on status, then having extramarital relations with individuals that they were actually attracted to - both men and women did this. There is also a longstanding tradition of Princes of Wales having mistresses who were married; this ensured that the mistress wasn't likely to expect to marry the PoW, provided a "father" for any children from the relationship, and reduced the scandal to the woman (she wasn't an unmarried woman sleeping with a man). The husbands provided a degree of cover for the wives within society, and typically benefited from their wives' status.

Also, reducing Camilla to the status of simply being Charles' friend's wife completely ignores that she had a friendship and sexual relationship with Charles that predated her marriage. Andrew wasn't a friend who's wife Charles was sleeping with, Andrew was the man who was married to the woman Charles had a relationship with.

Camilla's relationship with Charles and Andrew, through the 1970s and up to her divorce, could very likely be described as a Poly one, where in she was with Andrew as a "primary" partner, but with Charles as a "secondary" partner, that in time lead to Charles becoming the primary in what we assume is now a monogamous relationship.

 

[Daenerys Targaryen]

Really? Do you classify Kanga in the same way?

 

[Curryong]

I know of the upper classes 'tolerant' attitude towards marriage Ish, and in my view it's adultery whichever way you cut it.

Also, some partners of upper class adulterers seem to have been left out of the convenient 'well, everyone does it and always has' equation.

I always remember reading that Deborah Duchess of Devonshire was absolutely devastated when she found out about her husband Andrew's first affair. As the marriage went on and there were more women she described coping with it by progressively 'anaesthetising' herself so that the hurt ceased and 'it didn't matter any more'.

I would suggest that when Diana discovered just how her husband felt about Mrs Parker Bowles (whether during her engagement or early marriage) her reaction would have been more akin to Deborah Cavendish's than just airily waving her hands in the air and saying 'Well, we have the two boys now, so go for it Charles! After all, it's the accepted thing for men and women to sleep with each other's spouses, isn't it?'

 

[Osipi]

One thing about the Parker Bowles that does need to be mentioned is that the both of them were close friends of Charles and Charles was even godfather to their oldest son Tom. Andrew wasn't known to be overly chaste while he was away from Camilla and the relationships that these people made were acceptable to them all. Its how things worked in the PB marriage.

Both Camilla and Lady Dale Tryon were not just having affairs with Charles and bouncing around. They were his truest and most trusted confidantes outside of Lord "Dickie" Mountbatten. The intimacy between Charles, Camilla and Dale was on other levels besides having an "affair". They both "got" Charles, understood him and instinctively knew what he needed. That's what best friends do.

This is why I say that the thing that drove Diana absolutely batty wasn't so much that Camilla and Charles had a love affair thing going at one time but also she knew just how close Camilla and Charles were and how much he valued her opinion and input on things and even had "inside jokes". That actually was the real threat that Diana felt was threatening her marriage. She really wanted to have that kind of a relationship with her husband but had absolutely no clue how to go about getting it. In hindsight, I think they were too different kinds of people to mesh and be "soul mates". Oil and vinegar are never going to mix no matter how hard you want them to.

 

[Zonk]

Let's get back on topic...this thread is about Charles and Diana.

We are not doing the triangle or rectangle relationship discussion [i.e. Camilla/Charles/Diana or Charles/Diana/Camilla/Kanga] here.

Any and all additional off topic posts will be deleted without notice.

 

[Curryong]

I agree with all that you have written, Osipi. However, my contention is that Charles at 32 knowing how he felt about Camilla PB, should have been man enough to realise that he and Diana weren't soul mates in that way. Also that his wife (whoever she might be) deserved more than a tepid 'hoping love would grow' response.

Diana was just twenty and was in love with him. He was 32 and not in love with her, not to the depth that she was, anyway. I just find it pretty appalling actually that someone in their thirties didn't have the ability to realise this and the intestinal fortitude to resist the pressures to marry, and yes I know there were great pressures.

Look, I hold no brief for King Edward VIII who was a dreadful individual in so many ways. However, he at least didn't go to the altar with some 'suitable' young girl while in love with another (married) woman. That is what Charles did and he did it at 32, not as an immature and easily influenced and pressured 21. If he had resisted that pressure to marry what misery and heartache would have been prevented!

 

[Nico]

But Charles WAS immature and easily influenced at 32 !
If he was man enough, If he has resisted, if he was a the real prince charming, if , if if, ...With these ifs, we put Paris in a bottle.
It was an arranged marriage. Period. Like thousand and thousands in history. It didn't work, well like thousand and thousands of marriages. He had an affair ? Big deal she had affairs too. He was aloof and distant ? She was demanding and self destructive. He was a victim, she was a victim and this marriage was a huge mess of biblical proportions. The best things in their marital life were their children and their divorce.
End of the story.
It's really time to get over it and try, oh just try, to move on after 35 years !

