Duch_Luver_4ever Digest #1

[Duch_Luver_4ever]

Duch_Luver4ever Digest:

So after talking with some of you on PM and seeing that some ppl were missing my contributions to the forum, Role of the Spencer family in preparing Diana for marriage? thank you to those who remember. I've decided to try out a method that might be agreeable to me.

Don't get me wrong, moderators and admins, I have lurked from time to time and still see the same issues that caused me to step back, the latest being the debate about Diana and the stairs incident. I'm not going to speak for any other users cause I don't know whats going on in their minds, but I can see similar feelings in other quality posters as well in their posts.

While I cant speculate if they will step back from the forum as well, it likely affects their enjoyment of the forum. So what im doing is sort of a "LouisFerdinand" style of proposing questions/ideas/things to ruminate about.

From there, you all can run with it and I may PM a few of you about it, but that way those of you that still want to see my ideas can see them, and those that don't can ignore them, and I dont have to deal with the issue of the subject matters own words linked and referenced being cast out as utter rubbish. So here's my first "digest"

Diana and old news being "new" and her story interacting with news today: So, not to rag on youngsters again, but this spate of supposed "new, shocking and mistakes" the medias been running in events from the courtship are eye rolling to those boomers and GenX'ers that were there for the first run.

For example the postage stamp and engagement photos showing a height difference between Charles and Diana. It wasn't a "mistake" a'la photoshop or airbrush error that the clickbait news would have one presume. It was known back then about the box/step that Charles stood on to have the desired at that time from a photogenic/advertising/perception perspective. Diana threw them for a loop in that aspect with her height matching his, but as much as they like to think it was a photo that slipped past ppl undetected, it didnt, and the press did have a go at Charles for it.

Same with the "whatever love means" as a shocking, undiscovered clip. One can suppose that for ppl not alive at the time, it is "new" information for them, and the news articles are geared for a more general audience that might not be royal/diana philes, but it can be trying to those of us that follow more closely.

With all the talk about wiretapping/eavesdropping by the UK on the US lately, too bad they don't remember like we do the fact that US intel was listening in on Diana's calls that summer in 97 on behalf of the UK to get around domestic surveillance laws. For more info, google the "five I's or eyes" an agreement between US,UK,Canada, Aus, and NZ to basically spy on their citizens by using one of the other four gov't to do it for them, so its not as far fetched as the news would have one believe.

Now for my question or topic of debate, and it has to do with Diana and her reading/knowledge of private eye magazine, and what she may have known or not known about Camilla before she saw firsthand what a hold Camilla had on Charles.

One article is this one http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/stellar/how-diana-won-her-prince-book-reveals-charles-panicked-proposal/news-story/215b343ad31d8b059f5b5819f2c6d673 which talks about the mention in Private Eye of Camilla joining Charles and APB in April 1980 as Rhodesia became Zimbabwe, now you may say, maybe Diana missed that issue, but she did read them a lot, she would read them in the car with Ken Lennox.

Another interesting article I read recently about their age difference and generally unsuitability of the marriage,based on Charles stuffy range of interests, mentioned a time when Diana and Charles were playing Trivial Pursuit and it asked what Private Eye's "nickname" for the Queen was and Charles didnt know, and Diana was surprised and knew right away it was "Brenda".

I remember a different time before the marriage when Diana was at BP/Clarence House she jumped on a couch saying to the effect of "look im jumping on Brenda's couch". So while Trivial Pursuit was released after the wedding, she did read it enough before the wedding to know the Queens nickname, so its a curious question given how her family and friends knew she idolized Charles, that no one would mention, or she wouldnt have seen the April 1980 Private eye issue.

So do you all think she knew and just figured her love and charms would win out in the end, or did she just try and pretend it wasn't an issue? Either way, its to me almost as curious a question to ponder as the Spencer family question.

Tidbits: it wasnt wine Diana nicked from Highgrove to take to the Hewitts cottage in Devon in one of the threads, it was Orange Vodka.

30 years ago on April 9th, Diana opened the Aids ward and had her groundbreaking handshake, its interesting how important events happened in years ending in 7, In 1967, she was six and her parents marriage was breaking down,She met Charles in 1977 in the infamous "plowed field", the AIDS ward in 1987, and well, we all know about 97.

Finishing with a lighter touch: heres some lovely pics of Diana in a recent people article Princess Diana at Her Most Unguarded in 5 Rarely-Seen Photos

look at the first two, the top is pure whimsy as she shocked by her car stalling, and the second one, ah if that one doesnt fully describe how lovable she was, I dont know what does. Pure Perfection.

