Prince Charles wept over Camilla on eve of wedding to Diana
LONDON: Prince Charles had wept over Lady Camilla on the eve of his wedding to Princess Diana.
This startling revelation is in a new book by New York Times bestselling author Sally Bedell Smith.
Prince Charles only married Princess Diana because his father sent him a threatening letter telling him to propose because her ‘reputation was on the line’.
Charles panicked when he got the note from Prince Philip amid fears in the royal family that his indecision had ‘ impugned’ her honour.
He thought that Philip, who communicated with his son by letter and not by speaking to him, was issuing him an order that said: ‘You’ve got to get engaged’.
According to family friend Pamela Hicks, Charles “wasn’t in love, he wasn’t ready…. psychologically he assumed his father bullied him, so he read it as a bullying letter”.
While Charles was ‘powerfully attracted’ to Camilla, the on and off girlfriend of his polo playing pal, Andrew Parker Bowles, marriage never came up because ‘conventions of the time called for an heir to the British throne to marry a woman who at least appeared to be virginal’, Smith wrote.
She chronicled the life of the heir to the throne in a riveting ‘ Prince Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life’, which will be released on Apr 4.
She details how Charles and Diana were a terrible match from the start of their ill-fated union in July 1981.
Charles only married Diana, a former kindergarten teacher, because his real love Camilla Shand, now his second wife, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, was not virginal enough for royal custom.
During their rows at Kensington Palace Diana used to taunt Charles that he would ‘ never be king’, knowing it caused him deep consternation.
Bedell Smith claims that Diana used to hit Charles over the head when he knelt down to pray by their bed at night - and continue berating him during his prayers.
The book portrays Charles, 68, in an unf lattering light and writes that he and his staff “dealt with Diana’s bewildering and often infuriating behaviour by placating her, trying to distract her and, ultimately, out of frustration, abandoning her”.
Lady Annabel Goldsmith called Camilla “an intensely warm maternal laughing creature, with enormous sex appeal.”
Charles adored how Camilla “always listened”to him, Bedell Smith wrote, and in her he “found the warmth that he yearned for”.