Princess Diana Believed That This Could Have Saved Her Ill-Fated Marriage to Prince Charles
Princess Diana Believed That This Could Have Saved Her Ill-Fated Marriage to Prince Charles
Rachel BurchfieldThu, October 1, 2026 at 12:10 PM UTC
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Princess Diana and Prince Charles on March 22, 1990.Credit: GettyThe Gist -
According to royal biographer Ingrid Seward, Princess Diana believed that, had they been older, her tumultuous marriage to Prince Charles could have worked.
When they married on July 29, 1981, Charles was 32, and Diana had just turned 20 earlier that month.
Had that factor been at play, Seward said the former Princess of Wales told her that she and Charles could have “conquered the world.”
Despite the often tumultuous nature of their marriage, at the end of Princess Diana’s far too short life, the former Princess of Wales told royal biographer Ingrid Seward that it was important to her that her sons Prince William and Prince Harry knew that she and their father Prince Charles were once in love—and that this specific difference in their relationship might have made their ill-fated union work.
Princess Diana and Prince Charles in Budapest, Hungary.Credit: Getty
Poignantly, Seward said Diana told her that she believed “if they’d met when they were older, they probably would have made it work and conquered the world.” When they married on July 29, 1981, Charles was 32 years old, and Diana had just turned 20 earlier that same month.
“I was very lucky to see Diana shortly before she died, and she actually told me that she really loved Charles,” Seward told Hello!. “He was the one she would always love, and he was the one that got away.”
Princess Diana and Prince Charles on July 29, 1981.Credit: Getty
“She said, ‘It’s very important to me, Ingrid, that my boys know that their father loved me,’” Seward continued. “‘Of course, the world won’t know, because they won’t see the letters that we wrote each other.’”
Seward explained that the Prince of Wales—now King Charles—“wrote her the most beautiful love letters in which he praised her and talked about her in the most loving way. He did love her. He may not have loved her in the very beginning and he may not have loved her by the end, but he always loved her, and he felt so bad that he couldn’t make the marriage work.”
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Charles, Seward said, was “plagued by guilt” that he couldn’t make the marriage work, she added, “because he knew he was the one who should have made it work.”
But, Seward added, Diana’s “intense jealousy” and “many, many other things” made them “just not suited at the time,” she said. Ultimately, the couple separated in 1992, finalizing their divorce in 1996, just one year before Diana’s untimely death.
Prince Charles and Princess Diana on May 10, 1990.Credit: Getty
Seward’s comments to Hello! came on the heels of the release of Diana’s brother Charles Spencer’s bombshell book, Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, where he said in part that the future king told him that the world would forget Diana “soon enough” and that he seemed “giddily elated” after her death in a 1997 Paris car crash.
“And as for Diana, it’s [the book] the last thing in the world she would ever want, for anyone to put her husband down,” Seward said. “She could, but no one else could.”
on InStyle
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