[royalanthropologist]

Welcome back @Duch_Luver_4ever. As you know very well, you were sorely missed here. I have been having my own moments so I stepped back a bit. I read my posts and could not recognize the person writing them. They were just horrendous so I just need time to get my bearings back.  :hehe:

[Curryong]

Welcome back Duch_.
My feeling about Diana's knowledge of the Charles and Camilla relationship before she became engaged is that she knew that Camilla had been Charles's mistress, with a hint here from Private Eye, (I do think Diana probably read the snippet) a few whispers from acquaintances in London Society, a bit of talk from older people she knew.

However, I don't believe and will never believe, that she calculated that the relationship was still going on when she accepted Charles's proposal and just cynically accepted it as part of her forthcoming marital arrangements, as some say. I don't think that Diana knew at all the depths of Charles's feelings for Mrs PB, all the things they had in common, the ins and outs of their relationship.

The fact was that Charles and Diana had barely twelve dates before becoming engaged, they had few heart to hearts and I think Diana ignored the past and looked only to the future. It was only after they'd become engaged that Charles spoke to her about his confidential friend Mrs PB and then of course there was the incident of the G and F bracelet, and the farewell. All Diana's insecurities flew to the surface, and who could blame her! I don't think she had any peace of mind about Camilla in spite of Charles's reassurances, from then on.

[amabel]

But if she knew of his affair with Camilla why date him? surely (from the way many people seem to react) if Di was such an innocent this knowing that he was having an affair with a married wowman would have had her postivley horrified.. and unwilling to go out wiht a man who could get involved with a married woman?
If she was willig to get engaged to him, why then refuse to believe that he was finished with the affair when he told her he was

[Curryong]

Diana knew that Charles was 32, she knew he had a past with several women and girls, (all the men in the Barbara Cartland novels that she was so fond of were 'experienced') but I don't think she knew the details of the romance with Camilla or how long it had lasted or the depths of it. She probably thought that Camilla, unhappily married, had manipulated Charles and had been the leader in the affair. I don't think that it all hit her that it was as passionate as it was until after her engagement.

There are huge chunks of information about the run up to Charles and Diana's marriage that we don't know, nor are we likely to ever know. Such as -- how much did Charles tell his young fiancée about the  'confidential friends' in his past, how he 'sold' it to her, what he said (with sincerity, I'm sure) that caused her to believe he loved her and only her, that she was the only one he wanted in his life. She didn't quite swallow it, we know, otherwise she wouldn't have been upset about the bracelet and the insistence that he give it to Mrs PB personally.

[amabel]

wel lgiven the way some people react, to the idea of an affair with a married man or woman, I would have thought that if Diana was as innocent and virginal and moral, she too would have been horrified and felt that noting could excuse Charles having an affair..
but she didn't seem bothered and stayed in Camillas house.
and I would question that she didn't know that much about it, it was an open secret among society people.
If she "didn't know," it was because she had  a way of ignoring things like that, which continued in later life, as she did the same with Dodi Fayed..and Will Calring.. ignored the fact that they had other women In their lives.
if she was dating Charles, knowing that he had been or still was Camilla's lover, why do it?  WHy not say "I can't go out with a man who would date a married woman".. and if you feel that "Charles must have reassured her during their courtship and told her that the affair was over".. so why did she then get so aerated after the engagement had bene announced?  and if that was the case that she raelly did get very upseta and angry and threw a big wobbly about the relationship and the bracelet, how come there is  fairly well attested story that the night before the wedding she was riding a bike around the palace, singing "I'm going to marry the POW". 

[Curryong]

We don't know exactly what Diana did know about the relationship with Camilla or what explanation Charles gave for having an affair with her. I do think that Diana was a virgin and quite innocent when she was dating Charles. How worldly and sophisticated could a 19 year old that had never had a boyfriend be?

Yes, Diana  did ride around on a bicycle singing the evening before her wedding day. That doesn't mean that she was in a state of rapturous excitement throughout the whole engagement. The incident with the bracelet did upset her considerably and Diana probably went through various emotions in the weeks leading up to the nuptials, nervousness about her new life, apprehension about Mrs PB, joy that she was going to marry the man she loved, excitement about her wedding day, hope about her marriage, all those things and more.

We know that at one stage she wanted to withdraw and her sisters told her it was too late. It may have been a sixth sense driving her at that moment.

