Charles & Camilla: How has your opinion changed since the wedding?

[Elspeth]

So why is it so difficult to come up with the actual wording from the actual book? By the time people have got hold of something and put their spin on it, and it's been repeated by other people putting their spin on it, a second- or third-hand account isn't necessarily all that reliable.

Diana is supposed to have said in several places that she and Charles did love each other at some stages of their marriage. So I guess one unsubstantiated account will cancel out the other, right?

 

[judith14011]

< ed aggressive response - Warren >
Here is my last bit of research - I cannot find my Dimbleby book but here is Tina Brown on page 143 of "The Diana Chronicles:"

His (Prince Charles') authorized biographer Jonathan Dimbleby stated "The Prince made it clear he was never in love with Diana and felt he had to propose after he came under pressure from his father - a revelation that was duly splashed on the front page of the News of The World as 'I Was Never in Love with Diana'."

This quote comes directly (according to Tina Brown) from Jonathan Dimbleby's book, "The Prince of Wales, A Biography," page 284.

Perhaps someone on this thread has quick access to the Dimbleby book and can confirm that this quote comes directly from Dimbleby's bio of Charles, thus putting to rest any speculation of who said what and in what context it was stated.

 

[wbenson]

If that's offensive sarcasm, I know of members here who may as well be killing puppies.

 

[Elspeth]

Well, it'd be nice if someone could find out where he's supposed to have stated it and actually post the wording. My copy doesn't say anything of the sort on page 284 but it could be a different edition.

There have been countless examples where people have claimed "Charles said this, Charles said that," and when you finally come down to it, it was actually Diana saying that Charles said it. Which isn't exactly the same thing. So before we get any more repetition of this charge that Charles told Jonathan Dimbleby that he never loved Diana and it's right there in the book, would someone who's making this claim PLEASE give us the exact quote.

As I said before, if people aren't prepared to back this up with the exact quote, this part of the thread is going to end up deleted. This is ridiculous.


ETA: Scooter came up with this quote from page 283 (in post 703):

pg 283: 'If his betrothal to Diana Spencer was hardly the love match for which his friends had hoped, that she perhaps wanted, and which the nation certainly assumed, he was determined tht their marriage should suceed'.

Which is a very different thing from a statement from hm in the mid-1990s that he'd never loved Diana. As I suspected, people have played fast and loose with this statement in order to try and make it say something it didn't say. And rather than going back to the source, others have just taken the spin and claimed that it was the original statement. No surprise there, then.

 

[Mandy]

This thread is closed for moderator review

 

[Warren]

Well, that was unedifying.

After some deletions, edited posts to remove aggressive and insulting remarks, and one banning, we are ready to risk all and re-open the thread.

A couple of points first:

Some parts of the Forums are concerned with lighter topics while some make an attempt to examine issues of substance. To this end, if members want to quote a source or author in support of their argument, they need to quote the source. Stating "it was in the News of the World" or "Tina Brown said he said it" or "it said so in Vanity Fair" or "it was in all the newspapers" doesn't cut the mustard. Becoming aggrieved (and/or aggressive) when another member requests the precise wording from the claimed source demonstrates a disregard for historical accuracy and a disregard for verifiable fact.

Challenging moderator decisions in the threads and continuing to argue moderator decisions in the threads violates one of the basic rules of the Forums. Without wishing to come across as heavy-handed but pointing out the obvious, there are repercussions for doing so.

When we are discussing topics where some members have obvious emotional involvement it is important to respect the differences of opinion and to discuss (or debate) in a rational, adult and civil manner. It is also important to be able to back up 'statements of fact' with precise attribution if requested to do so.


Thanks for everyone's cooperation in ensuring we are able to continue this discussion in a spirit of civility and mutual respect.

Warren
on behalf of Elspeth, Avalon, Polly and TheTruth
the British Forum and Diana subforum moderators

 

[jcbcode99]

So, all drama aside, I have been searching for the transcript to the Dimbleby interview with Prince Charles and I can't find one. Or, at the very least, a video link. Whenever I do a search all I seem to turn up is the Panorama interview.

 

[Skydragon]

So, all drama aside, I have been searching for the transcript to the Dimbleby interview with Prince Charles and I can't find one. Or, at the very least, a video link. Whenever I do a search all I seem to turn up is the Panorama interview.

Like you, I cannot find a transcript or video link. I did find a statement that nobody can show or print it due to legal limitations(?).

