Royal author Ingrid Seward’s book My Mother and I made several shocking revelations about Princess Diana ‘s turbulent relationship with her ex-husband Prince Charles . The book explores the difficulties Diana faced in her marriage with Charles and the equation she shared with Queen Elizabeth II . When her marital problems grew, a heartbroken Diana frequently turned to her mother-in-law for support. The Princess, once allegedly ‘hysterical’, vented her frustrations to the late Queen and deemed Charles a ‘nightmare’, according to Seward, which left the monarch ‘horrified’.
As reported by Fox News , Seward said, “Diana used to go to her private room in between appointments that the Queen had, which were every 20 minutes, and burst into tears. [She’d say], ‘Everybody hates me mama, and I hate my husband. He’s a nightmare.’” As reported by InStyle , Seward continued, “The queen would just stand there [horrified], and Diana would be getting more and more hysterical. [The Queen] didn’t know how to handle it, but she thought Charles should know how to handle it.”
diana was 16 and charles was 29 when they met btw she was selected by the royal family, who required that his wife be both high society and a virgin. he was aging and his “eligible bachelor” status was quickly waning. today we’d call this an arranged marriage pic.twitter.com/ohpindLQb7
— matt (@mattxiv) May 7, 2023
As per the author, the Queen struggled to understand why Charles, ‘in his early 30s’, couldn’t handle Diana who was ‘only in her early 20s.’ “She [Queen] didn’t understand because she didn’t have the experience to understand something like that,” Seward explained. The author opined that Charles and Diana were immature and fundamentally incompatible, which is why their marriage failed.
Furthermore, Seward noted that Diana entered her marriage with a rigid and idealized image of Charles that didn’t align with reality, which greatly disappointed her. The author also claimed that the Queen reportedly thought Diana was perhaps better suited for her younger son, Prince Andrew, as reported by the New York Post . Born in the early 1960s, Andrew and Diana were closer in age. Andrew went on to marry Diana’s friend Sarah Ferguson in 1986, though their marriage also ended in divorce. Seward asserted that Andrew always had a preference for sophisticated women but doubted that Diana would have tolerated his personality in a romantic relationship .
remember when Princess Diana stepped out like this making Charles look like a fool just hours after admitting that he cheated on her in a televised interview? now that was for history books https://t.co/CbsHYXbsJ7
— primadonna (@versaceschanel) January 3, 2020
In 1977, Diana and Charles first met through her sister, Lady Sarah McCorquodale, who was in a relationship with the Prince at the time. Three years later Diana and Charles started their whirlwind romance. A fairy tale come true, the couple’s 1981 marriage was watched by many. However, behind the scenes, their marriage was doomed from the get-go. Charles later acknowledged having rekindled his affair with his lover, Camilla Parker Bowles , in an authorized biography published in 1986. With leaked phone calls and secret trips the two shared, Diana separated from the heir apparent in 1992 and eventually got divorced in 1996. Diana tragically passed away from her injuries from a terrible car accident the following year.