[amabel]

She did have boyfriends.  She was a pretty girl and had dates and admirers.. and I don't believe she was as naïve and "innocent little girlish" as she made herself out to be.  Surely she TOLD us about her relaltionship with Charles and the "Camilla situation.. in Diana HTS?  So As far as I recall she spun it that she knew nothing about the affair till she was engaged..
but I think - and you seem to agree, that she knew about it well beforehand.  She would have been the only "society girl" who didn't.. I'm sure there was plenty of gossip and giggling about Charles and his ladyfriends.at Sloane range dinner parties... and her own sister dated him.
but my point is, IF she was so naïve, so childlike and virginal how come she was OK with marryyng a man who only recenlty beforehand had been engaged in an affair with a married woman?

[royalanthropologist]

This just makes me think what I was like at 19. Horrendous decision making skills, impulsiveness and a self-belief that was wholly without merit. I think Diana did not clearly think about what was happening and what would happen.  She naively assumed that Charles would get over Camilla and that the ring would protect her in any case. Apparently Diana got her proposal at Camilla's house and she was first put forward so that Camilla could opine on whether she was a suitable consort.

The people that should have intervened are her family, particularly her mother. It is not as if Charles was the first royal to have mistresses so they must have known his attachments. Even when the marriage went wrong, I think Diana played it very badly. She was not strategic. Going to the press was only going to send Charles further and further away.  As she became more strident and uncompromising, Charles saw even more reasons why he should turn to Camilla. You cannot be a feminist Princess of Wales. The role is just not made that way.

[amabel]

but it seems to me that on the one hamds we have a Diana who is so childishly innocent she doesn't even know what everyone knows, about the affair (Sounds like a SUPER Naïve Barbara Carltand innocent).. and she only finds out about Camilla when it is too late to end the engagement.. but when it comes to the pre wedding night, when she was teling us she was a "lamb to the slaugther" she's happily singing about marrying the POW.

[Curryong]

I wrote in that first post that I believe that she had heard that Charles and Camilla had had an affair or had read something of it or whatever, but that she hadn't known the details of it, or the depths of it. Nor probably did most other people. No-one knows absolutely everything about a love affair except the two people concerned.

As for her innocence, I do believe she was quite innocent. No one has ever pointed to evidence of Diana having high levels of sophistication at 19. I believe that she discovered or intuitively felt with the bracelet incident that everything he had probably told her about his feelings for Camilla being irrevocably in the past might not be true. She was in love with Charles, believed that he felt the same about her, and the bracelet and wanting a last meeting with Camilla was probably a great shock to her.
She said she felt 'like a lamb to the slaughter' considerably later, years later, but she may well have felt a deep unease at the time as well as joy the night before about her forthcoming nuptials. Sometimes people's feelings are mixed in that way.

[SophieChloe]

[gmod]Opening Post : Whilst it is lovely to see you back here @Duch_Luver_4ever. And whilst it "may be agreeable to You" I'm a tad concerned that you have turned this into your own * Speakers Corner*.

While I cant speculate if they will step back from the forum as well, it likely affects their enjoyment of the forum.

From there, you all can run with it and I may PM a few of you about it, but that way those of you that still want to see my ideas can see them, and those that don't can ignore them, and I dont have to deal with the issue of the subject matters own words linked and referenced being cast out as utter rubbish. So here's my first "digest"

This Forum is meant for all Members to give their thoughts - whether they agree with you or not - they should not be requested to "ignore". I shall be keeping a close eye on your "digest", [/gmod]

[sandy]

Diana knew Charles was seeing other women before he dated her. After all, she was 12 years younger and read the papers. She did not travel in the same circles. I doubt very much she had much experience with men. She had to have a medical exam to see if she was a virgin who could later have children with the Prince of Wales. She had a "history but no past." She did indicate that Charles reassured her the day before the wedding  (with a note) that he would be waiting for her and be proud of her as she walked down the aisle to him. She thought to herself (as she told Morton) "well that's over" as she saw Camilla sitting in the Cathedral. She was optimistic enough then to think that Charles married her because he loved her she was "the one" and Camilla was over. She did not travel in Charles' circle pre courtship and his friends would not jeopardize the match by telling her the truth about Camilla. She underestimated the hold Camilla had over Charles.
Double post auto-merged: April 13, 2017, 09:48:41 PM

but it seems to me that on the one hamds we have a Diana who is so childishly innocent she doesn't even know what everyone knows, about the affair (Sounds like a SUPER Naïve Barbara Carltand innocent).. and she only finds out about Camilla when it is too late to end the engagement.. but when it comes to the pre wedding night, when she was teling us she was a "lamb to the slaugther" she's happily singing about marrying the POW.