Can we just stop the hypocrisy and say the things as they are : Charles will be always some kind of a villain because he's alive and well , and, the horror, hapilly married. Diana had never the chance to find happiness. That's utterly sad but that's life !
Things are as they are, and studying this couple like a forensic autopsy will not change the past nor the future.

 

[Iluvbertie]

I don't think Diana was in love with Charles. I do think she was in love with the idea of being a Princess and future Queen.

She didn't know Charles as a person so she couldn't have been in love with him. Had she really known him she would never have agreed to marry him unless she really was a gold-digger, social climber wanting to take the Spencer family to the top of the tree.

She had no real experience of love so didn't know what it was which was another reason why her family should have encouraged her to walk away. She was infatuated that an older man was paying her some attention and not in love with him.

Both were wrong to go into that marriage. Both were adults. Both were pressured by their families and both suffered as a result in a marriage that failed.

 

[Ish]

I know of the upper classes 'tolerant' attitude towards marriage Ish, and in my view it's adultery whichever way you cut it.

I'm going to try to phrase this carefully because I don't want to get into the triangle or get into a fight, and I pre-emptively apologize if what I write ends up crossing the line and needs to be deleted as being off topic.

I agree that when Charles and Diana had their extra-marital affairs that they were adultery. While Charles may have had a different attitude towards monogamy within a marriage than Diana, the pair did not agree to have an open marriage and neither one of them consented to the other's affairs. I would not be surprised if Charles was okay with Diana's affairs and would have been fine with an open marriage by the standards of the upper class, but Diana most certainly did not and that in and of itself makes both Charles' actions and Diana's actions adultery.

That being said, I disagree immensely that all extra marital affairs are in and of themselves adultery; there are certainly many cases of of upper class relations being adultery (that in the Wales' marriage, that in the Cavendish marriage, and so on), but there are also cases where it is not - it is instead a polygamous relationship. Polygamy is different from adultery in that it is in its core based on consent between adults; two people in a relationship consent to one or both of them having relations outside of their relationship. Any relations outside of that relationship that follow whatever rules they make are not adultery. Polygamous relationships can have adultery in them - if John and Jane Doe are married and have an agreement that casual sex with others is okay, but that long term relationships are not okay, then if John gets into a long term relationship with Sally he's committing adultery. They can also start with adultery - if John and Jane Doe have a monogamous relationship, then John has an affair, that's adultery, but if he and Jane then discuss it and she agrees to have an open relationship, future relations outside of the marriage aren't adultery.

Dickie and Edwina Mountbatten are an example of such a marriage. So are Wallis and Ernest Simpson. There are examples outside of the nobility as well - Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer have openly described themselves as in a poly marriage, while other couples have hinted at it (Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, Rachel Ray, Mo'Nique...).

 

[Curryong]

^ Yes, agreed, Ish. But we are talking about the Wales marriage and, whatever Charles may have assumed or wanted or believed Diana would later accommodate, I do not believe that a marriage that was akin to the Mountbatten ménage was what Diana had in mind when she accepted Charles's proposal.

 

[Lady Nimue]

I think that Diana gave him the impression that she thought he was terribly clever and that she loved to hear him talk about things, and he not unreasonably felt that she was very young but that she was at an age where she would problaby like to learn about things of the mind, even if she hadn't taken much interest in school.

Diana DID speak of Charles as being very "deep" and brainy, so I think that Charles thought that she might not have done well at school but that she was intelligent enough to learn and that their honeymoon would be a good time to get to read up on stuff.

They had several weeks not just a week or 2 and I don't think that it is unreasonable that Charles believed Diana's admiringly saying "oh you're so brainy" and that it meant she was receptive to sharing his interest in reading. Just as she had watched him shooting and fishing, so he thought that she liked the outdoors and country sports, yet when they were married she abruptly went off this which had seemed like a shared interest.

Good points. Hadn't thought that Diana possibly gave Charles cause to feel that she was interested in his ideas, in the same way she seemed interested in being at Balmoral, or fishing or living the 'country life'. Interesting. New twist.

 

[Curryong]

The majority of people, when they first start dating, bounce ideas about films, literature, art, etc off each other. With works such as Jung most people interested in the subject who believed their girlfriend was too, would ask 'Hey, what do you think of this particular point...?'

If the questioner gets a wide-eyed response and no coherent answer after the first couple of times, I think they would come to the conclusion that the young woman they were asking the question of, wasn't really interested, (however adoringly goo-goo-eyed they looked) especially if there hadn't been a 'My goodness, that's intriguing. May I borrow that book, if you you don't mind?'

Unless of course the particular person concerned with Jung and false prophet van der Post enjoyed the sound of his own voice droning on and on, without any sort of meaningful response from his listener.

 

[Duchess Sophie]

But Charles WAS immature and easily influenced at 32 !
If he was man enough, If he has resisted, if he was a the real prince charming, if , if if, ...With these ifs, we put Paris in a bottle.
It was an arranged marriage. Period. Like thousand and thousands in history. It didn't work, well like thousand and thousands of marriages. He had an affair ? Big deal she had affairs too. He was aloof and distant ? She was demanding and self destructive. He was a victim, she was a victim and this marriage was a huge mess of biblical proportions. The best things in their marital life were their children and their divorce.
End of the story.
It's really time to get over it and try, oh just try, to move on after 35 years !

