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oken home but they thought a family atmosphere would be the answer…’ For Diana,
it was a case of answered prayers, but even she was beginning perhaps to be touched by
doubt. Replying in her large, rounded, rather childish writing to one of the many people
who had sent letters of congratulation to the couple on their engagement, she said, ‘it’s
amazing how many people have said that married life is the best’, adding, ‘I wonder if
I’ll be saying that in twenty years time!’ Both of them could be seen as victims of public
expectation, but of the two, Diana was undoubtedly the most willing. The truth was not
exactly the romantic fairy-tale the public wanted to believe in. ‘The “fairy-tale love
affair” was a calculated act by two people who both thought they knew what they
wanted and went after it without considering the long-term consequences,’ one of
Diana’s biographers wrote. ‘By the time the couple announced their engagement in
February 1981 Charles had, for the best part of a decade, known that he had found his
soulmate in Camilla Parker Bowles. Diana knew it too and went along with it… he
needed someone suitable to produce a future King, she desperately wanted to be
Princess of Wales.’ 4 Both were readers of the novels of Barbara Cartland, Diana’s stepgrandmother,
on the themes of virginity and romantic love and both of them were
determined to be in love, Diana wholeheartedly, Charles more reluctantly. A television
interview with the couple after the engagement was announced revealed the unreality
of the couple’s views of each other:
Charles: Diana is a great outdoor-loving person.
Diana: We both love music and dancing and we both have the same sense of humour.
Charles: You’ll definitely need that.
The Prince’s response to a query about being in love was the disquieting ‘whatever that
may mean’.
At first the signs seemed good as Diana showed herself not to be the ‘shy mouse’
people had once thought her but determined to assert her power over her Prince, firmly
and in public. On a visit to some royal relations, Diana, who had been showing off her
engagement ring, found as she was leaving that she had left it behind in the drawingroom.
Peremptorily she ordered Charles to go back and fetch it. Her hosts were surprised
but pleased, thinking that that was the way to treat the spoiled royal bachelor. Later,
they saw the incident in a different light. Diana had moved into Clarence House for a
few days over the time of her engagement to escape the press siege at her flat in
Coleherne Court. She then was given a suite of rooms at Buckingham Palace. On the
night she had left Coleherne Court for Clarence House the Scotland Yard Inspector
assigned to her, a favourite of Prince Charles’s who shared his ‘alternative’ views, told
her, ‘I just want you to know this is the last night of your freedom, so make the most of
it.’ Those words, Diana later said in somewhat melodramatic terms, ‘felt like a sword
through my heart’. Arriving at 4 p.m. she was left on her own. A few days later she
moved into the intimidating anonymity of Buckingham Palace.
Elizabeth did little to make her daughter-in-law feel at home. Diana, she quickly