Princess Diana and Prince Charles married in 1981. It was a wedding between two opposites since apart from their different interests, the two also had an age gap of twelve years. Princess Diana was merely twenty-years-old when she received the royal title of the Princess of Wales.
The fairytale wedding and the well-wishing of the citizens for the newlywed couple were all down the drain since, behind closed doors, Charles had an extra-marital affair going on, and Diana knew well about her husband’s infidelity. According to People, Charles began his affair with Camilla Parker Bowles in the year 1986. Princess Diana and all her suspicions were correct, and her pent up anger of the same made her confront Camilla outright. Here’s how it unfolded.
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The ‘Third Person’ In Princess Diana And Prince Charles’ Marriage
Diana and Charles announced their split from each other in 1992, eleven years after their marriage, meanwhile their official divorce was finalised in 1996. In the fifteen year marriage, Diana was well aware of the dishonesty and cheating lurking in the relationship. Before her engagement with Charles, Diana knew Camilla as an old friend of Charles’s instead of being told that she was, in fact, his ex-girlfriend.
Penny Junor, the biographer of Diana’s book, ‘The Duchess: Camilla Parker Bowles and the Love Affair That Rocked the Crown’ writes, “Instead of explaining to Diana at the outset that Camilla was an old girlfriend, he had presented her as nothing more than a friend. It didn’t occur to him that she needed to know before someone else told her.…He came clean after the engagement, admitting that Camilla had been one of his most intimate friends, but reassured Diana that from now on there would be no other women.”
It was during one of the lunch invites that Diana first got her suspicions about Camilla and Charles. That time, Camilla kept asking Diana if she was going to hunt with Charles when she moved to Highgrove. When Diana replied in the negative, there was an apparent relief on Camilla’s face. As Andrew Morton’s book ‘Diana: Her True Story—In Her Own Words‘ states, “Diana later realized that Camilla saw Charles’s love of hunting as a conduit to maintaining her own relationship with him.”
It was clear that the friendship between the two never really blossomed. In her most famous interview, Diana stated that there were in fact three people in her marriage.
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When, Where And How Did The Diana-Camilla Confrontation Happen?
Princess Diana confronted Camilla during a birthday party. The princess actually turned up unexpectedly. At the party, Diana found her husband, Camilla, and another man downstairs chatting closely. Diana joined the crowd, and very soon told Camilla that she wants to have a word with her. In a conversation recorded at the Kensington Palace in 1991, Diana narrates the whole incident, “And I said Camilla, I’d love to have a word with you, if possible.’ And she got really uncomfortable, put her head down and she said, ‘Oh yes, all right.’ And I said to the two men, ‘Ok, boys, I’m just going to have a quick word with Camilla, and I’ll be up in a minute’.
The conversation goes forward like:
Diana: “Camilla, I would just like you to know that I know exactly what’s going on.”
Camilla: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Diana: “I know what’s going on between you and Charles, and I just want you to know that.”
Camilla: “You’ve got everything you’ve ever wanted. You’ve got all the men in the world falling in love with you, you’ve got two beautiful children, what more do you want?”
Diana replied, “I want my husband.” Further, Diana ended the conversation with, “It must be hell for both of you but I do know what’s going on. Don’t treat me like an idiot.”
For Diana, it was a huge step she had taken. She explained, “I cried like I have never cried before.” The seven years of pent-up anger had all come undone.
However, the next morning she felt a tremendous shift, saying, “I’d done something, said what I felt.”
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