Sorry this is quite long....
It isn’t all as cut and dried as that. We have Diana’s account of the marriage (which is the one which she told to Andrew Morton) and which the writer of ‘The Crown’ (an anti - monarchist) used for the series. That is the version most people believe as the ‘true story’.
Then we have other author’s books and their biographical accounts of Diana, and of Charles, which all pretty much tally and tell the other side of the story. How Charles was heavily pressured into the marriage by Diana’s grandmother and his own grandmother (The Queen Mother), who were great friends and by Philip, who told him to ‘get on with it’.
That, ridiculous as it sounds nowadays, the future King had to marry a girl ‘without a past’ (a virgin really) and as he was 30 years old, there were understandably no suitable girls around that fulfilled that criteria near to his own age.
Diana was madly in love with him and, on her own admission, was determined to have him. Charles was flattered and found her ‘jolly and attractive and ‘fun’ and was sure he would ‘fall in love with her’. It wasn’t to be, because they had absolutely nothing in common. In a way, Charles was as much a victim as Diana was.
Charles said (as do many other accounts) that he was faithful to Diana for a number of years before he resumed his affair with Camiila. That they had tried to make the marriage work until it was obvious it was irretrievably broken down. Diana places his affair with Camilla resuming some time after the birth of Harry.
Diana, in her sad search for true love, had many affairs from then onwards. Unfortunately, some of those men were married (her affair with Will Carling very publically ended his marriage to Julia) and Oliver Hoare’s marriage almost went the same way.
I adored Diana, she had many qualities I admired; I was on her side all the way until I looked into it all beyond her own feelings and perspective and I could see it was all just a rather tragic story of 2 human beings going through a marriage and divorce that millions of people have gone through themselves, but without the spotlight being shone on their every move.
It isn’t widely reported, but In the year before Diana died, she and Charles had put the past behind them, they became friendly, and not just for the boys sake;
Tina Brown, Diana Biographer:
At the end of Diana's life, she and Charles were on the best terms they'd been for a very long time. Charles got into the habit of dropping in on her at Kensington Palace and they would have tea and a sort of rueful exchange. They even had some laughs together.
It was definitely calming down, the boys were older. They talked about their philanthropies. And she had accepted Camilla [Parker Bowles]. One thing she had finally done was really understand that Camilla was the love of his life, and there was just nothing she could do about it.
But she said to me at that lunch that she would go back to Charles in a heartbeat if he wanted her."
Diana told her friend Julia Samuels "Charles is the kindest man I have ever known".
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It's all so sad.