The only reference to Dimbleby that I can find in the Diana Chronicles between pages 141 - 144 is

What is harder to go along with is the assertion by Jonathan Dimbleby, Charles insistence on delivering the gift to Camilla in person was an act of 'courtesy'

 

[TheTruth]

For the moment, it looks much more like the contrary. Actually, if you go on this page, a reader said :

His biographer says that Charles did everything he could to make the marriage work and didn't see Camilla Parker-Bowles again romantically until his marriage had irretrievably broken down.

I know you're probably aware of this already but my thinking is that you don't force yourself to make a marriage work if there's not a single feeling inside you.

I'm doing some research right now and see if I get luckier. I'll post if I find anything.

 

[BellaFay]

So, all drama aside, I have been searching for the transcript to the Dimbleby interview with Prince Charles and I can't find one. Or, at the very least, a video link. Whenever I do a search all I seem to turn up is the Panorama interview.

I doubt that you'll find a link or a transcript. Dimbleby did the programme as a freelance & it was only ever broadcast once on the ITV. The BBC apparently turned it down - this was when Marmaduke Hussey (husband of the Queen's Lady in Waiting, Susan Hussey) was still on the trustee board of the BBC. I think after it was broadcast the once it was deposited in the Windsor Castle archives and you would have to ask permission to view or broadcast it again. So far permission has never been given. Whereas the Panorama interview is BBC copyright and so can be re-broadcast ad infinitum. From my memory Prince Charles never said in the interview that he had never loved Diana. He admitted to having an affair but only after the marriage had broken down "us both having tried" to make it work as he put it. Furthermore, like Elspeth I could find no reference to Charles denying he had loved Diana on p.284 (or for that matter 283 or 285) of Dimbleby's book, contrary to what Tina Brown claims.

 

[scooter]

It's at the very bottom of 283 continuing on 284.

 

[Elspeth]

The wording on page 283 is

pg 283: 'If his betrothal to Diana Spencer was hardly the love match for which his friends had hoped, that she perhaps wanted, and which the nation certainly assumed, he was determined tht their marriage should suceed'.

which isn't the same as saying that he'd never loved Diana. I don't think it comes as any surprise to people that Charles wasn't head over heels in love when they married, but then he'd said in an earlier interview that he thought friendship was a better basis for a marriage than infatuation. And saying that he wasn't head over heels in love at the time of his marriage (which is what Dimbleby said, it wasn't a direct quote) isn't the same as saying in the mid-1990s that he'd never loved Diana.

 

[Russophile]

No, it doesn't say that he (Charles) never loved Diana. But I think it reveals a lot about him, that he was very well prepared to do his duty for his country and was hoping to fall in love.

 

[COUNTESS]

No one but Charles will ever know the truth. That he defended his position with his biographer is just that. That, as Prince of Wales, keeping a mistress, was not outside the relm of his "position", was certainly a possibility. That he would have liked the match to have worked, publicly, certainly. He wanted to be Edward VII, but it didn't work. Diana was not Alexandra.

 

[Russophile]

Diana was not Alexandra.

No, she had MUCH better hearing.

 

[LadyCat]

Russo you are sooooo bad!!!

 

[COUNTESS]

Maybe not, if she had lived long.

 

[scooter]

The wording on page 283 is

pg 283: 'If his betrothal to Diana Spencer was hardly the love match for which his friends had hoped, that she perhaps wanted, and which the nation certainly assumed, he was determined tht their marriage should suceed'.

which isn't the same as saying that he'd never loved Diana. I don't think it comes as any surprise to people that Charles wasn't head over heels in love when they married, but then he'd said in an earlier interview that he thought friendship was a better basis for a marriage than infatuation. And saying that he wasn't head over heels in love at the time of his marriage (which is what Dimbleby said, it wasn't a direct quote) isn't the same as saying in the mid-1990s that he'd never loved Diana.

Sorry Elspeth, but I must disagree. "not a love match' clearly, to me anyway, means Charles was not in love with Diana when he married her. Also, immediately after that quote CHarles goes on to say he was 'uneasy' about the match. If Skydragon is correct, and the wheels came off the Wales marriage wagon about one year into it, when exactly did her love her, if not at the wedding? Also, on page 287 Charles is quoted as saying 'His feelings for Camilla Parker Bowles had not changed'. This certainly indicates to me that Charles was in love with Camilla and not Diana at the time of his first wedding.

