Queen Elizabeth Thought Diana Might Be Better Suited to Prince Andrew
Diana and Andrew?
It’s easy to forget just beset by turmoil the royal family was in the 1990’s, as Princess Diana and Prince Charles’ so-called “War of the Waleses” threatened to tear the institution apart. From today’s perspective, it seems rather extraordinary that these two married at all, given not just the 12-year age gap and Charles’ ongoing affection for Camilla Parker Bowles but also the fact that they shared no interests.
In a new book, My Mother And I, a portrait of the relationship between Charles and his mother Queen Elizabeth, excerpted in the Daily Mail this week, author Ingrid Seward says that Diana, intoxicated by royal glamor “determinedly … set out to become the Princess of Wales.”
According to Seward, the late queen had her reservations about the match between Diana and Charles, and privately wondered whether Diana wouldn’t be better suited to Prince Andrew.
Diana’s royal campaign, as Seward tells it, includes a 1980 visit to her sister Jane, who was married to Robert Fellowes, a trusted member of the queen’s household, at Balmoral; Diana was subsequently invited to join a four-day shooting party at the castle.
One anonymous member of staff is quoted as saying that in an effort to make a good impression: “Diana was always up early. If you looked out of your window at a quarter to eight, you would see her walking in the garden, and she made a great point of being there to see them off. It was then that she played her sharpest card. She would go around telling everybody how much she loved Balmoral and that it was such a magical place and how she loved it beyond imagination.”
Charles was encouraged, Seward says, by her professed interest in the estate and took her on fishing trips.
Seward also sheds light on another strange moment in Diana’s pre-marital, post-engagement life when she was effectively sequestered in Buckingham Palace and developed a close friendship with Prince Edward’s footman Mark Simpson.
Simpson tells Seward: “She was becoming more and more unhappy.”
Things took a strange turn when Charles returned from a week-long trip to America and barely acknowledged his fiancée, leading her to break down in tears.
Simpson found her weeping, gave her a hug: “And then Lady Susan Hussey [the late queen’s lady-in-waiting] came in while I had my arms around her. That was a big mistake—for me, anyway. She didn’t think the future Princess of Wales should have her arms around a footman. She came in and went straight out. I was mortified.”
Simpson adds that after the engagement in 1981, “I started seeing her every day and we had these great long chats. She told me she hated the engagement photos and she thought she looked fat, which was when her bulimia started. We talked about everything. She said how unfeeling the family was; how they had no emotion and Prince Charles wasn’t paying her any attention, and there was a great long list of people she hated and loathed. She hated Lady Susan Hussey, and she hated Princess Anne.”
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Source: thedailybeast.com
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