Can we just stop the hypocrisy and say the things as they are : Charles will be always some kind of a villain because he's alive and well , and, the horror, hapilly married. Diana had never the chance to find happiness. That's utterly sad but that's life !
Things are as they are, and studying this couple like a forensic autopsy will not change the past nor the future.

It wasn´t an arranged marriage. If it was, Diana would have told Andrew Morton or the spiritual coaches she had. Heck, she might even had told Hewitt at some point. What I am trying to say, is that Diana was quite the tell-all to people she trusted, especially in the period she was at her most vindicative.

They married out of love, but because they didn´t knew each other well it quickly fell apart. Staff, family and friends taking sides and leaking stories or helping cover up didn´t help them both. It defintely rasied the anxiety and paranoia in Diana. And that she felt out of place with his smart friends didn´t help her insecurity either.

 

[Lady Nimue]

The majority of people, when they first start dating, bounce ideas about films, literature, art, etc off each other. With works such as Jung most people interested in the subject who believed their girlfriend was too, would ask 'Hey, what do you think of this particular point...?'

If the questioner gets a wide-eyed response and no coherent answer after the first couple of times, I think they would come to the conclusion that the young woman they were asking the question of, wasn't really interested, (however adoringly goo-goo-eyed they looked) especially if there hadn't been a 'My goodness, that's intriguing. May I borrow that book, if you you don't mind?'

Unless of course the particular person concerned with Jung and false prophet van der Post enjoyed the sound of his own voice droning on and on, without any sort of meaningful response from his listener.

This was her husband for goodness sakes. She had already affirmed her interest and admiration while dating (pre-engagement). She was in love (so you say). I'd be enthralled (if I were in love). Something doesn't add up with the story. Don't you see that? There's some fibbing going on, and it's not Charles.

You make Charles' overtures sound unappealing, like spoilt meat, like Charles is some impossibly old codger, with the same derisive tone Diana took years later, essentially laughing at him (in her ignorance), and getting others to do the same (who knew no better). It's unkind. Plain and simple. Don't you see that?

The scale of immaturity and cruelty Diana was displaying towards her new husband is appalling imo.

 

[Curryong]

I was talking about the courtship period; as I said in the first paragraph of my above post, when people first (note I said first,) date, they throw likes and dislikes, opinions on film, books, literature into the air between each other, noting what the other likes and dislikes.

We don't know whether Charles read Jung or van der Post to Diana when they were first dating. However, as I noted, most people who like and are attracted to each other talk about favourite topics.

If they are taking note of the other person's reactions to what they are speaking about and there's no answering spark, no desire to discuss the subject in question from that person, they then move on. There may be disappointment but most people can accept when another is not interested in a favourite movie, book, intellectual pastime etc.

If Diana had been interested then she would have borrowed books from him and others, made notes on what interested her about them and discussed various aspects of the books with him.

Again, this is the pre-engagement period we are talking about.

As we take it that she didn't do so, (and I've never read otherwise,) then I should think Charles would have known within the first couple of weeks of dating that this girl did not share his intellectual interests, however prettily she smiled at him while he talked on them.

If all that Charles got from Diana when he talked deeply of philosophy and psychology were wide-eyed, if admiring looks but no questions, no borrowing of books, no intellectual sparks, I would have thought that a person with any common sense would have said to themselves 'This girl is just being polite. She is not absorbed by what I'm saying. Therefore, she does not share my interests in philiosophy, psychology, Jung etc'

As I have said, and I'll repeat it, this would be in the 'getting to know you period' before the engagement and certainly before marriage.

As for your other points, Diana wasn't the only unkind person who derided and put down their spouse in that marriage.

 

[Iluvbertie]

We know that Diana told him she liked the outdoorsy life at Balmoral so why assume she didn't ask questions and borrow books on these topics? We know she was an accomplished liar but that is excused due to her age - why?

Why put the blame on Charles and assume that she made no comments when Charles is no idiot. Diana may very well have asked questions and borrowed books - which she wouldn't have read - we know she was given books to read to help her with her duties which she refused to read so it is possible she borrowed books and then put them away having kept her eyes on her prize - Charles the future King (not Charles the man but Charles the position - that is what she wanted).

 

[royal rob]

My goodness this just goes on and on the number of posts about Diana saying she liked the outdoors etc must be enormous and usually the same people then say we should move on. How can people that don't like her continue to talk about her.

 

[Nice Nofret]

My goodness this just goes on and on the number of posts about Diana saying she liked the outdoors etc must be enormous and usually the same people then say we should move on. How can people that don't like her continue to talk about her.

good point, but how can people that don't like him continue to talk about him?