If Diana had been older

Princess Cassandra · August 07, 2019, 02:08:44 PM

Regarding the difference in their ages, I am of the opinion that emotionally speaking, they were closer in age. For a few reasons he remained emotionally young. So, I think their issues were really that they had so little in common, and neither was equipped for a 50 - 50 give and take relationship.

amabel · August 07, 2019, 02:12:14 PM

Quote from: Princess Cassandra on August 07, 2019, 02:08:44 PM
Regarding the difference in their ages, I am of the opinion that emotionally speaking, they were closer in age. For a few reasons he remained emotionally young. So, I think their issues were really that they had so little in common, and neither was equipped for a 50 - 50 give and take relationship.

and Charles was interested in the past, and liked Older people..whereas Diana was not into the history of the RF or old ideas... She was very young for her age.. more like a teenager of 15 or 16 in many ways than a girl of 20./.

sandy · August 07, 2019, 08:13:24 PM

That's why Charles selected her, no chance of past experience.

amabel · August 08, 2019, 07:40:07 AM

If you mean it was a plus point that she was a virgin yes. However her "youngness" wasn't. He was someone who always enjoyed older people's company and was interested n the past. Diaana wasn't. She was very young for her age, didn't know much about the past or the history of her new family and didn't really want to learn...

Curryong · August 08, 2019, 11:38:22 AM

^ And was Charles anxious to learn about Diana's generation and their hopes and aspirations? Why did it all have to be on Diana to mould herself to him and learn from the older people in his circle? Who knows, Charles just may have learned something from the young. It's not always old people who can impart knowledge and wisdom, is it?

And even among people of his own generation, born in the late 1940s who came to adulthood in the Beatles and Carnaby St era, he stuck out like a sore thumb in his clothing, attitude and views. I remember him at university pontificating about hippies and sounding like a sixty year old. There was never anything young about Charles. Several commentators have remarked that he was born middleaged. Not admirable in my view.

amabel · August 08, 2019, 02:30:14 PM

what is "not admirable" about it? It is the way he was.. Some people are like that and others are "young" types..
Im sure that Charles has learned from younger People through the Princes Trust but in his personal life, he preferred to mix iwht older people. Diana preferred light hearted types who were interchangeable, "Dianamen"...

LouisFerdinand · August 09, 2019, 12:58:30 AM

When he was a teenager and in his twenties, which old male relative did Prince Charles spend a lot of time with, not including Lord Louis Mountbatten?

amabel · August 09, 2019, 06:57:22 AM

As far as I know Mountbatten was the only male relative he was espeicaly close to, as he didn't find his father sympathetic.

Princess Cassandra · August 10, 2019, 01:32:02 AM

Quote from: Curryong on August 08, 2019, 11:38:22 AM
^ And was Charles anxious to learn about Diana's generation and their hopes and aspirations? Why did it all have to be on Diana to mould herself to him and learn from the older people in his circle? Who knows, Charles just may have learned something from the young. It's not always old people who can impart knowledge and wisdom, is it?

And even among people of his own generation, born in the late 1940s who came to adulthood in the Beatles and Carnaby St era, he stuck out like a sore thumb in his clothing, attitude and views. I remember him at university pontificating about hippies and sounding like a sixty year old. There was never anything young about Charles. Several commentators have remarked that he was born middleaged. Not admirable in my view.

That's very interesting - I had not heard that, but it makes me think that at that time he was not really himself at all. He might have been trying to be more "first in line to the throne" than himself. He once was asked what it was like to realize your special role and he described it as a horrid realization that gradually comes over you, or something like that. He was a serious, sensitive person, and may well have been trying to measure up. At any rate, if that's the way he was talking he wouldn't have been relating well to his contemporaries.

sandy · August 10, 2019, 01:43:00 AM

Charles seemed to me very Edwardian in outlook, his mentors were his great Uncle Mountbatten and his grandmother the Queen Mum, both of whom grew up in Edwardian times. I used to think Charles "sensitive" but I don't anymore.

Curryong · August 10, 2019, 07:45:09 AM

^ Yes, I think that's correct. And it still appears in the number of staff or 'servants' he has in his household. The Queen Mum in her widowhood and old age was gaily supporting (or her daughter was) a staff of about thirty at her homes and that did not include people like her Comptroller. Charles might not have that number but his Edwardian lifestyle is apparently something of an irritation to his thrifty by comparison parents.

As for Mountbatten he always had perfect manners with 'the ladies', (though he lived high on the hog due to his heiress wife's money) but his attitude towards women (marry them young and innocent and mould them) is right out of the Edwardian copybook.

What person born circa 1948 and becoming an adult in the 1960s had those sort of views in 1981? I'd say one in 50 million or something. Even in wealthy upperclass households times had moved on. Diana had washed up at dinner parties and at home, laundered her own clothes, shopped for herself.

It was that sort of thing and his elderly mentors (and don't let's forget L van der Post, Charles's philiosophical adviser was a man in his seventies with odd ideas about how women should fit into men's lifestyles) that made Charles look like a dinosaur to his contemporaries and those younger than him. (Charles took a lot of advice from van der Post, a man who, again, was born before WW1.)

