Princess Diana

[ChristineM]

Thank you Mari for emphasising my point that the manner in which 'Diana struck back' is completely alien to me.   However, your post has made me think about the psychological impact of the situation on a young, formative mind.   Charles, probably for a variety of reasons - frustration because he wasn't with the woman he really loved, jealousy, pettiness, pique - did his best to destroy Diana's self confidence.   He constantly belittled her - most of all intellectually.   In fact, nowadays - and at long last - according to British law, this now constitutes assault and is a CRIMINAL offence.   He did his best to destroy her self esteem - probably because his own is so low.   None of us can imagine the torment going on in this woman's mind.   

This is probably part of the reason why Diana sought out the needy of this world.   She didn't just want to be loved.   She wanted to be needed.   Whenever she heard of tragedy or sadness, she would make contact and, if she could, personal contact.   I have read numerous stories of parents of stricken children suddenly discovering the Princess of Wales writing to ask if she could help or if she could visit.   She managed to forge friendships with dying youngsters and stay with them until the end.   I think this must have taken a great deal of courage, a very particular type of skill and a huge toll on her already bruised emotions.   I don't know that I would have been able to cope with her participation, but large episodes of her life of giving to others, frequently total strangers - letters, gifts, money and most of all herself - go largely unrecorded.

Unfortunately these qualities fail to chime with Salamander who appears unable to see the wood for the trees, or in this case, the good for the bad.

tsaria

[dmitri]

It would seem everybody in the world was in love with Diana apart from Charles. His wife was devoted to him and he betrayed her, the mother of his children. That is really quite awful. One wonders what planet he was living on to think he could get away with it all in the late 20th century. Charles has had every advantage in life and has made a mess of it. He has not learned from the mess his great-Uncle Edward/David made in 1936 and is now with a woman who is not respected. He just never really gets it right. Is he grossly insensitive? 

[Salamander]

Two wrongs don't make a right, so the saying goes, and I still don't think that Diana had a right to pursue another married man just because she was hurt by her husband.  She in turn did to another woman what had been done to her.  But she was the Queen of Hearts right, so I guess that all makes it okay.

Anyway, it seems that I am to be derided here simply because I don't find some of her actions in finding love very decent (to use dmitri's very word), so I'll leave you to your bashing.

[Grace]

It would seem everybody in the world was in love with Diana apart from Charles. His wife was devoted to him and he betrayed her, the mother of his children. That is really quite awful. One wonders what planet he was living on to think he could get away with it all in the late 20th century. Charles has had every advantage in life and has made a mess of it. He has not learned from the mess his great-Uncle Edward/David made in 1936 and is now with a woman who is not respected. He just never really gets it right. Is he grossly insensitive? 

I think you hit the nail on the head yourself, Dmitri, when you said he has had every advantage in life.  He has been bowed and scraped to his whole life, other than when he was at school, and his every whim has materialised with one word for him.  The result is now the man who believes the monarchy should change to suit him not the other way around.  This is not a man who understands compromise.

[dmitri]

I don't think anybody has been bashing. That is a silly term. I do think people had hoped the marriage would have worked. Of course when one partner decides to have an affair with another woman it tends to make the wife rather put out. As for a woman just remaining a Nun after her husband had betrayed her is just absurd. The days of Edward VII were over well and truly although the present Prince of Wales seems to live his life as if they still occurred. I wonder whether he cares at all about what happens outside the gates of Clarence House and other royal residences. The Prince's Trust has done good. All of this though comes unstuck with his inability to realise people expect something of their Prince of Wales ... the answer to this is a basic sense of human decency. This seems to sadly have been forgotten by the present incumbent and his 2nd wife.

[dmitri]

I think that he is in for a shock if he wants to behave this way as King.

[Martyn]

May I pose another variation to the original question?  Given that many believe that Charles and Diana were too different in age and outlook to be suited, do you think that had there been no Camilla would the marriage had lasted once Diana got bored with her fuddy-duddy husband and started to notice the handsome young men dancing around her?  Being locked into a marriage with a man she may come to have realised she didn't love deeply, would the marriage had survived if she had succumbed to their attentions?  Once again, would the young lady's actions be excused because after all, she was young and beautiful and her husband was older and less handsome and less exciting?  It all seems a bit ageist and sexist to me, but then, we humans are usually more easily swayed by youth and beauty....

I think that is impossible to predict.  Your point that the couple were mismatched in terms of age and outlook is incontestable, but let's not forget tastes and interests as well.  Tsaria made the pertinent point earlier that Charles was old in terms of outlook and interests even when chronolgically still quite young.  Personally I simply cannot bear to watch every time that appallingly feeble clip of him performing his own pseudo- Goon sketch; proof if proof were needed that his sense of humour is decidedly underpowered.

