Prince Charles Recalled What He Thought of Princess Diana the First Time He Laid Eyes on Her
Years after Prince Charles and Princess Diana said “I do,” Diana documented much of her private thoughts on audio recordings which were used for the biography Diana: Her True Story and the documentary Diana: In Her Own Words. But not much is known and may never be known about Charles’ true feelings for his first wife. However, what has been reported is what the heir apparent thought about her the first time they met.
Read on to find out how Prince Charles described Lady Diana Spencer the first time he saw her.
Prince Charles’ first impression of Lady Diana Spencer
In 1977, Prince Charles dated Diana’s sister, Lady Sarah Spencer, and that’s when the Prince of Wales met a then-16-year-old Lady Diana Spencer.
Diana remembered seeing the future king for the first time at her family’s Althorp home. In Diana: In Her Own Words, the princess said: “He came with his Labrador [Harvey]. My sister was all over him like a bad rash and I thought, ‘God he must really hate that.’ I kept out of the way.”
Charles would later recall what he thought of the teenaged Diana. According to the Express, the prince described her as “very jolly and amusing.”
Prince Charles and Princess Diana got engaged after a brief courtship
Two years after meeting at Althorp, Diana and Charles crossed paths again. Diana revealed it was when she was “asked to stay with some friends in Sussex and they said, ‘Oh, the Prince of Wales is staying,’ and I thought: I hadn’t seen him in ages.”
Diana went on to describe what happened during the second meeting. “He was all over me,” she said on the tapes. ”We were talking about [Lord] Mountbatten and [Charles’ ex] girlfriend and I said, ‘You must be so lonely.’ I said, ‘It’s pathetic watching you walking up the aisle with Mountbatten’s coffin in front, ghastly, you need someone beside you.’ Whereupon he leapt upon me and started kissing me and I thought, urgh, this is not what people do. And he was all over me for the rest of the evening, following me around like a puppy.”
The two began a courtship. At the time Charles was under immense pressure to find a bride so after meeting Diana just 12 times he proposed.
Not happily ever after
On July 29, 1981, Prince Charles and Princess Diana tied the knot at St Paul’s Cathedral in London. The wedding was like something out of a storybook as the pair said their vows in front of 3,500 invited guests and a global audience of 750 million.
However, their actual marriage was marred by lies and infidelity. In 1992, they decided to separate before agreeing to divorce in 1996, one year before Diana’s tragic death.
Today Charles is married to Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall.
