Princess Diana’s Private Diaries:
The beloved royal’s own words shed light on the private struggles and heartbreak she endured behind palace doors.
FOR years, Princess Diana did her best to play the part of dutiful wife to husband Prince Charles. Always elegant and poised, she smiled for photographs at events and fulfilled her duties as a member of the British monarchy. But it’s common knowledge that she suffered dramatically behind closed doors. Now Star is exclusively revealing the contents of Diana’s long-lost journals — which contain her deepest and darkest feelings about her ill-fated 15-year marriage, her struggles with eating disorders and multiple suicide attempts — including one while pregnant. “Diana kept a diary, it was like therapy for her,” says an insider of the mom to Prince William and Prince Harry, who were just 15 and 12, respectively, when she was tragically killed in a car crash at age 36 in 1997. “The pages are filled with details about her life and struggles as a royal.”
RUDE AWAKENING
Her life was supposed to play out like a fairy tale. Lady Diana Spencer was just 20 years old and a virgin when she wed Charles in a lavish ceremony at St. Paul’s Cathedral. The televised event drew 750 million viewers around the world. But the royal newcomer later admitted to having serious reservations about marrying the Prince of Wales, and called her 1981 wedding “the worst day of my life.” From the start, says the insider, Diana found their marriage to be “cold and loveless,” and she herself called her sex life with Charles “very odd.”
She turned to an unlikely ally for help: Camilla Parker Bowles. Charles and Camilla, who would become his second wife, had dated briefly in the early ’70s and remained friends. “Diana knew about Charles and Camilla’s past but didn’t see her as a threat because she was married at the time,” the insider explains. The two women would meet for lunch and gossip, and Camilla showed Diana the royal ropes. But Diana soon learned the pair were having an affair and “was furious,” says the insider. She was even subjected to the humiliation of a leaked phone call in which Charles talked dirty with
Camilla. In 1995, the princess lamented that “there were three of us in this marriage.” (Charles and Camilla finally wed in 2005.)
Diana’s misery intensified. Desperate, she looked to Charles’ mother, Queen Elizabeth II, for guidance. “I asked her, ‘What do I do?’” Diana later recalled, adding that the queen offered little help in return, telling her, “I don’t know what you should do, Charles is hopeless.”
Throughout, her diary was a refuge. “It helped her,” says an insider, becoming her only outlet. “When Diana was married to Charles, the royals had a ‘stiff upper lip’ policy,” the insider explains. “It was frowned upon to talk about personal struggles — it was seen as a sign of weakness.”
NO WAY OUT
Diana’s emotional pain was so severe, she tried to take her own life. She even admitted throwing herself down a flight of stairs while pregnant with William. “Charles said I was crying wolf, and I just felt so desperate and I was crying my eyes out,” she confessed. Seemingly unmoved, Charles left to go horseback riding. It wasn’t the only time she attempted suicide. “I was trying to cut my wrists with razor blades,” she said. “I was so depressed.”
The renowned beauty also battled eating disorders, bingeing and purging after feeling fat-shamed by Charles: “The bulimia started the week before we got engaged,” she revealed. “My husband put his hand on my waistline and said, ‘Ooh, bit chubby there, aren’t we?’ And that triggered off something in me.”
LASTING MESSAGE
A true light during her marriage to Charles — which she called “torture” — was her two sons. Today, nearly 23 years after her death, Harry and William, along with their wives, Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton, are still determined to raise awareness around mental health issues. “It’s a cause close to the princes’ hearts,” says the insider, “especially after learning about the pain, depression and loneliness their mom experienced and seeing some of the notes she wrote about what she went through.” She’d be proud of the work William and Harry have done — and thrilled they don’t have to follow in her footsteps and struggle in silence, says the insider. “Diana may have suffered at the hands of the royals, but her legacy lives on. She’s changed the royal way of thinking.”
Her final wish for her sons was that they use their voices for good. “She taught her boys to stand up for what they think is right,” says the insider, adding that Harry firmly believes his mom would have backed his decision to leave the royal family and start a new life across the pond with Meghan. “Harry feels confident that if Diana were alive today, she’d encourage him to do what makes him happy.”