In the
During this period, it wasn't only Diana and Charles that were headed towards the divorce court but so did Anne and Mark and Andrew and Sarah. Out of all of them, Diana was the most vocal and I believe she was seen more of an embarrassment to the family rather than actually able to damage the monarchy in any way. As it became apparent that Diana on a show of public unity was next to impossible so divorce was the only solution.
Yes of course there has been adultery, Good lord of course there has... what was unprecedented was for people to go and admit it, to say "my husband was horrible to me, I didn't fit into the RF" etc. For the two parities in a royal marriage to both publicly admit to other lovers was completely unprecedented..
And yes Diana wasn't going to let go, she went on making a fuss till the queen who Hates to interfere, clearly felt that the monarchy was in danger unless Diana was firmly stopped and excluded.
IMO there was a very serious wobble, and if Diana had not been controlled, there was enough public discussion of "is the monarchy really necessary" and distaste for the way the RF were behaving, to worry the queen very much, and possibly to end the monarchy or damage Charles' chances of succeeding. There were some churchmen who felt that he wasn't fit to succeed because he was going to be either separated form his wife or divorced, and that he had caused the divorce by his affair with Camilla.. who clearly was not going out of his life.
AS I recall the Archbishop of Canterbury said that the C Of E didn't have a problem with Charles succeeding provided he and Diana, if they were separated, put their children first and didn't engage in any adulterous affairs. Well that was not going to happen so clearly there had to be a divorce.. and then there was the problem of remarriage.
Some of the "distaste" was due to the other problems, like Andrew and Sarah.. (I don't think people took much notice of Anne and Mark's divorce), but mostly it was Diana. She went public, she wouldn't shut up.
She was even said to have dialled telephone lines when there were discussions about ending the monarchy and voted for "ending the monarchy"...Clearly she wasn't going to go quietly, she wanted ot damage the monarchy in spite of saying that it was her son's future...
The queen was very clearly angry and rattled and Diana's interview was the last straw, at which point she finally put her foot down, ordered a divorce and I believe that that the agreements would have had clauses stopping Diana from discussing her marriage in public again. And I dont think that Diana would ever have been really forgiven for her indiscretion because she HAD scared the RF into a real fear that the monarchy was in danger...
SHe was treated politely because of her sons, but she wasn't going to be liked or trusted or considered part of them, ever again.
I think that Diana's actions were a threat to the monarchy, maybe not enough of a threat to topple the monarchy, but a threat nonetheless, as was Edward VIII's abdication, Victoria becoming invisible, Hanoverian dissipation, etc. I think that at numerous junctures Britain could have rid itself of the monarchy and did not, and at those junctures there were machinations combined with luck that ended up preserving the monarchy.
Not enough perhaps to topple it but enough to give it a serious whack and scare and anger the Royals. Generally even at its worst the British monarchy has never been as bad or tyrannical as other Monarchies. There was a parliamentary democracy of sorts developing from the 18th Century, so the Upper and middle classes (and gradually the working classes) had a role in ruling the country and weren't excluded from the political process and angry. So they were generally content to reform the monarchy but not to get rid of it. It wasn't like Russia (or France) where the Monarch was an autocrat who stopped all reform, or Germany where it was associated with defeat in War...
but noting lasts forever and I think that if the British were more ideologically minded, there was enuogh of a problem in the 1990s, to scare the RF.