THE DIANA DEBACLE
Their disastrous relationship is one of the best-documented in history. But for the first time it’s revealed Charles knew his marriage to Diana was destined to fail before they even walked down the aisle.
“He knew the marriage was doomed,” writes royal reporter Robert Jobson, who followed Charles for 18 months on tour and spoke to people in the prince’s inner circle. “It hadn’t taken him long to realise they were totally incompatible.”
Diana’s temperament was unsuited to Charles’ – she was moody and often ill-tempered and would burst into tears for no apparent reason, insiders reveal.
“Charles was at a total loss,” Jobson says. “The more he saw of his volatile fiancée, the more Charles knew in his heart he’d made a terrible mistake.”
So why did he go ahead with it all? At the time, pressure was mounting on the 32-year-old prince to choose a bride and “virginal, aristocratic and wonderfully photogenic” Diana seemed the perfect candidate.
The media circus around the doe-eyed 19-year-old became dangerous and his father told him the situation was unfair to Diana. Propose or break up with her, Prince Philip (97) told his son.
So Charles did what he thought was the noble thing – and felt it was too late to back out when he realised just how bad a match they were.
“The power and influence of the media driving matters towards an engagement and wedding were unstoppable,” he told close friends.
“To have withdrawn would’ve been cataclysmic. I was permanently between the devil and the deep blue sea.”
He became the villain, of course, especially when his affair with Camilla was revealed.
Charles long ago gave up fighting against the “distorted portrayal of his character”, particularly after his ex-wife’s tragic death, according to Jobson.
“What frustrates him though is that one version of history – Diana’s version – has become so engrained in the popular psyche that it has gone down as ‘historic fact’.
“In his view, this version is a tissue of lies peddled by a Machiavellian princess to a sympathetic media.”