Diana knew that Charles was experienced. Coverage of his love life was in the press for years. But she underestimated the hold Camilla had over Charles. She did think it was "over" and told this to Morton.
Double post auto-merged: April 13, 2017, 09:53:05 PM

This just makes me think what I was like at 19. Horrendous decision making skills, impulsiveness and a self-belief that was wholly without merit. I think Diana did not clearly think about what was happening and what would happen.  She naively assumed that Charles would get over Camilla and that the ring would protect her in any case. Apparently Diana got her proposal at Camilla's house and she was first put forward so that Camilla could opine on whether she was a suitable consort.

The people that should have intervened are her family, particularly her mother. It is not as if Charles was the first royal to have mistresses so they must have known his attachments. Even when the marriage went wrong, I think Diana played it very badly. She was not strategic. Going to the press was only going to send Charles further and further away.  As she became more strident and uncompromising, Charles saw even more reasons why he should turn to Camilla. You cannot be a feminist Princess of Wales. The role is just not made that way.

I read that Charles talked about marriage in general at Camilla and Andrew's place. But did not actually propose until after he returned from a trip (he called her telling her he had something important to ask her). They had a quiet dinner and he proposed, she returned and told her flatmates. He called her father. This is all recorded in the MOrton book. Diana's father in interviews at the time confirmed the sequence of Diana's proposal and Charles calling him up.

Charles rather unrealistically did not think logically of the consequences of his proposing to Diana knowing he did not love her. I think he felt Diana would fall into line like Andrew Parker Bowles did.

Charles had mistresses pre marriage while he courted suitable girls. But this did not mean he'd continue the habit after he got married. Mountbatten apparently wanted him to commit to his granddaughter Amanda, after Charles go the sowing of wild oats out of his system.

Diana only went to the press about 10 years after the marriage. In the meantime, Charles friends leaked nasty stories about Diana.
Double post auto-merged: April 13, 2017, 09:58:51 PM

wel lgiven the way some people react, to the idea of an affair with a married man or woman, I would have thought that if Diana was as innocent and virginal and moral, she too would have been horrified and felt that noting could excuse Charles having an affair..
but she didn't seem bothered and stayed in Camillas house.
and I would question that she didn't know that much about it, it was an open secret among society people.
If she "didn't know," it was because she had  a way of ignoring things like that, which continued in later life, as she did the same with Dodi Fayed..and Will Calring.. ignored the fact that they had other women In their lives.
if she was dating Charles, knowing that he had been or still was Camilla's lover, why do it?  WHy not say "I can't go out with a man who would date a married woman".. and if you feel that "Charles must have reassured her during their courtship and told her that the affair was over".. so why did she then get so aerated after the engagement had bene announced?  and if that was the case that she raelly did get very upseta and angry and threw a big wobbly about the relationship and the bracelet, how come there is  fairly well attested story that the night before the wedding she was riding a bike around the palace, singing "I'm going to marry the POW". 

Diana did not know about the hold Camilla had on Charles when she met Camilla. Camilla at the time was a housewife supposedly happily married with young children, one about two years old. At first she did not seem a threat because after all she was married with young children and not single.

Why keep blaming Diana about Kelly Fisher when Kelly herself never blamed Diana. She was super angry at Mohammed Fayed and Dodi for their casting her aside. Diana came to the yacht after Dodi dumped Kelly. He probably told Diana that he was engaged but he broke off the engagement. Had Diana lived, I think Kelly would have won a suit against Fayed. She gave her side of the story at the Inquest and no, Diana did not break them up.

Will Carling denied an affair.

Diana did not travel in Charles circles, she was 12 years younger and only got to really know Charles circle when Charles starting asking her out on dates. So how would she know he was sleeping with Mrs Parker Bowles--she knew he most likely had experience because he had many girlfriends who made the headlines.

[amabel]

I wrote in that first post that I believe that she had heard that Charles and Camilla had had an affair or had read something of it or whatever, but that she hadn't known the details of it, or the depths of it. Nor probably did most other people. No-one knows absolutely everything about a love affair except the two people concerned.

