Princess Diana ‘Wrong’ About Blistering Claim King Charles Wouldn’t Succeed as Monarch: Royal Insider
Princess Diana once famously stated her then-estranged husband, Prince Charles, wasn’t up for the “top job” of king. However, a royal insider contradicts that statement, saying the late Princess of Wales was “wrong.”
‘Diana was wrong’ about King Charles, says royal insider
In a 1995 interview for Panorama, Princess Diana spoke openly about life behind palace walls. Then, she made a blistering comment about her estranged husband’s future as king.
She stated, “Being Prince of Wales produces more freedom now, and being king would be a little bit more suffocating. And because I know the character, I would think that the top job, as I call it, would bring enormous limitations to him, and I don’t know whether he could adapt to that.”
Former BBC royal correspondent Jennie Bond told The Sun that Princess Diana was wrong when she infamously claimed that now-King Charles wouldn’t be up for the “top job” of monarch. “I think Diana was wrong,” she stated.
“She felt that he would be much happier, and she told me that in some long conversations,” Bond admitted. She said Diana believed “he’d be much happier sitting in Tuscany, painting” than ruling the United Kingdom as its monarch.
Charles was once a ‘very tortured soul’: insider
Throughout his marriage to Princess Diana, King Charles reportedly was very conflicted. Jennie Bond called him a “very tortured soul.”
Not only was Charles married to a woman handpicked for him and in love with another [Camilla Parker Bowles], but he had been waiting for decades to take over as monarch from his mother, Queen Elizabeth. Charles wanted more responsibility, but as the then-Prince of Wales, he was restricted in his work for the crown.
Despite not believing Charles would enjoy being king, Diana wanted him to succeed. She admitted she took issue with how her then-husband’s private secretary planned his future.
“She was very cross with his then-private secretary. [Diana] felt he was not managing Charles’ diary, future, that whole strategy properly. And she felt that he would find the ‘top job’ very restrictive, I think,” Bond explains.
“I don’t think she was correct,” the royal insider concluded. “We are talking about a time when Charles was a very tortured soul.”
“He’s no longer tortured. He’s happy in his domestic life,” Bond shared. “This has given him freedom, I think, to concentrate on what he wants to do in his job, and I think he relishes it.”
Along with speaking about Charles as monarch, Princess Diana also shared other intimate thoughts about her then-estranged husband. The Panorama interview evoked both shock and sympathy from royal watchers.
What else did Princess Diana say about King Charles in the Panorama interview?
Princess Diana spoke of her marriage to then-Prince Charles to Panorama. She also talked of Charles’ affair with Camilla Parker-Bowles.
Diana famously claimed, “There were three of us in this marriage. So it was a bit crowded.”
Diana also opened up about other health issues, including bulimia and postpartum depression. “It was a symptom of what was going on in my marriage,” Diana explained.
“I was crying out for help but giving the wrong signals. The cause was the situation where my husband and I had to keep everything together because we didn’t want to disappoint the public. Yet, obviously, there was a lot of anxiety going on within our four walls.”
Diana also admitted, “The most daunting aspect [of marrying into the royal family] was the media attention, because my husband and I, we were told when we got engaged that the media would go quietly, and it didn’t; and then when we were married they said it would go quietly and it didn’t; and then it started to focus very much on me, and I seemed to be on the front of a newspaper every single day, which is an isolating experience, and the higher the media put you, place you, is the bigger the drop.”
Princess Diana and King Charles divorced in 1996. Diana died in a car accident in 1997.
How to get help: To connect with mental health resources near you, visit the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) website.
