Prince Charles Felt Like He Was Going to Be Blamed When He Found Out About Princess Diana’s Death
Prince Charles and Princess Diana did not have an easy relationship or marriage. However, by 1997, the year the princess died, the pair had established a co-parenting relationship and had moved on with their respective personal lives.
Therefore, the princess’ death haunted the future Crowned King, so much so that he felt he would be blamed when she was killed.
Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s marriage fell apart quickly
Pushed together by the British royal family, Princess Diana and Prince Charles barely knew each other and had very little in common when they married in July 1981. The princess was just 19, while the prince was already in his 30s. It also didn’t help that Charles was in love with his ex-girlfriend Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall.
With such a rocky foundation, the marriage fell apart quickly. Charles was mostly uninterested in his new bride, and he resented the frenzy surrounding her in the press. Meanwhile, Diana felt ostracized by his family and the life she once knew. Royal biographer Penny Junor explained to Express,
[Princess Diana] was just bitterly unhappy, she was disappointed in her marriage as was Charles it was a car crash from the very beginningWhen Charles and Diana got together it seemed on paper that this was the most perfect match, but Diana’s childhood had been very difficult and the happy jolly-go-lucky venire that she presented to the world was nothing more than a venire. Charles was a very complex character and the two of them was about the worst match you could possibly have made.
This was the last time Princess Diana and Prince Charles spoke
By the time the ’90s rolled around, the Prince and Princess of Wales’ marriage were effectively over. They were finally granted a separation in 1992 when news of the princes and Camilla’s affair leaked to the press.
By 1997, the duo was officially divorced and were co-parenting their sons, Prince Harry and Prince William. Charles was still seeing Camilla, and the princess had moved on with Egyptian billionaire Dodi Al-Fayed.
Before she died, the princess was in Paris, set to return to London after vacationing on Al-Fayed’s yacht in the South of France. The last time she spoke to her sons, and perhaps Prince Charles, was around 4:30 p.m. on Aug. 30.
The men were vacationing in Balmoral Castle in Scotland, so the call was rushed and distracted. Princess Diana was killed early the next morning in the horrific car crash at the Pont de l’Alma tunnel in Paris.
Prince Charles thought he was going to be blamed for Princess Diana’s death
Initially, when the royals learned of the car crash, they heard the princess was alive but badly injured. However, news of her death soon followed. Prince Charles was reportedly in shock. In her 2005 book, The Firm, Junor wrote via Express the prince said, “‘They’re all going to blame me, aren’t they? The world’s going to go completely mad, isn’t it?'” Junor added, “What he did get absolutely right was the prediction that he would be blamed. Had he loved Diana instead of his mistress, people argued in their anger, Diana would still be alive.”
Later, Princess Charles was overcome with grief. “He wept bitterly at the sheer tragedy of it all, that their life together, which they had both so wanted to work, should have ended in such acrimony and anger, and he wept for William and Harry,” Junor wrote in 2017’s The Duchess. “And he wept for his failure to help Diana. He knew he had done his best – no guilt there – but she’d been beyond any help he was able to provide. It was a bruising and difficult time for him.”