As for her innocence, I do believe she was quite innocent. No one has ever pointed to evidence of Diana having high levels of sophistication at 19. I believe that she discovered or intuitively felt with the bracelet incident that everything he had probably told her about his feelings for Camilla being irrevocably in the past might not be true. She was in love with Charles, believed that he felt the same about her, and the bracelet and wanting a last meeting with Camilla was probably a great shock to her.
She said she felt 'like a lamb to the slaughter' considerably later, years later, but she may well have felt a deep unease at the time as well as joy the night before about her forthcoming nuptials. Sometimes people's feelings are mixed in that way.

but if she was so innocent surely she would have thougth (as so many people on this forum seem to think)that the fact that he had had an affair with a married woman  meant he was compleltey in the wrong and that nothing could justify it?  Why did she go out iwht him at all?  Why did she stay at the home of the woman he had had the affair with?  Surely that was an indication that there was a close relationship with that woman still?
  Why did she wait tll they were formally engaged (according to her account) before she got so uneasy that she raised the issue with Charles..an d then wasn't really satifised with his assurance that he was now In love with her?

[Curryong]

Diana probably did feel that it was wrong, especially considering the history of both her parents. However, Charles can be extremely charming and she was attracted. Goodness knows there have been many many girls and young women who have fallen for the lines put out by men who are married (work colleagues and so on,)  which is infinitely worse.

It wasn't Charles who was married and, as I've said before, she may have felt that Camilla was the prime mover and enabler in that affair. What she would be keeping a wary eye on, and she did, was any sign that this romance was flaring up again.

It wasn't just the Parker Bowles house that Diana stayed at when dating and engaged to Charles. It was a number of his friends who hosted weekends, the Soames for instance, all of whom seemed elderly to her and most of whom she didn't like very much. She both disliked and mistrusted Camilla PB with some reason, but during the courtship Diana tried to adjust to Charles's friends. She'd hardly say to him, unless she wanted the romance to finish, 'I don't like Camilla, she has a past with you and I feel she is looking me over, sizing me up and seeing what sort of a challenge I will be.'

I mean, this discussion is all with the benefit of hindsight and with large pieces of the jigsaw puzzle missing. We can only guess at some of the motivations of the parties involved and we don't know what Charles said to Diana with reference to Mrs PB.

Diana later stated that during one of their conversations about Camilla (after they were engaged) she asked him out and out about his feelings for Mrs PB and he returned an ambiguous answer. You can say that should have finished things in Diana's eyes but it obviously did not (I would have walked, quite frankly) but if that statement is  true then that shows Charles (an engaged man) in a less than honourable light, to say the least. 

There are some who believe that Diana was primarily after that title and that Charles's main attraction for her was that he was POW. I acknowledge that his being heir and a prince probably was part of the attraction but I believe that she fell for the man first and was in love.

[amabel]

well I would be scpetial aobut "what Diana said" as she often said contradictory things..
I understood that when she spent time with Charles at weekends, he was staying at Highgrove which he was having decorated at the time and she would stya with Camilla who lived nearby.
And I would say that if she was relaly so moral about the whole idea of people having affiars  or so innocent (In Morton she seems to portray herself like a Barbara Cartland blushing innocent heroine who barely knows what kissing is).. she would surely have "walked" if a man whom she knew had had a relationship wit a married woman whom he was still In touch iwht, had started to court her.
It seems to me that there's no point in "being wary in case the whole Camilla thing started up again".. if she knew quite well that Cam lived near Charles, was part of his circle and was still a very close friend whom he asked to give a bed to his girlfriend...
I can't help feeling that Diana was well aware that there had been an affair, that it didn't really bother her and I can see that the RF came to believe "she knew about Camilla, she didn't give two hoots about it, and it was olny when she had snared Charles that she started to throw tantrums about it and other thigns that annoyed her."
And yes if she was gog to be bothered by the friendship between C and Camilla she SHOUDL have brought the issue up to Charles when they were dating.. and said "I worry about your past relationship with Camilla, you mut have loved her a lot, are you still goig to see her a lot in the future" and got it all thrashed out before they got engaged.

[Curryong]

And what of Charles's attitude towards the affair with Camilla? It's been emphasised again and again on this forum and others that he had to find a pliable young virgin to marry who would fit in with his way of life.

How did Charles intend to approach with this young fiancée (whoever she was) the rather thorny issue of his sleeping with another man's wife? Did he intend to explain that he had been so in love and lust with her that he couldn't keep away, that he couldn't keep his hands off her even in front of her husband and his friends and others at a polo ball.

