It was 1980 when the 32-year-old Charles encountered the 19-year-old Lady Diana Spencer, youngest daughter of Earl Spencer, at a weekend house party<\/a>. They had met before, since Charles had been involved with her elder sister, Sarah, but then Diana had been a mere 16 \u2013 and now, Charles was under pressure to find a bride. His beloved mentor Lord Mountbatten, recently assassinated<\/a> by the paramilitary Provisional IRA, had urged Charles to \u201cchoose a suitable, attractive and sweet-charactered girl before she met anyone else she might fall for\u201d. It was Diana\u2019s tragedy to be chosen for what she did not have \u2013 experience, any sign of independent opinions \u2013 rather than for any more positive qualities.<\/p>\n Not that Diana was reluctant; she actively sought the prince\u2019s interest. Unhappy at home, thanks to her parents\u2019 bitter divorce and her father\u2019s remarriage to the daughter of the romantic novelist Barbara Cartland, she was looking for her path in life. Without a qualification to her name (\u201cthick\u201d, she cheerfully called herself), marriage was the obvious option. That autumn the press spotted Diana sitting beside Charles as he fished the river Dee. Immediately they took up the tale of \u2018Shy Di\u2019, the aristocratic English rose, so modestly working as a kindergarten assistant. Her uncle Lord Fermoy assured the press she was a virgin<\/a>; her biographer Andrew Morton would write that she knew she had to \u201ckeep myself tidy\u201d. There have been few high-profile women in the modern western world who were chosen so exclusively for what was valued in their forebears: virginity, aristocracy and fertility.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> The engagement<\/a> was announced on 24 February 1981, Charles telling a friend he wanted to do \u201cthe right thing for this country\u201d. There is also another quote that sums up his position as neatly. Of course, the pair were in love, \u201cwhatever \u2018in love\u2019 means\u201d, he told reporters, while Diana smiled shyly.<\/p>\n With hindsight, it feels now as if everyone should have seen trouble ahead. But most didn\u2019t, actually. On the contrary, the couple \u2013 both of whom were later revealed to have had qualms \u2013 were pushed into commitment by the united desires not only of their family, but of press and public. \u201cHere was a fairy story that everyone wanted to work,\u201d Diana later noted, ruefully.<\/p>\n The couple were married in St Paul\u2019s Cathedral<\/a> in London on 29 July 1981 in a show-stopping public ceremony. Queen Elizabeth II<\/a> was only one of those who felt that at a time of unemployment, rioting and IRA violence, it would cheer up the country \u2013 just as her own wedding had done, in the aftermath of war. The guest list was heavy on foreign notables and the bride chose the hymn I Vow to Thee My Country.<\/em><\/p>\n Prince Charles later told the TV presenter Jonathan Dimbleby that it was on honeymoon on board the royal yacht Britannia<\/em> that he first learned Diana suffered from the eating disorder bulimia<\/a>. The press and public saw a different side of the story. Almost immediately, at the beginning of November, the Palace announced that Princess Diana<\/a> was pregnant.<\/p>\n When Prince William was born on 21 June 1982, Diana said later that she had \u201cfelt the whole country was in labour with me\u201d. Their second son, Prince Harry, followed in September 1984 \u2013 but the two parents\u2019 approach to their families would come to dramatise the differences between them. There were famous photographs of Diana, warmheartedly flying to hug her sons after a separation, which contrasted with the image of a young Prince Charles, exchanging a solemn handshake with his mother, the Queen, after she returned from a long royal tour.<\/p>\n After the birth of both sons, Diana\u2019s transformation from dowdy posh girl into glamorous icon began. Blond, blue-eyed and ever more stylish, she evoked the\u00a0romantic image of the fairytale princess. By the tour of the US in 1985 \u2013 where Diana danced with John Travolta \u2013 she was, so Reader\u2019s Digest<\/em> declared afterwards: \u201cThe World\u2019s Number One Celebrity\u201d. And \u2013 though she would famously later complain that there were three in her marriage, thinking of her husband\u2019s affair with his future second wife, Camilla Parker Bowles<\/a> \u2013 Diana too had begun to look elsewhere.<\/p>\n Her bodyguard and close confidant Barry Mannakee was transferred to other duties; when he died in a motorcycle accident, Diana, foreshadowing the conspiracy theories that would follow her own death<\/a>, believed he had been killed, presumably by the British security services. In 1986, she met army officer James Hewitt and, by the end of their 18-month affair \u2013 when Diana returned instead to a former flame, James Gilbey \u2013 the royal marriage had effectively foundered.<\/p>\n The end was nigh. When, in 1992, the couple were persuaded to tour India together, Diana had herself photographed, ostentatiously alone, in front of the Taj Mahal. The same year, Andrew Morton\u2019s biography, Diana: Her True Story In Her Own Words<\/em>, provoked a hostile questioning of many aspects of the monarchy. At the end of what the Queen called her annus horribilis<\/em> \u2013 her horrible year \u2013 Buckingham Palace announced that \u201cwith regret, the Prince and Princess of Wales have decided to separate<\/a>\u201d, but that \u201ctheir constitutional positions are unaffected\u201d. It was hard to see how that could be.