Princess Diana and Prince Charles Showed ‘Hatred’ Toward One Another During a Trip to South Korea, Insider Says
Princess Diana and Prince Charles did not have a happy marriage. The royal couple barely knew one another when they met, they had a massive age gap, and no similar interests.
By the time they separated in 1992, following a tense trip to South Korea, their disdain for one another was visible.
How did Princess Diana and Prince Charles first meet?
The first meeting between Prince Charles and Princess Diana was not the fairytale that most people would expect. The duo first crossed paths in 1977 when the late princess was a teen and the prince was dating her older sister, Sarah. The romance between the prince and Sarah Spencer fizzled before it ever got started with Lady Spencer reportedly saying she wouldn’t marry the prince “if he were the dustman or the King of England.”
Prince Charles and Princess Diana would not meet again until 1980, when the prince was grieving the loss of his uncle, Lord Louis Mountbatten. “We were talking about Mountbatten and his girlfriend, and I said, ‘You must be so lonely.” the late princess recalled, in the documentary Diana: In Her Own Words. “I said, ‘It’s pathetic watching you walking up the aisle with Mountbatten’s coffin in front, ghastly, you need someone beside you.”
Prince Charles began to take a slight interest in the stunning young princess, and after being pushed by his father, Prince Philip, the Prince of Wales proposed. By the time they’d gotten engaged, the pair had only met 13 times in person. The prince was also still very much in love with his ex-girlfriend, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall.
Why did Prince Charles and Princess Diana get divorced?
It’s no secret that Prince Charles was smitten with Camilla from the moment they met. They began dating in the early 1970s and the prince had hoped to propose. However, Camilla was in an on-again, off-again relationship with her now ex-husband, Andrew Parker Bowles. Also, the royal family did not approve of Camilla. She was not the “virginal” woman they’d imagine by the future Crowned King’s side.
Despite her marriage in 1973, Camilla and Prince Charles remained very close, eventually striking up an affair after the prince’s marriage to Princess Diana. “[Princess Diana] was just bitterly unhappy; she was disappointed in her marriage as was Charles it was a car crash from the very beginning,” royal biographer Penny Junor explained via Express.
In 1992, news of Camilla and Prince Charles’ affair went public, which led to the Prince and Princess of Wales’ separation and eventual divorce in 1996.
“There were three of us in the marriage, so it was a bit crowded,” Princess Diana said candidly in a 1995 BBC interview.
Princess Diana and Prince Charles toward one another during a trip to South Korea
Cracks in Princess Diana and Prince Charles’ marriage began to show early on. By the 1990s it was all but over. Shortly before the royal couple announced their separation, Queen Elizabeth II sent the pair on a royal tour to South Korea in November 1992.
The four-day trip was called the “togetherness tour” and it was meant to reassure the public that the couple was not splitting. The tour was a disaster from the moment the pair stepped off the plane. According to Express, a reporter covering the tour noted, “hatred that radiated between the two as they came down the steps of the plane.”
“We know that they’re not [fine] but we’re doing our best with them,” Charles’ deputy private secretary Peter Westburcot told the press at the time.
On Dec. 9, 1992, the couple announced their separation.