 

[Elspeth]

But you're reading a lot into that statement. The reports we hear are flat assertions that somewhere in the biography, Charles told Dimbleby straight out "I never loved Diana." He didn't say that. I'm sure he wasn't deeply in love when they married, but Diana told several people that they'd loved each other (I think it was in one of the Ingrid Seward books, where she said Diana told her that she and Charles loved each other at some stages of their relationship), although I'm sure it wasn't the same sort of love he had for Camilla. That part of the book is very carefully worded with ifs and howevers and althoughs, and there aren't any direct quotes. Whoever took that passage and construed it as "Prince Charles told Dimbleby he never loved Diana" has been guilty of serious overstatement, even misrepresentation, because nowhere in the book is such a quote to be found.

 

[scooter]

So do you think he was in love with both of them? I think if someone is in love with person A and marries person B, said marriage doesnt have much of a chance. Person B will never be person A.

 

[Warren]

We are not arguing inference, or person A or person B or even person C. Resorting to tangents will not resolve the question of what precisely Dimbleby wrote.
We are trying to determine the veracity of an alleged quote from a published and readily available source. As easy as that sounds, the alleged quote remains unverified.

 

[Jo of Palatine]

I doubt Charles had realised how much he loved Camilla when he met Diana. I think they've been friends but he had always known that he must marry and that she couldn't be this bride, so he firmly let Camilla in his "friendship"-drawer. Then he met Diana, young and sweet Diana who was so determined to have him and who knew so much about his soft- and weaknesses from her sister Sarah. And Diana was there for him in just the right way when he was especially in need of understanding as he had just lost his uncle from a terrorist attack. I think he really believed to be in love with Diana but he didn't know her and when he found out how she really was, he found he couldn't love her romantically anymore. If Diana had been different, a more mature love could have grown between them, but as it was he was disappointed, helpless and though he cared, it was too much for him to cope with (which is one of his weaknesses, I believe). So when Diana claimed Charles would betray her with Camilla and it wasn't the truth then, Charles felt responsible for his wife's treatment of his old friend.

Yes, I believe Diana threw Charles and Camilla together with her constant bickering and accusations about them. And somehow I believe Charles gave up at one point and really turned to comfortable, friendly Camilla who was there for him. Like he said in a row to Diana: you know what? After you've accused me constantly I will do what you claim I have done all along. Call me at Camilla's!" He seems to be a man who can react like that when you believe the description in the Dimbleby-book.

Of course I don't know but I believe there is a possibility that it happened that way. It sounds more plausible to me than the story Diana used to tell.

And when I see Charles and Camilla together today, I think it was not the worst outcome. At least not for them.

 

[Jo of Palatine]

Dimbleby, page 280 hardcover edition:
"She was so obviously hapy and he seemed so attracted to her that his friends warmed to a prospective love match." And: "In private, he confided to one of his friends that though he did not yet love her, she was lovable and warm-hearted, and he was sure he could fall in love with her."

Dimbleby then goes on to describe how most people surrounding the prince thought Diana was the right choice except for Penny Romsey and Nicholas Soames. He explains the pressures the media and his own family put on the prince to decide for or against Diana and how this pressure made it impossible for him to really realise if he loved her or not. In fact, Charles detected in his father's ultimatum the "insinuation that he had callously exploited an innocent girl and that, by his hesitation, he was threatening to dishonour the family." Charles "felt ill used, but impotent".

From the book, page 283:
"In what he confessed was a "confused and anxious state of mind", the prince tried to reconcile himself to the inevitable, confiding to another of his friends, "it is just a matter of taking an unusual plunge into some rather unknown circumstances that inevitably disturbs me but I expect it will be the right thing in the end". (...) He added, "It all seems so ridiculous because I do very much want to do the right thing for this Country and my family - but I'm terrified sometimes of making a promise and then perhaps live to regret it."

And Dimbleby comments: Making every allowance for last-minute nerves, it was hardly the most auspicious frame of mind in which to offer his hand in marriage.

So Dimbleby never claims that Charles did not love Diana, he only explains that the circumstances made it impossible for Charles to decide to marry her out of his love for her. He simply wasn't given the time to see her often enough to get to know her good enough to base his decision on that knowledge and to start loving her for better or for worse.

 

[Skydragon]

If Skydragon is correct, and the wheels came off the Wales marriage wagon about one year into it,

That should read in Skydragons opinion, I think..

