Camilla ‘empathised with
Diana’s discontent over Charles’s regimented life’
THE Duchess of Cornwall began to understand Princess Diana’s ‘discontent’ before her wedding to Prince Charles, a biographer said yesterday.
Tina Brown said Camilla struggled with Charles’s ‘regimented’ lifestyle of engagements, particularly as punctuality had ‘never been her strong suit’.
In her new book about the Windsors, the author and former editor said the duchess initially thought there was ‘an upside’ to not being married to the heir to the throne as she ‘had never had a calendar filled with things she didn’t want to do’.
But she added: ‘Charles expected her to be ready for engagements at his own regimented pace. When she asked where they were going, he would snap “Haven’t you read the brief?”
‘One of her friends at the time told me that she had even started to feel some empathy with Diana’s manifold discontents.’
Miss Brown’s book, The Palace Papers, also puts a new spin on the couple’s decision not to attend the 2004 wedding of Edward van Cutsem and the Duke of Westminster’s daughter, Lady Tamara Grosvenor.
Unmarried at the time, the Prince of Wales was due to sit at the front of Chester Cathedral for his godson’s wedding, while Camilla was consigned to the back.
Charles, who married Camilla the following year, was thought to have pulled out because of his dismay at the way she was being treated. But Miss Brown, who wrote the Diana Chronicles in 2006, suggested Camilla put her foot down. ‘She would not be humiliated in front of all Charles’s circle and the Royal Family,’ she reported.
‘The prince had to choose between attending the wedding without her or snubbing his closest friends and his godson.’
Charles ultimately excused himself from the event, saying he had to go to Warminster barracks to meet the families of soldiers serving in Iraq. Camilla was described as ‘otherwise engaged’. Miss Brown, who wrote about the royals as former editor-inchief of Tatler and editor of Vanity Fair, also told the Sunday Telegraph that Prince Harry would be ‘going after’ the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall, as well as his brother William, in his forthcoming memoirs.
Warning that the rift in the family was likely to deepen, she added: ‘Harry ... can’t stand Camilla, he doesn’t want Camilla to be queen, he’s very angry that it’s happening. He has not made peace with it and he probably never will.’