Diana could have developed in many different ways.  It is perfectly possible that she might have grown up and tired of her fossilised husband; it is equally possible that had there been no other woman and with some commitment and attempt to accomodate her from him that she might have believed that her fairy tale really had come true.  Who knows?  Diana was a blank canvas to some degree, an unformed inexperienced girl with some romantic pre-conceptions, who might possibly have become a supportive and loving wife, a perfect consort.

However she did love him allegedly, and he was no oil painting then and I can't honestly say that any of the other men with whom she was romantically linked were stunners either.  I think that Diana looked for other things in the men that she chose to love/pursue/bed and I don't think that looks and charm were always top of her list.

'We humans are usually more easily swayed by youth and beauty' - Charles of course being a most noticeable exception to that notion.....

[helenazar]

Diana could have developed in many different ways.  It is perfectly possible that she might have grown up and tired of her fossilised husband...

Martyn, I think that this is a really good point. This is very common, in fact. Young girls/women often fancy themselves "in love" with older men, only to find, about 10-15 years later that they are stuck with an old boring not-so-attractive geezer (please pardon me for putting it this way ;-)) with whom they have nothing in common... And, on the other hand, lots of young fun, good looking men around. I mean it wouldn't be that difficult to beat Charles in that department... Suddenly, the old geezer doesn't seem all that appealing, prince or no prince... So who knows really what would have happend 10 or 15 years down the line, even if Charles did not have Camilla in the wings. There is no way to tell now of course, but this is not a completely fantastical scenario...  especially since we know that Diana was not at all averse to extra-marital ... adventures. Just pure speculation, based on some known facts, you understand.

[Martyn]

Diana could have developed in many different ways.  It is perfectly possible that she might have grown up and tired of her fossilised husband...

Martyn, I think that this is a really good point. This is very common, in fact. Young girls/women often fancy themselves "in love" with older men, only to find, about 10-15 years later that they are stuck with an old boring not-so-attractive geezer (please pardon me for putting it this way ;-)) with whom they have nothing in common... And, on the other hand, lots of young fun, good looking men around. I mean it wouldn't be that difficult to beat Charles in that department... Suddenly, the old geezer doesn't seem all that appealing, prince or no prince... So who knows really what would have happend 10 or 15 years down the line, even if Charles did not have Camilla in the wings. There is no way to tell now of course, but this is not a completely fantastical scenario...  especially since we know that Diana was not at all averse to extra-marital ... adventures. Just pure speculation, based on some known facts, you understand.

Good point, Helen.

Knowing what we do about Diana, it is fair to say that it wasn't Charles's looks that really inspired her but the whole package, which we know had more to do with her naive romantic notions of love and royalty than with anything based in reality.  It is possible that she might have matured, as most of us have done from the age of nineteen onwards have done, and consequently needed far more than this emotionally stunted man might have been able to provide her with.

Diana was not averse, as you say, to extra-marital affairs.  I do doubt however that this was part of her philosophy when she entered into marriage with Charles and would suggest that it became part of her life because it was part of her husband's life, from day one; also because she must have needed someone to love, as the emotional distance between her and her husband grew.

It is possible though that had there been no maitresse-en-titre in situ from the beginning, that Diana may have trodden the well-worn path of ropyal consort blind-eye turning, had Charles's attachments been less emotionally binding and more carnal in nature.  It is equally possible, as many long-term couples find, that it is possible to be married/involved with someone and avoid adultery, even when all passion is spent and only companionship and marriage in name only remain.  Who can say?

[helenazar]

Who can say?

No, at this point, no one can say...

[Martyn]

Who can say?

No, at this point, no one can say...

Its is all conjecture, a collection of 'what if's'.  I do think that there is some merit in discussing it though.......

[dmitri]

I do rather tire of people claiming Diana was the whore of Babylon. There was no sign of any adultery on her behalf until AFTER Charles decided to take up his obsession with Camilla and abandon his wife. Give Diana a fair go some of you. She was terribly betrayed. I tend to think only her living as a Nun would satisfy some of you. This was a young woman with the same needs as most other young women. Certainly her husband didn't carry out his bedroom duties in his wife's bedroom with his wife.

[TampaBay]

Camilla was only one of many big problems in the Wales marriage.  Diana over-shadowing with greater popularity of the "people" Charles was just as big a problem if not bigger than Camilla. 

Charles does not like and/ortolerate competition be it from his mother, sons, fellow princes, friends such as APB...etc...etc.  Does this man have any friends who are not "toadies"? 

Prince Andrew has many firends much more accomplished than himself from all classes and walks of life.

TampaBay

[Robert_Hall]

Prince Andrew has many firends much more accomplished than himself from all classes and walks of life.

That would need to take much accomplishment, TB!

[TampaBay]

Prince Andrew has many firends much more accomplished than himself from all classes and walks of life.

That would need to take much accomplishment, TB!

Robert,  I love you!

TampaBay