 

[Russophile]

Like I said, he was prepared to do his duty.

 

[Moonmaiden23]

But you're reading a lot into that statement. The reports we hear are flat assertions that somewhere in the biography, Charles told Dimbleby straight out "I never loved Diana." He didn't say that. I'm sure he wasn't deeply in love when they married, but Diana told several people that they'd loved each other (I think it was in one of the Ingrid Seward books, where she said Diana told her that she and Charles loved each other at some stages of their relationship), although I'm sure it wasn't the same sort of love he had for Camilla. That part of the book is very carefully worded with ifs and howevers and althoughs, and there aren't any direct quotes. Whoever took that passage and construed it as "Prince Charles told Dimbleby he never loved Diana" has been guilty of serious overstatement, even misrepresentation, because nowhere in the book is such a quote to be found.

I assume you are referring to me as the person "guilty of serious overstatement or misrepresentation". I admit that when I first made the statement about the infamous quote I worded it in a way that implied that I had read it directly from the Dimbleby book.That was an error and I apologize. But I DID read HE NEVER LOVED HER blaring accross the paqes of several tabloids, which I named-and was told very firmly that that wasn't enough because I didn't provide page numbers, quotes, etc.

It seems that based on excerpts from the Dimbleby book other people came to the conclusion that the POW never loved Diana. I personally do not believe that is the case but it is not surprising at all that someone reading the excerpts published here in this Forum would come to that conclusion-that he married her believing that he COULD come to love her and was never able to do so.

Also, I am confused about this "provide the link!" mandate...for example you yourself have countered with the story that Diana herself told several people that she and Charles were in love. But YOU didn't provide a source or a quote yourself other than to say that it was in an Ingrid Seward interview. For the record I remember reading somewhere that the late Princess told someone that too, but wasn't I chastised about making vague statements precisely like that one, because I didn't provide a link to back it up? So when is a link required and when it is not??

Thanks in advance.

 

[Elspeth]

I assume you are referring to me as the person "guilty of serious overstatement or misrepresentation".

No, actually I thought (possibly mistakenly, since I didn't check my copy of her book) that Tina Brown had construed that passage as "He told Dimbleby that he never loved Diana" and that other people were just picking up on that second-hand retelling of what was in the Dimbleby book. I was referring to Tina Brown, not you, when I said that. If you repeated something verbatim from a second-hand source which had overstated what was in the original, you aren't the one doing the overstating.

Also, I am confused about this "provide the link!" mandate...for example you yourself have countered with the story that Diana herself told several people that she and Charles were in love. But YOU didn't provide a source or a quote yourself other than to say that it was in an Ingrid Seward interview. For the record I remember reading somewhere that the late Princess told someone that too, but wasn't I chastised about making vague statements precisely like that one, because I didn't provide a link to back it up? So when is a link required and when it is not??

I'm on vacation this week and not able to check my books. If you remind me on Friday (feel free to drop me a PM), I'll go and see if I can find it. I'm pretty sure it was in a book (which should be findable) rather than a Majesty article (which might not be, since I don't keep all my back copies). It isn't so much a matter of always having to provide the backup information and links and so on every time you post something, but as Warren said a few posts back, if someone makes a factual statement based on a checkable source and is asked to provide the actual wording from the source or a link or other reference to the original statement, s/he should make every effort to do so. Otherwise we're in danger of just getting into the endless loop of "she said that!" "no she didn't!" "yes she DID!" "prove it!" "shan't! but she did say it!" "no she didn't...."

 

[MARG]

Are we ever going to get back on topic? The Charles, Diana, Camilla triangle, and who's to blame has been done to death.

 

[Elspeth]

Feel free to lead the way, MARG...

 

[Jo of Palatine]

Are we ever going to get back on topic? The Charles, Diana, Camilla triangle, and who's to blame has been done to death.

Maybe we can agree that they were all victims of circumstances - Charles couldn't marry Camilla but was/felt forced to marry, Diana thought marriage was her best bet in her situation and married up with the hope of love, Camilla was married (and had married because of a similar reasoning as Diana) and couldn't change a thing about that. All three were trapped by the time and social position they inhabited and only when these circumstances changed or were changeable, the situation changed.


Now we're post 1996, 1997 and 2005: I see a late luck and happiness for two of those involved and may the third rest in peace.