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Princess Diana may be gone, but even decades after her death, details about her marriage to the now-King Charles III are emerging. According to an expert, the late British royal used one unflattering word to describe her husband in a tearful conversation with Queen Elizabeth II. 

Diana described Charles as a ‘nightmare’ to Queen Elizabeth 

Diana and King Charles had a famously tumultuous relationship. Its breakdown played out publicly in the ‘90s after being dubbed the “War of the Waleses.” 

Behind palace doors, Diana, who died in August 1997 at the age of 36, royal expert Ingrid Seward has revealed, lamented about her marriage to the queen. 

“Diana used to go to her private room in between appointments that the Queen had, which were every 20 minutes, and burst into tears,” the Majesty Magazine editor-in-chief said, per OK. 

Now for how Diana would describe Charles to her mother-in-law. “[She would say] ‘Everybody hates me, mama, and I hate my husband. He’s a nightmare.’”

Seward continued, calling it a “very low point.” 

“The queen would just stand there, and Diana would be getting more and more hysterical,” she said. “[The queen] didn’t know how to handle it. But she thought Charles should know how to handle it. That was a very low point in the relationship.”

The queen lacked the ‘experience to understand’ or help Diana with the marriage 

Princess Diana, who called King Charles a 'nightmare,' with Queen Elizabeth
Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Diana | Tim Graham Picture Library/Getty Images

Although she herself had been married for decades — Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip were together for nearly 74 years — the queen couldn’t quite grasp the situation plaguing her son and daughter-in-law. 

The monarch, who died in 2022 at the age of 96, “didn’t understand because she didn’t have the experience to understand something like that,” Seward explained. 

“Remember the cloistered world of the royal family, especially in those days,” she continued. (King Charles and Diana married on July 29, 1981.) “They didn’t have to ever deal with moral conflict” — presumably Charles’ relationship with the now-Queen Camilla — “because there was always someone else to do it for them.” 

“If you didn’t want to talk to someone,” she continued, “the switchboard at Buckingham Palace would just not put them through. So, you never had to take on things. And the queen wasn’t used to doing this.”

Princess Diana later said she and King Charles had ‘run out of steam’ in their marriage

In December 1992, Britain’s then-Prime Minister John Major announced King Charles and Diana’s separation. At the time, neither commented publicly on the decision. However, Diana went on to address it in her now-famous 1995 BBC Panorama interview.  

Interviewer Martin Bashir, who was later found to have “fabricated” documents to secure the sit-down, asked Diana about her feelings at the time of the separation.  

“Deep, deep, profound sadness,” Diana said (via PBS). “Because we had struggled to keep it going, but obviously, we’d both run out of steam.” 

“And in a way, I suppose it could have been a relief for us both that we’d finally made our minds up,” she added, noting King Charles “asked for the separation,” and she agreed. 

King Charles and Diana’s divorce became final in August 1996. Diana’s death in a Paris, France, car crash happened almost a year later to the day. 

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