Yep, *that* lunch meeting between Princess Diana and now-Queen Camilla Parker Bowles at a restaurant called Ménage à Trois. It was… simply next-level.
Diana Became Suspicious of Camilla During Their Lunch
“The friendly note invited her to lunch. It was during that meeting, arranged to coincide with Prince Charles's trip to Australia and New Zealand, that Diana became suspicious. Camilla kept asking if Diana was going to hunt when she moved to Highgrove.
I looked for her," Diana said, according to Andrew Morton's biography Diana: Her True Story — In Her Own Words. "So walking down the aisle, I spotted Camilla, pale gray, veiled pillbox hat, saw it all, her son Tom standing on a chair. To this day you know — vivid memory."
Princess Diana once confronted Queen Consort Camilla at a party about her affair with Charles in what she later described as the “bravest moment of her marriage”.
Andrew and Camilla were close friends with Charles, and as it goes when you begin dating someone new, Diana was introduced, and the couples would interact. Diana recalled the early days in recordings for Andrew Morton's 1992 book, Diana: In Her Own Words. "I met [Camilla] very early on," she said.
According to the Telegraph, the Queen bowed out because of her role as head of the Church of England, which discourages divorce. This prominent role meant she would have had to uphold the Church's values. It's believed her duties outweighed familial obligations when making this decision.
Answer: The big reason Prince Charles and Camilla Shand, as she was then known, didn't get married in the early 1970s: He never asked her. And there are probably a number of reasons for that. In his early 20s, like many other young men, Charles simply wasn't ready for marriage.
" Here, according to Brown, Camilla began to sympathize with her love rival, the prince's first wife Diana, who complained of the tight constraints placed upon her when she became a princess.
The princess then gave Camilla's alleged response, which was: "'You've got everything you've ever wanted. All the men in the world fall in love with you. You've got two beautiful children.
Diana and Camilla might have never had a close friendship, but when Charles and Diana started dating the pair were friendly with each other. At the time Camilla was married to Andrew Parker Bowles and had two children with him.
It's almost as if Charles had accepted that if he couldn't marry Camilla (who had been married to Andrew Parker Bowles since 1973), he wouldn't be happy no matter who he married, and so just went along with what his father thought was good for him and his country.
Despite Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles' dating history, she still made the royal wedding's guest list — likely due to her husband Andrew Parker Bowles' role as the Commanding Officer of the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment.
As it goes, wedding mishaps even happen to royals. On the day of her wedding, Princess Diana accidentally spilled some Quelques Fleurs perfume on her dress, her makeup artist Barbara Daly revealed in Diana: The Portrait. Diana was quick to tuck the front of her dress in, though, effectively hiding the stain.
But throughout Princess Diana and the then Prince of Wales's 20-year odyssey, there were moments of real affection, no matter how fleeting. “We fell in love gradually,” Princess Diana told biographer Andrew Morton. “It wasn't really dramatic. One blink and it would have gone.”
While Princess Diana and Prince Philip were not reported to have gotten along well (during her marriage to Philip, there were reports that he was "unkind" to her, according to CNN), behind closed doors, it appears he was there for Diana during the difficult divorce — to a degree at least.
Both Diana and Charles reportedly wanted to call off the wedding.
The letter was written in 1972, years before Diana and the King announced their separation. Philip continued: “I cannot imagine anyone in their right mind would leave you for Camilla. Such a prospect never even entered our heads.”
apparently the Princess Royal said “you're not Queen, you're the Queen Consort”'.
The source told the Daily Mail: "When Diana died, his instinctive reaction was to feel a terrible guilt because of everything that had led to that dreadful moment. "But he no longer feels guilt for her death because he has come to accept that had nothing to do with where she was or who she was with at the time.
"It was indeed dreadfully sad, and she is a huge loss to the country," the queen wrote.
Here, Diana allegedly admitted she was friendly with Prince Charles. “At the end of Diana's life, she and Charles were on the best terms they'd been for a very long time,” she said. Adding that, “Charles got into the habit of dropping in on her at Kensington Palace and they would have tea and a sort of rueful exchange.
Though it seems almost comically old fashioned now, the fact that Camilla had a dating history was a major strike against her. "The conventions of the time called for the heir to the British throne to marry a woman who at least appeared to be virginal," writes Bedell Smith.
Before King Charles III (then Prince Charles) married Princess Diana (then Diana Spencer) in 1981, he was apparently already smitten with his former girlfriend, Camilla Parker Bowles (then Camilla Shand, now Camilla, Queen Consort). After an extensive courtship, Charles and Camilla married each other in April 2005.
According to a biography of Charles titled The Man Who Would Be King, Camilla did invite Diana out to lunch with “genuinely friendly intentions,” and said that she would “love to see the ring.” However, Seward says that there was antipathy between the two since before Charles and Diana's wedding, and that Diana had ...
The Queen and Prince Philip were absent from Charles and Camilla's wedding because both the bride and groom had previously been divorced, according to The Telegraph.