What if she had demanded some details of their affair, the subterfuge so they could sleep together at other's homes or when Andrew was away, the fact that his mother had been informed that he'd been sleeping with a fellow officer's wife?

Did he hope any young woman would accept it all with a sophisticated wave of the hand, even when he insisted on a last meeting with Camilla to give her a present, even though he was engaged to another? Did he expect a gentle acceptance of his explanations that it was all over and it was fine and OK for the said ex mistress to be hosting his new fiancée, because 'of course that behaviour is just accepted in our crowd isn't it'?  Gentle nod of head from fiancée to it all?

Quite frankly Charles IMO was jolly lucky to get anyone to marry him at all with his lamentable behavior towards his girlfriends and liking for married mistresses.

[amabel]

But Diana DID accept that he'd been iwht another man's wife...and that she herself was actulay staying at the womans house and that charles was still in touch with Camilla.  She must have realised that in royal cirlces its usual for old loves to stay  friends and socialise iwht each other. Anne is still friends with ANdrew PB who was one of her early boyfriends.
If she was as horrified by it as people here seem to be, I think that she would not have dated Charles at all...and I mean come on Charles was going to find that there were women who were eager to marry him, even if he'sd been cross eyed with 2 heads...

[royalanthropologist]

I think Campbell hit the nail on the head in terms of actually describing what happened, even though she did not like Diana. Charles married Diana with lukewarm feelings at the very best. At the time he assumed that may be he would learn to love her or alternatively that she might be like Queen Alexandra (not fighting with the mistress but focusing on her own royal duties). That way he could get the press and his parents off his back by marrying a seemingly suitable girl and having a quiet life.

Diana got hints that Charles was not that into her right from the beginning but ignored them (long absences, no physical contact and noncommittal answers about being in love), sticking to her Barbara Cartland view of the handsome prince rescuing her from abandonment in her own family. In the beginning Diana was on her best behavior and tried to fit in with the royal family. Once the ring was on her finger, she really did not have to be so accommodating. She started to assert her rights including trying to separate Charles from the Highgrove set.

At first Charles was bewildered at the change in his new wife but he did let her have free reign. Indeed Diana was quite surprised when he bolted because she thought she had finally bulldozed him into being the kind of man she wanted. There are stories of Diana insisting on having her way in everything from naming children, schedules, house decor etc. The dog banishing incidents (some have said they were incontinent) really cemented Charles' view that his wife was trying to control him and had essentially tricked him into seeing one side of her personality.

During that time Diana had bulimia and depression. I repeat: unless you have actually lived with someone that suffers from those conditions, it is nearly impossible to understand how difficult it is to live with them. There are reports of Diana spending hours crying, throwing tantrums, refusing to engage with other members of the royal family, taunting Charles about matters she knew were very sensitive to him like the crown, saying she hated everything he liked etc.

Even if you are madly in love with someone, if they start behaving like that; the love begins to fade away. For Charles it was worse because he did not even really love his wife. Any mistake or difficulty she created was exaggerated in his mind because already he was not in love with her.  Now he discovered he did not even like her at all.

Charles' friend were worried about how depressed he was getting about the failing marriage (some report of how he was turning grey). Charles then confided in his mistress Camilla whom he had always been in love with but was not courageous enough to marry at the time. Camilla was everything Diana was not: accommodating, permissive, sensible, patient, discreet and very pragmatic about issues of fidelity. To Charles, it seemed that he had made a terrible mistake in marrying Diana. She was not making him happy and he was certainly not making her happy. At the time, he was afraid of divorce but when Diana started discussing the succession he became determined to get her out of his life for good through divorce.

Campbell wrote that Charles had many mistresses but Diana became obsessed with Camilla specifically because she correctly guessed that this one was going to last. That is when she started the efforts to recapture Charles but he was gone for good. Even the Hewitt affair would not move him. In her desperation she thought that if she reported him to the press, there would be such a backlash that he would have to give up his mistress. At one time Diana even enlisted the help of Kanga (a disgruntled ex-mistress) but nothing moved Charles.

Yes, there was a backlash (which exists in a certain section of the population even up to today) but Diana underestimated the stubbornness of Charles. She tried and tried but the damage to the marriage was irreparable. The press reports and the resultant attempts to bully Camilla turned mild dislike into occasional hate for Diana. Charles became more and more determined that he would never return to Diana. That to me seems like the most plausible explanation.