And I don't think that being that out of touch with your contemporaries in your youth is a good idea at all. It's led to that sort of Romaticism about the countryside and how people should live and farm that's caused consternation in the agricultural community over the years.

amabel · August 10, 2019, 09:38:38 AM

I think I'd rather someone who was old fashioned than someone who was very "young for their age..."

dianab · August 10, 2019, 07:52:36 PM

Quote from: Princess Cassandra on August 10, 2019, 01:32:02 AM
That's very interesting - I had not heard that, but it makes me think that at that time he was not really himself at all. He might have been trying to be more "first in line to the throne" than himself. He once was asked what it was like to realize your special role and he described it as a horrid realization that gradually comes over you, or something like that. He was a serious, sensitive person, and may well have been trying to measure up. At any rate, if that's the way he was talking he wouldn't have been relating well to his contemporaries.

disagree. from all the accounts he's quite a edwardian type and didnt relate to people from his generation or normal people out there. he's what he is. a very out-of-touch and outdated man.

Double post auto-merged: August 10, 2019, 07:57:11 PM

Quote from: sandy on August 10, 2019, 01:43:00 AM
Charles seemed to me very Edwardian in outlook, his mentors were his great Uncle Mountbatten and his grandmother the Queen Mum, both of whom grew up in Edwardian times. I used to think Charles "sensitive" but I don't anymore.

during his borading school days he spent more time there than with mountbatten and qm and he didnt relate at all to the boys of that generation who appreciated the normal things during 1960/70s.

LouisFerdinand · August 11, 2019, 12:55:52 AM

Did Prince Charles spend a lot of time with his German first cousins? These would be the children of Prince Philip's three sisters.

Curryong · August 11, 2019, 03:27:58 AM

Charles saw the German cousins regularly in his youth. It's known that in the 1950s, 1960s, Philip took his older children to visit his relatives each year. Presumably he did that in the 1970s and 80s with his younger children as well. Certainly, a couple of years after marrying Diana, Charles moaned to a friend that he wanted to invite 'the German cousins' to his homes but Diana didn't want it, so he was certainly in contact with them then.

Of course many of the cousins were older than Charles and Anne, in some cases a lot older (born in the 1930s) so may have died in recent years. Naturally, with the next generation and the next the ties of kinship loosened a bit. I haven't read anything for years about Philip or any of his offspring going over to Germany to see his relatives, but that doesn't mean none of them do.

amabel · August 11, 2019, 09:26:53 AM

I think that Philip's always kept in contact...Didn't know about Charles wanting to invite his cousins and diana not wanting it.. but I presume it is true.. so it seems that there was a relationship..

LouisFerdinand · August 12, 2019, 01:19:45 AM

It is good that Prince Charles keeps in touch with his German cousins. After all they are family also.

amabel · August 12, 2019, 08:21:49 AM

We don't know that he does nowadays. He seems to have done years ago... but as has been pointed out, his cousins are a lot older than him and he may not be friendly with THEIR children...

LouisFerdinand · September 02, 2019, 01:17:43 AM

If Diana had been older and married an aristocrat, would the wedding have occurred at Westminster Abbey?

amabel · September 02, 2019, 06:58:53 AM

Quote from: LouisFerdinand on September 02, 2019, 01:17:43 AM
If Diana had been older and married an aristocrat, would the wedding have occurred at Westminster Abbey?

we don't know

oak_and_cedar · September 03, 2019, 06:17:31 PM

Quote from: LouisFerdinand on September 02, 2019, 01:17:43 AM
If Diana had been older and married an aristocrat, would the wedding have occurred at Westminster Abbey?

Probably not. But she would have been happier IMO.

Curryong · September 03, 2019, 08:01:50 PM

If Diana had married an aristocrat I think she would have chosen her local church at Althorp in which to wed. Her grandmother and most of the other Spencers of the last couple of hundred years are there in the vaults. It's the Spencer church. Otherwise, depending on what her future husband did for a living, something like the Guards Chapel or other smart London church.

The only reason that her parents wed at WA was because the Roches did not own an estate, and therefore Frances couldn't marry there. Also the Roches were close to the Royal family. Royal guests were attendees and that demanded a regal setting which Ruth Fermoy was probably anxious to facilitate.

However by the 1980s Johnny was a sick man, he was not close to the Queen, and he lived a quiet life. His former and current wives, Frances and Raine, were known in Society as 'bolters', and he had been involved in Raine's divorce from her first husband. Doubtful grounds for full-on Abbey nuptials for his daughter.

TLLK · September 03, 2019, 11:14:04 PM

Quote from: LouisFerdinand on September 02, 2019, 01:17:43 AM
If Diana had been older and married an aristocrat, would the wedding have occurred at Westminster Abbey?

Probably not as @Curryong mentioned, Johnny was rather ill at the time of Diana's wedding. Also by the 1980's it seems that most of the aristocratic set chose to marry at the chapels on their own estates or the nearby village church that their families have sponsored for centuries.

amabel · September 04, 2019, 06:55:43 AM

Quote from: TLLK on September 03, 2019, 11:14:04 PM
Probably not as @Curryong mentioned, Johnny was rather ill at the time of Diana's wedding. Also by the 1980's it seems that most of the aristocratic set chose to marry at the chapels on their own estates or the nearby village church that their families have sponsored for centuries.

according to Nancy Mitford older fashioned aristocrats considered it vulgar to have a London wedding.."women were married from their homes"...

oak_and_cedar · September 04, 2019, 04:05:59 PM

Quote from: Curryong on August 10, 2019, 07:45:09 AM

And I don't think that being that out of touch with your contemporaries in your youth is a good idea at all. It's led to that sort of Romaticism about the countryside and how people should live and farm that's caused consternation in the agricultural community over the years.

@Curryong What kind of costernation? I'm very curious and quite interested in knowing..