According to Seward in The Queen & Di, although Elizabeth was initially sympathetic to Diana, eventually the stoic monarch felt that the emotional Princess was simply too much to handle.
Though Diana was still new to her royal role and just 21 years old at the time, the queen was right to trust her. It was her first solo overseas trip as a representative of the royal family, and she won praise for her “dignified manner at the highly charged and at times mawkish funeral service,” per Morton.
Arbiter said: “Diana and the Queen shared a warm relationship. The Queen found emotional problems difficult – that's her generation.” She also explained that the Queen had asked the press to give Diana her space.
As TIME pointed out, the royal family had been cool towards Diana even before her divorce from Charles, due to the attention she attracted from the tabloids. While the precise reasons for the coolness are “still ultimately a matter of speculation,” Lacey says, “there was no doubt it was there.
Russell recounts that between the call in 1989 and a recording of it being sold to a newspaper in 1992, the relationship between Diana and the Queen Mother had soured. He wrote: "Diana did not enjoy herself at the Queen Mother's ninetieth birthday party in August 1990, calling it 'grim and stilted.
The queen's public words about Diana were sincere, as a private letter—made public in 2017—that she wrote after the funeral to her aide Lady Henriette Abel Smith seems to confirm. "It was indeed dreadfully sad, and she is a huge loss to the country," the queen wrote.
The Queen Mother also reportedly didn't approve of Charles and Camilla's relationship, with royal author Robert Jobson writing in his 2006 book, William's Princess, that "it was a fact that Camilla's name was not allowed to be spoken in the presence of Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother."
"One of the most shocking things that Diana told me was that the night before the wedding, Charles told her that he didn't love her," Thornton said in an ITV documentary. "I think Charles didn't want to go into the wedding on a false premise. He wanted to square it with her and it was devastating for Diana.
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.
I will too! 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.
Camilla may have been at Diana's wedding but she was not welcome at her funeral, which was watched by an estimated 2.5 billion people around the world. Still, to many her absence echoed around the ancient hall. The Queen made it clear to Charles that he could not take his paramour to the service.
July 29, 1981
Walking down the aisle on her wedding day, Princess Diana dips into a deep curtsy before Queen Elizabeth while then-Prince Charles lowers his head into a bow.
The late Monarch reportedly had some concerns about their relationship in the early days, but she eventually welcomed Kate to the family with open arms. Despite Her Majesty's initial worries, they soon faded away once the two began to bond.
According to Seward in The Queen & Di, although Elizabeth was initially sympathetic to Diana, eventually the stoic monarch felt that the emotional Princess was simply too much to handle. “A footman said, 'The Princess cried three times in a half an hour while she was waiting to see you.
In a new interview clip promoting the publication of his autobiography Spare, Prince Harry recounts how he and Prince William were unable to show any emotion as they met mourners in public. He told ITV's Tom Bradby he had cried when his mother was buried.
In the earlier days, Diana was simply afraid of her mother-in-law. Though she carefully followed all the formal traditions and courtesies, she kept a distance from the Queen. Some observers found Diana's uneasiness with the Queen surprising since she was not an outsider to the Royal family.
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).
Who walked behind Diana's coffin? The funeral procession included William and Harry,Prince Charles andPrince Philip, as well as hundreds of representatives of the charities Diana had been involved with.
During that time, the Princess of Wales was romantically linked to a few different people, including art dealer Oliver Hoare and rugby star Will Carling. But only one man has been called the "love of her life"—British Pakistani surgeon Hasnat Khan, whom Diana dated from 1995 to 1997.
In the book, which is published in December, the author notes that Elizabeth II "was genuinely delighted when she learned that her grandson was to marry Markle." The queen "liked Meghan and told many people so.
Camilla: I watched in horror as Mama died slowly and in agony from osteoporosis.
Further complicating their romance was that Camilla didn't meet royal prerequisites for marrying the heir to the throne: Reports claimed she wasn't a virgin and she didn't have an aristocratic bloodline. Charles and Camilla split, believing they didn't have a feasible future together.
She's spotted crying at Heathrow airport upon his departure—not because she is sad, but because before he left, he had taken a phone call with Camilla Parker Bowles. “It just broke my heart,” she later recalled, according to Diana: In Her Own Words.
Queen Elizabeth's colorful younger sister Princess Margaret was known for being a royal troublemaker and was, like Diana, divorced from an ex-husband she'd had a tumultuous and unfaithful relationship with. Princess Margaret attended Princess Diana's funeral with her son Lord Linley and his wife Lady Serena Linley.
Before she was taken out of the car, he held her hand and comforted her. "My God, what's happened," Diana then asked him, in what proved to be her final words. "I massaged her heart and a few seconds later she started breathing again.