I believe that had Diana been properly advised, she would still be Princess of Wales and Camilla would be just the occasional or ex-mistress. As it happens, Diana's determination to punish Charles and Camilla inadvertently opened the way for them to eventually get married. I do not know how Diana would have coped with the wedding of 2005. Here was a wedding that had been soundly critiqued by the press with dire predictions of doom. All that changed nothing. The bride looked very nice for her day and it was quite clear to everyone who wanted to see that Charles was very happy. He remains happy today. I am not sure Diana would have found similar happiness with her companions. The trauma of her life was too deep.

[Curryong]

Gee, Royal, Camilla is everything that Diana was not AND makes the Great Man happy, too, and of course that's the most important thing of all, isn't it? And not a criticism in sight of Camilla's behaviour as a married woman and a mother of two through those years when she was sleeping with Charles before and after her marriage and his. Very convenient that Diana's mental health was to blame for the collapse of the Wales marriage, indeed for everything that happened actually, including keeping the star-crossed lovers apart for so long. You sure your surname isn't Junor or Bedell Smith?

[royalanthropologist]

I know it is tempting for me to get into yet another "Camilla is good/bad debate" but I will not do that. Camilla's marriage had its own complications and she handled them very differently from Diana. To date she remains on friendly terms with her former husband, something that Diana never quite achieved.

If you read my message carefully @Curryong, you will see that I wrote about Camilla's role in giving advice and supporting Charles. Saying that it is all due to Camilla and that she is an immoral woman is a great justification but it really does nothing to support or advance the marriage. That is precisely the mistake Diana made in my view. Her strategy was "attack Camilla and make it very difficult for Charles to see her". That is a very good strategy if you want to annoy your husband and make your rival uncomfortable. However, it will not save the marriage and it did not save this one; as well we know. All that Diana succeeding in achieving with that strategy was to push Charles further and further away, as well as losing some of the somewhat positive relationships she had with some members of the royal family.

Yes Camilla is very different from Diana. Apparently Charles infinitely prefers the Camilla version of a wife (they have been together for practically 3 decades so it must mean something).

As for prioritizing the happiness of your spouse, that is very critical in my experience. If you do that, the marriage might just work. If you do not and focus on trying to fight the mistress; the chances are that you end up being divorced. It is a question of deciding what you want: do you want to shame the husband and mistress or do you want to remain married? Whatever you consider to be important will determine your strategy. If Diana wanted to remain married to Charles and Princess of Wales; her chosen strategy was very ineffective.
Double post auto-merged: April 14, 2017, 10:18:17 AM

However; if Diana's intention was to have an acrimonious divorce and dent her husband's popularity then by all means she succeeded brilliantly.

[Curryong]

I am not saying that the collapse of the Wales marriage was all due to Camilla at all (though her behaviour certainly didn't help the marriage.) However, the demise of the Wales marriage wasn't all on Diana either, and we certainly hear a lot from those who are more sympathetic to Charles that Diana's mental state and her actions stemming from it was the primary cause of its ending.

Far from any criticism of Camilla there seems to be a complete whitewash of her actions and a huge emphasis on her bolstering and supporting and trying to make Charles happy as justification for any actions of hers that harmed Charles's marriage.

How about a bit of balance. How about a bit of examination of Charles's less attractive qualities that might have impacted on his marriage? How about his neediness and constant need for praise, his tendencies to self pity and his intellectual aggrandisement, his demeaning of his wife on several occasions in front of others, inferring that she was a brainless idiot. How about his self-absorption, ignoring of his wife's friends as uninteresting, his need to intellectualise everything?

But no, Diana was to blame for 80% of the failure of the marriage and Charles wasn't really to blame either for the other 20% because he had his true love and that made everything fine.

[royalanthropologist]

It all really comes down to what a person wants from the marriage or even after the marriage. To my mind there was a very fundamental difference between what Charles wanted from a wife and what Diana wanted from a husband. They could not or would not give what the other wanted. At that point relationship breakdown begins. Camilla may have helped to write the postmortem to that marriage but the end really began at the beginning. The fundamentals were just not there: love, respect, admiration, mutuality of interests etc.

Let us say that Camilla's plan (if there was any plan at all) was made so much easier by the strife in the marriage. Camilla offered a shoulder to cry on and  less complicated companionship. She contrasted sharply with Diana who Charles perceived as being difficult. Charles jumped at the first opportunity to leave his marriage and refused to return despite Diana's efforts.