<\/p>\n Within weeks came \u2018Camillagate\u2019, the published transcript of a deeply embarrassing conversation between Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles. After that, the \u2018Squidgygate\u2019 tapes of Diana\u2019s conversation with James Gilbey seemed positively tame, notable chiefly for Diana\u2019s words: \u201cAfter all I\u2019ve done for this fucking family.\u201d Diana, now, was the saint \u2013 visiting hospices and orphanages, embracing lepers and Aids victims, getting 10 times the press coverage that was given to Charles\u2019s activities. She was winning the publicity war \u2013 and never more so than on television.<\/p>\n In the summer of 1994, Charles\u2019s interview with Jonathan Dimbleby was televised, in which he admitted infidelity and revealed both a lack of sympathy for Diana (shown as \u201cnothing more than a hired womb\u201d, in the words of American biographer Kitty Kelley) and a worrying distance from his family. The programme and Dimbleby\u2019s subsequent book inflicted another injury on the already wounded monarchy, described by even the far-from-radical publication The Economist<\/em> as \u201can idea whose time has passed\u201d.<\/p>\n Diana was following in a time-honoured line of rebellious royal consorts. On the grand scale, Eleanor of Aquitaine<\/a> and Isabella of France<\/a> had both conspired against their spouses for rule of the country. But a closer comparison \u2013 albeit one unflattering to Diana \u2013 would have to be with Caroline of Brunswick, wife of George IV<\/a>. Unappealing to her husband and seeking consolation elsewhere \u2013 itself the subject of an extraordinary public investigation into her morals \u2013 Caroline was turned away from the doors of her husband\u2019s coronation.<\/p>\n There was, of course, an echo of the threat that Diana represented closer at hand, one from earlier on in the 20th century. Eyeing both the Princess of Wales and Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York \u2013 and recalling the abdication of her brother-in-law Edward VIII<\/a> over his relationship with the scorned Mrs Simpson \u2013 the Queen Mother is reported to have noted: \u201cIt\u2019s Wallis all over again.\u201d<\/p>\n As she became ever more alienated from the royal family, Diana\u2019s own increasingly eccentric behaviour (nuisance calls, rumoured affairs and New Age therapies) was also being discussed widely and crudely. She struck back. The interview with Martin Bashir on the current affairs TV show Panorama<\/em> \u2013 aired on 20 November 1995 and watched by some 200 million worldwide \u2013 is still shocking today. [In 2021, an independent inquiry found that Martin Bashir used deception to secure the interview<\/a>]. Casting doubt on Charles\u2019s ability to be king, Diana said that her aspiration was not to be queen of England, but \u201ca queen of people\u2019s hearts\u201d. Within weeks, the Queen suggested the Wales should divorce \u2013 and quickly.<\/p>\n As Diana moved through middle age, would divorced life have represented an opening or a closing of doors for her? Her year as a divorced woman witnessed controversial relationships with surgeon Hasnat Khan and Harrods heir Dodi Fayed, but it also saw the anti-landmines campaign which stands as her lasting memorial. But the events of 31 August 1997 put an end to the possibilities. Diana\u2019s death in Paris prompted an extraordinary outpouring of public grief<\/a> and a commensurate hostility towards the only people who appeared not to care: the royal family.<\/p>\n In the febrile climate of blame \u2013 the tears in the street, the mounds of flowers outside her Kensington Palace home, the funeral in Westminster Abbey \u2013 it was prime minister Tony Blair who found the popular tribute. Diana had been, he said, \u201cthe people\u2019s princess\u201d. And yet, within a comparatively short space of time, royal popularity was climbing again, slowly.<\/p>\n In part that was down to a new generation: Diana\u2019s sons. But the older royals, too, had been kickstarted into some adjustment to changing public moralities. On her golden jubilee in 2002, the Queen invited Camilla Parker Bowles<\/a> to the ceremony. Prince Charles\u2019s happy second marriage<\/a> is in part his first wife\u2019s legacy. And whatever the short-term effect on the royal family\u2019s popularity, in the long term the Diana story, with its tragic end, may have restored our sense of their humanity.<\/p>\n Without Diana\u2019s wide-eyed appealing presence, the difficulties she caused \u2013 as well as those she endured \u2013 show up more clearly. It remains true that there is a whole generation of women for whom Diana to some degree symbolised their own challenges. Ironically, providing a unifying symbol for our national concerns has always been the role of the royal family.<\/p>\nFind out more of the history behind Spencer,<\/em>\u00a0the latest depiction of Diana, Princess of Wales to land on the big screen:<\/h4>\n
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<\/div><\/div> <\/div> <\/section>![\""Making\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2019\/04\/GettyImages-158076479_cmyk-6b4fc04.jpg?quality=90&resize=590%2C413"\" "\\"\"Making\\"\/")
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