Princess Diana: Loved by the people, not her husband
Princess Diana would have turned 56 on July 1. This week Beau Monde looks back on her short but special life ...
Princess Diana would have turned 56 on July 1. This week Beau Monde looks back on her short but special life. Today: How the arrival of Prince Harry meant the end of the marriage to Charles.
Although Diana had hoped that the media's attention would diminish after her marriage, it only grew. She was young, compared to the other Windsors, she was the height of glamor and readers couldn't get enough of what she did and what she looked like.
"I didn't understand the fascination with a chubby twenties," the princess said later. "It was very overwhelming, for someone who was not used to that at all. I seemed to be on the front pages every day, which is an isolating experience. The higher the media praise you, the deeper you can fall."
Rising star
The Windsors, unaccustomed to the overwhelming amount of publicity, spoke to Diana about it, as if she decided what The Sun put on the front page. Charles was also jealous that she was clearly more loved than he on joint working visits. It isolated her even more "because I wanted so badly to do well for my husband and his family."
Bulimia
Given the circumstances, things did not go that bad between Charles and Diana that first year. They wrote touching love letters and walked endlessly in Balmoral. However, Charles did not understand her fears and her bulimia, calling it 'waste of food' to eat and then throw up. Just as he did not understand Diana's anger at his ongoing contact with his great love Camilla.
Depressed Diana
Diana could not have been easy to get along with for Charles. She was temperamental and emotional, two things the Windsors shuddered about, just as they weren't used to complimenting: Diana was only told when she had done something wrong. She was very unhappy because she did not feel seen or heard and was already thinking about suicide regularly. Not because she really wanted to die, but because she believed that attempting suicide was the only way to get help and a little understanding. Pregnant, she threw herself down a wooden staircase, engaged in self-mutilation and cut herself in front of Charles. The prince would treat her with "studied contempt" because he thought she was posing.
William
William's arrival brought relief: Diana was overjoyed to be a mother and Charles was also delighted with this new phase in his life. His friends were amazed that he changed diapers, bathe with William, and cut appointments to allow more time with his family. Both Charles and Diana later spoke of their first year as parents as the happiest of their marriage. But Diana, meanwhile, struggled with postpartum depression and exhaustion because she still had bulimia and was not getting enough nutrients. Moreover, her honeymoon with the press was over: she was suddenly criticized for shopping too much and being unstable: 'Screeching in the palace' was the find that a friend of Charles passed on to the press.
Harry
The problems persisted, the summer of 1984, when William was a toddler and Diana was pregnant with their second child, was the last period when both Charles and Diana managed to do something together successfully. They had a common factor in William that they both loved, Charles deeply hoped that the second would become a daughter. It became a son: Prince Harry. "And he has red hair too," said the disappointed crown prince, who thought this was a typical Spencer trait. Then he left to play polo, without even looking at the maternity woman or his son. "At that moment, something died in me," Diana said later.
Affair
Not long after that it became clear that Camilla was already fully part of Charles's life. Her husband Andrew Parker-Bowles agreed to the affair, Camilla was often the hostess at Highgrove, Charles's country home. There they received discreet friends and continued their relationship, while Diana with two little boys in Kensington Palace emptied the fridges and spit everything out again. While talking to another man at a party, the next day in tabloid shame it was said that her husband had a double life remained under the radar, something Diana found very unjust.
Confrontation
In the late 1980s, Diana seemed to realize that she had nothing to expect from her husband and her in-laws in terms of happiness. Princess Margaret, the Queen's sister, was one of her harshest critics and never missed an opportunity to call Diana "hysterical." Because Diana still vomited four to five times a day, she received treatment for her eating disorder at the urging of her best friend Carolyn Bartholomew and recovered enormously from extra vitamins and minerals. She felt stronger, became more confident and even confronted Camilla by letting her know at a party that she knew exactly what was going on between her and Charles. Camilla played the innocence murdered, Diana threw out pent-up anger and frustration for seven years. Eyewitnesses report that Camilla needed three whiskeys afterwards, "to get back to being herself".
Obsession
Having Diana as a rival must have been no fun for Camilla. The princess was obsessed with 'The Rottweiler', intercepted Charles 'correspondence with his mistress, pressed the redial button on his telephone to always connect to the Parker-Bowles' house, overheard conversations and called Camilla's night with the announcement that she had sent people to kill her: "Look outside." That could not have been nice, with two small children at home (left son Tom, right daughter Laura). Camilla was already well on her way to becoming the most hated woman in the United Kingdom and could only move somewhat freely among intimates, such as at a hunt.
Diana's unbridled anger was completely over the top and cannot be justified, but it was part of her grieving process for her failed marriage. As a child who had suffered greatly from her own parents' divorce, she hated not being able to provide a truly close-knit family for her own children. It was striking that Charles and Diana meanwhile continued to make working visits together. “We were a good team in public,” she said later. "Especially considering what was going on in private."
Own life
Diana was getting better in the early nineties. She became more self-aware, discovered her spiritual sides, and made friends with whom she could count on understanding and support. The scissors went into her hair, she increasingly exchanged her frumpy English clothes for woman-of-the-world designs from Gucci and Versace. And she had her own affairs, including with James Hewitt.
Taboo breaker
Even the Queen, who was deeply concerned about Charles and Diana's relationship and was pretty much the only one who approached her eldest son about his affair with Camilla, was impressed by the new Diana. And of the great publicity her work generated: Diana visited the homeless shelter with her sons, broke the taboo on AIDS by hugging infected children and drinking tea with patients, and often visited hospitals at night unseen, to spend a while there in peace. sit with critically ill people. Compared to Charles, whose infidelity was increasingly leaked, the crown prince did not fare well.
Book Bomb
At the palace a Team Diana and a Team Charles arose, who exuberantly hung their dirty laundry outside to win the favor of the press for their boss. In 1992, the princess made a masterstroke: she gave her friends permission to talk to Andrew Morton. In 'Her True Story' they told her side of the story, without ever meeting him. "I was tired of being seen as an unstable madman," she said later. “I wanted to understand what I was going through, including other women in the same situation, albeit in a different environment.
Great grief
At the end of 1992, Charles and Diana were separated from bed and breakfast. "My husband and I discussed this very calmly," said the princess later. “We understood that the public wanted clarity, because everyone could see that the situation was unsustainable. Talks with lawyers, with the Prime Minister, with Her Majesty, of course. I was deeply, deeply sad. to go, but it just didn't work anymore. "
Tomorrow's picture: Diana's new life as a free woman