Diana wanted to fight but I am not too sure to what end. What was the end goal? Was it a case of venting? Did she want public sympathy? Did she want Charles back? Did she want to separate? Was it just a question of wounded pride? or Did she just want to make life tough for Charles and Camilla? I have never gotten a clear answer to these questions.

All of us who are married make compromises and accept certain things about our spouses which are not particularly pleasant to us. If and when you needle them about those inadequacies they gradually withdraw or find someone that is prepared to put up with them. Charles might be all those things that you say @Curryong, but it is what he is. Diana chose to marry him and even later did not want to divorce him; warts and call.

It is a pointless exercise to say: "my spouse has this and this and this that is wrong with him. I am unable to change him but I do not want to separate from him or for him to find happiness with someone else". Diana had to make a very firm decision: did she want to be Charles or without him. After that she had to lay a strategy for achieving those goals.

I get the feeling that Diana was the party that wanted the marriage to continue or at least to be a normal marriage whereas Charles had completely detached. At that point you look for an amicable separation or divorce. The interim stuff of tantrums, press briefings, war of the walesses etc. is a waste of a life in my opinion.

[Curryong]

I happen to be twice married, the second marriage has been happy. I wouldn't have accepted Charles's proposal, even at nineteen, but that's just me.

You say Diana chose to marry Charles, warts and all. Charles wailed that he was driven to propose by his father but he still proposed himself. Philip wasn't standing behind him with a shotgun. And did he accept Diana, warts and all? Did she never ever compromise for him?

You say Diana may have wanted to make life tough for Charles and Camilla. What!! He was her husband! Also did THEIR romantic association never make life tough for her? You have read, I suppose,  of the incident recorded by Wharfe and others when Diana confronted Camilla at a party about the affair, and Charles was in a vile mood all the way home in the car with her. What cheek, for his wife to actually tell his mistress off! How dare she! So much more civilised to play the game!!

It's not just me that asserts that Charles has several unpleasant characteristics that probably impacted on his marriage. His self-pity, self absorption and demeaning of Diana etc have been recorded by others, some of them authors not particularly sympathetic to Diana. His latest biographer has pointed to serious flaws in Charles which you yourself in another thread on this forum agreed must make him a nightmare to live with and work for.

However, you apparently believe that Charles did little to harm his marriage and Camilla nothing, while Diana bears the majority of the blame for its failure. Well, I disagree.

With most marriages the fault can be laid at the door of both partners and it was the same with the Union of Charles and Diana.

[royalanthropologist]

Yes a 50:50 split of fault is what Diana actually stated in her Panorama interview. My point was that there had to come a time when Diana had to develop a strategy about what comes next. Charles was Charles. She was never going to change him and certainly the press were never going to persuade him to change or treat his wife with respect. That point was around 1986. "What comes next?" is what I was trying to discuss.

Diana laid out with great eloquence all the things that Charles did wrong in that marriage. She convinced many, many people about how unfairly she had been treated. Later on she became an icon for women who were having troublesome marriages or even some feminists/Republicans who wanted to give the royal family and Charles a bloody nose (psychologically at least).

BUT....to what end? What was the cost on Diana as a person? Did she get any long term satisfaction from what happened? Certainly none of the condemnation that Charles and Camilla faced ever persuaded them to stop or him to return to Diana. That is why I felt that the War of Walesses was an exercise in self-indulgence and childishness. An amicable and civilized divorce or even a "marriage in name only" would have been better options.

Evidently Charles has certain qualities. There are at least 3 women who have engaged in very bitter battles for him so he could not be a complete nasty. Those qualities hooked Diana, Camilla and even Kanga.

BTW I am glad you found happiness. These days one marriage is not always enough to find your true love. If you are lucky enough to get them in time, they can help you forget the nightmare of bad marriages.
Double post auto-merged: April 14, 2017, 12:37:07 PM

That confrontation scene between Diana and Camilla is rather sad to me. It just shows that at that point Diana was defeated and was effectively vacating her marriage. Some of the people that wrote about it say that Camilla responded with icy silence and a mock curtsy. Others say she rhetorically asked Diana what more she wanted when she had two beautiful children and an adoring public.

It all seems so superficial, desperate and pointless (i.e.) "let me go and confront her and we see what happens". Husband sulks and goes straight back to mistress for comforting. In the end it was Diana who spent the night crying. Camilla went back to her normal routines, not particularly perturbed by the incident. I personally would not have done such a thing. I would have sought ways of having an amicable separation or divorce if I could no longer stomach the presence of a mistress in my marriage.