Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s Tortured Relationship

The story of Prince Charles and Diana, Princess of Wales, is not that of star-crossed lovers. Continuously recounted in film, television, tell-all books, and the gossip pages, it is a tale of a woefully mismatched married couple, lauded as the English monarchy’s future, whose divorce almost unraveled the British Crown. Plagued by infidelity, recriminations and pointed press leaks, the “War of the Waleses” captivated the world. But throughout Princess Diana and the then Prince of Wales’s 20-year odyssey, there were moments of real affection, no matter how fleeting. “We fell in love gradually,” Princess Diana told biographer Andrew Morton. “It wasn’t really dramatic. One blink and it would have gone.”

1977: Charles and Diana Meet

Sixteen-year-old Lady Diana Spencer and 29-year-old Prince Charles meet at her ancestral home of Althorp in the fall of 1977. At the time, Prince Charles was casually dating Diana’s bold older sister Lady Sarah McCorquodale. “I remember thinking what a very jolly and amusing and attractive 16-year-old she was,” Charles remembered. “I mean, great fun, and bouncy and full of life and everything.”

The seeds are planted for a courtship that will captivate the nation and beyond. “He met Miss Right and she met Mr. Right,” her sister Sarah later said. “They just clicked. They have the same giggly sense of humor, and they both love ballet and opera and sport in all forms. It’s perfect, and they are both over the moon about it.”

Charles and Diana pose for photographs at Buckingham Palace after the announcement of their engagement. Hulton Deutsch/Getty Images. 

1980: The Courtship Begins

Prince Charles and Diana begin falling in love in July of 1980, when both stay with their mutual friend Philip de Pass, in Sussex. There, the empathetic Diana comforts Prince Charles over the recent murder of his beloved father figure, Lord Mountbatten. Princess Diana recalled the conversation in Diana: Her True Story:

“I said: ‘You looked so sad when you walked up the aisle at Lord Mountbatten’s funeral.’ I said: ‘It was the most tragic thing I’ve ever seen. My heart bled for you when I watched. I thought: ‘It’s wrong, you’re lonely—you should be with somebody to look after you.’ The next minute he leapt on me practically and I thought this was very strange, too, and I wasn’t quite sure how to cope with all this.”

1981: The Infamous Engagement

In February 1981, the Prince of Wales proposes to Diana at Windsor Castle. “In my immaturity, which was enormous, I thought that he was very much in love with me, which he was, but he always had a sort of besotted look about him, looking back at it, but it wasn’t the genuine sort,” Princess Diana recalled. “‘Who was this girl who was so different?’ But he couldn’t understand it because his immaturity was quite big in that department too.”

The awkwardness of the couple is on full display at the formal engagement press call on February 24. When asked by reporters if they are in love, Prince Charles replies cynically, “whatever in love means,” prompting Diana to roll her eyes and giggle. “Lots of people have got married with that sort of age difference,” Prince Charles continues. “You are as old as you feel you are. I think Diana will keep me young, apart from anything else…. I shall be exhausted.”

The starry-eyed 19-year-old Lady Diana strikes a more optimistic note. “With Prince Charles beside me,” she enthuses, “I cannot go wrong.”

Charles and Diana on the balcony of Buckingham Palace after their wedding.From Getty Images. 

The Wedding of the Century

Prince Charles and Diana are married on July 29, 1981, at St. Paul’s Cathedral. A television audience of around 750 million people watch. According to Princess Diana, the couple had only met 13 times, and she has deep reservations after discovering Charles’s continuing affection for his former girlfriend Camilla Parker Bowles. However, according to Diana: Her True Story, her sisters tell her, “‘Duch, your face is on the tea towels so it’s too late to chicken out.’”