- On this day, February 24, 1981, the royal couple announced their engagement.
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When he finally met the woman he would marry, he repeated the question at least three times.
After years of speculation about who would become his bride, Prince Charles announced their engagement on February 24, 1981.
His intentions were, of course, Lady Diana Spencer, and the couple’s romance remained fairytale-like, although an awkward moment during an official interview left his bride devastated and was seen as a harbinger of eventual break-up. It was done. .
The couple first met in November 1977, when Diana was just 16, during a filming weekend at her home in Althorp House, Northamptonshire.
At the time, Prince Charles was dating his older sister Sarah, and later recalled: “I remember thinking what a bubbly, funny, charming 16-year-old she was.” I mean, so fun, so energetic, so full of life and everything. ”
Charles took action in 1980, two years after ending his relationship with Sarah.
In July 1980, Charles and Diana met again for a weekend at the family home of their friend Philippe de Pass in Sussex. By September Diana was discovered at Balmoral.
After a whirlwind romance that included only a few dates, Prince Charles proposed to Princess Diana, then 19, at a private dinner at Buckingham Palace in 1981.
They managed to keep this news a secret, but it was revealed at 11am on February 24th by a statement from the Lord Chancellor.
“The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh are very pleased to announce the engagement of their beloved son, the Prince of Wales, to Lady Diana Spencer, daughter of Earl Spencer and Lady Shand Kydd,” it read.
In a BBC engagement interview held at the palace, Prince Charles said he was “pleased and frankly surprised” that Princess Diana was ready to accept him, while Princess Diana looked shy from her blonde bangs. She looked up at her future husband and described him as “beautiful.” wonderful’.
At a photocall at Buckingham Palace, Prince Charles’ answer to Princess Diana’s “of course” when asked if the couple loved each other was memorable. “Whatever love means.”
At that moment, Princess Diana awkwardly laughed off the offensive comment, but Prince Charles added: “‘In love’ is open to your own interpretation.”
But years later, in a personal recording included in the documentary Diana: In Her Own Words, she told her voice coach: So I said, “Yes, of course I do,” and Charles turned around and said, “Whatever love means.”
“And I was completely devastated. I thought, what a strange answer. It traumatized me.
In a BBC interview, the Prince of Wales said that after posing the question, he wanted to give Princess Diana time to consider the offer, but Princess Diana quickly accepted, moved out of her Kensington apartment, and lived in Clarence until 2016. I explained how I lived in the house. An important day.
That day in February was the day Princess Diana unveiled her engagement ring to the world for the first time, wearing a cobalt blue skirt suit from Harrods.
Garrard’s stunning piece was a 12-carat oval blue sapphire from Sri Lanka, surrounded by a ring of diamonds and set in 18-carat white gold.
Although the ring was not custom-made, it was inspired by the iconic brooch that Prince Albert commissioned for Queen Victoria’s wedding.
Princess Diana’s ring now belongs to Kate, since Prince William used it to propose in Kenya in 2010, almost 30 years after her parents’ engagement.
On July 29, 1981, five months after announcing their engagement, Charles and Diana wed in St. Paul’s Cathedral in front of a staggering 750 million global television viewers. I mentioned it.
Billed as the wedding of the century, the wedding was a very different story behind the scenes. By that day, according to biographer Penny Junor, Princess Diana had realized Camilla’s true importance.
“Instead of first explaining to Princess Diana that Camilla was an old girlfriend, he presented her as just a friend,” she wrote in her book, The Duchess: Camilla Parker Bowles and the Love Affair That Rocked The Crown. ” he wrote in “ “After the engagement, he came clean and admitted that Camilla was one of her closest friends, but reassured Princess Diana that he would have no other women in his future.”
Nevertheless, Princess Diana was so uncomfortable with Camilla’s presence in her future husband’s life and with life in the palace, which she found stifling, that she tried to call off the wedding two days before the ceremony.
As Andrew Morton reveals in his shocking 1992 book The True Story of Princess Diana, her sisters Lady Sarah McCorquodale and Jane, Baroness Fellowes, dissuaded her from fleeing. .
“‘You’re out of luck, Dutch,’ they said, using their sister’s nickname,” Morton wrote. “It’s too late to run away now because your face is on the tea towel.”
Charles and Diana had two children, William and Harry, and were officially married until 1996, when their divorce was finalized.
Their marriage was marked by infidelity on both sides, and Princess Diana said of Charles and Camilla’s relationship in her famous 1995 Panorama interview: “There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.” says.
In August 1997, just one year after their divorce, Princess Diana died in a car accident in Paris.