King Charles reportedly wept the night before marrying Princess Diana, knowing he was still in love with his ex, Camilla. But he wasn’t the only one to shed tears.
“They both [cried],” royal expert Ian Pelham Turner told Fox News Digital, referring to doomed couple Charles and Diana.
“Diana was reluctant about marrying Charles but was told by her sister it was too late. The tea towels with their joint images were already being sold. Charles was given cufflinks with a Camilla insignia, which he wore on his wedding day so that she could be included, which allegedly made him emotional.”
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Turner’s claims came shortly after People magazine looked back at Charles and Diana’s royal wedding July 29, 1981.
“According to the biography ‘Prince Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life,’ Charles felt pressured into his marriage to Diana and was still torn about his love for the then-married Camilla,” the outlet shared. “He even cried over it the night before his nuptials.”
British royals expert Hilary Fordwich told Fox News Digital the book’s author, Sally Bedell Smith, told her that Charles did cry the night before marrying Diana.
“In covering the king’s coronation [in 2023], I was live on set with Sally Bedell Smith,” she said. “I asked her about him crying the night before his wedding, which she confirmed.”
While the explosive marriage of Charles and Diana is well documented, Fordwich said the younger royals of today should be grateful that they won’t have to ever endure similar heartache.
“The tumultuous love triangle of Charles, Diana and Camilla is an infamously sad study of the clash between traditional royal duty versus personal fulfillment and happiness at the heart of Britain’s monarchy,” Fordwich explained.
“Then-Prince Charles reportedly told his friends he felt compelled by his father, Prince Philip, to marry Diana not due to deep love, but rather to comply with royal convention.
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“He had to marry a virginal, suitable bride who would meet public expectations of a future queen,” she shared. “Camilla was regarded as completely ‘unsuitable’ due to her many previous relationships and marital status. Certainly, the Church of England wouldn’t permit the heir to the throne to marry a divorcee.
“His godmother, Patricia Mountbatten, said he realized he was ‘too committed’ to back out of marrying Diana,” Fordwich continued. “Still, she knew he was making a mistake given his love for Camilla, who remained his soulmate despite being married to another man.”
Charles met Camilla in 1970 through mutual friend Lucia Santa Cruz. According to reports, Charles was instantly smitten. Despite a blossoming romance, Charles joined the Navy in 1971.
While Charles was serving, Camilla married Andrew Parker Bowles, an ex-boyfriend of the royal’s younger sister, Princess Anne, in 1973. According to reports, a devastated Charles tried to stop Camilla from marrying Parker Bowles, but the pair remained friends. As the former lovers stayed close, Charles began courting Lady Diana Spencer in 1980.
“By the time Charles married Diana, supposedly, Camilla’s physical relationship with him had ceased,” said Fordwich. “However, their emotional bond continued, for which both were derided. The tabloids termed her ‘the other woman.’”
And it was easy for Diana to see that Camilla continued to play an important role in the life of the man she was going to marry.
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“At first, Diana professed to be very much in love with Charles but expressed to many she felt foolish and jealous once she fully grasped his emotional attachment to Camilla,” Fordwich explained.
“The press, both sides of the family and even her Spencer sisters made it clear to her that she simply couldn’t back out of the wedding once her face was ‘on the tea towels.’ … The entire nation and the world were giddy with excitement regarding their imminent wedding.
“On her wedding day … the public speculated her sleepless look was due to wedding nerves. No one was aware of her knowing of Camilla’s place in Charles’ heart, which rendered her distraught.
“Diana later described feeling she was ‘the luckiest girl in the world,’ but she also knew Charles’ true affections lay elsewhere,” Fordwich continued. “Her emotional turmoil would damage not only the rest of their marriage but, to this day, it has ramifications in Prince Harry’s behavior, given his deep-rooted resentment of Camilla as well as his mistrust of the media.”
Camilla made the royal wedding’s guest list, likely due to her husband’s role as the Commanding Officer of the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment, People magazine reported.
While several reports claimed Camilla wore white during the ceremony, catching Diana’s eye, royal expert Richard Fitzwilliams clarified to Fox News Digital that she wore a “pale gray dress with a veiled pillbox hat.”
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Problems only worsened during Charles and Diana’s honeymoon.
“From the start, the public preferred the princess, though privately she was angst-ridden and bulimic,” said Fitzwilliams.
“It does seem that fate almost inexorably decreed that, once it had been set in motion, it was impossible to call the wedding off. Diana’s discovery of a bracelet Charles had bought for Camilla before the wedding worsened her suspicions that she had a dangerous rival.”
“The divide between Charles and Diana was exacerbated by the gulf between their respective ages, their completely different interests, as well as their worldviews,” added Fordwich.
“Even on their honeymoon, they reportedly had some rather major personality clashes. Later, there was the lurid scandal of 1989 that exposed Charles and Camilla’s ongoing affair. It shocked the public and irreparably damaged Charles’ reputation.”
“The British public hasn’t forgotten,” Fordwich added.
Charles and Diana separated in 1992. In 1995, Diana gave a bombshell interview to BBC’s Panorama during which she declared, “Well, there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.”
Their divorce was finalized in 1996.
Charles and Camilla rekindled their romance after Diana died in 1997. They married in 2005. The couple were crowned king and queen in 2023.
