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her courtiers might have had faded in the radiance of the occasion as the bride, dazzling
in yards of ivory silk, tulle and diamonds, walked up the aisle of St Paul’s Cathedral on
the arm of her father, gallantly performing this very public duty after recovering from a
near-fatal stroke two years before. There had been behind-the-scenes difficulties: to
avoid trouble threatened by the Spencers, Barbara Cartland, the bride’s stepgrandmother,
had stayed away; and Diana had banned her husband’s two married
confidantes – Lady Tryon and Camilla – from attending the wedding breakfast which
was to be given for 120 people at the Palace although she had not been able to prevent
Camilla from being among the 2,700 congregation in the Cathedral. But now there was
an atmosphere of glamour, happiness and love echoing the words of the Archbishop of
Canterbury, Robert Runcie, ‘This is the stuff of which fairy-tales are made…’ He also
went on to say, ironically as it turned out, ‘Those who are married live happily ever
after the wedding day if they persevere in the real adventure which is the royal task of
creating each other and creating a more loving world…’ The question at the back of
Elizabeth’s mind as she sat listening to her Archbishop must have been, ‘But will they?’
At the time, the royal wedding seemed to set the seal on the future of the monarchy as
the focus of the nation; an occasion of superb ceremonial centring round the figures of a
handsome Prince and a beautiful Princess. Polls showed that its popularity stood as high
as it had at the time of the Queen’s Coronation and Jubilee. When, after an elaboratesounding
wedding breakfast of quenelles of brill with lobster sauce, chicken breasts
stuffed with minced lamb, strawberries and cream, the couple appeared on the Palace
balcony and the Prince, prompted by the crowd, kissed his bride full on the lips, it
seemed as if love had triumphed and the future could be nothing but bright. Just as
Elizabeth and Philip had after their wedding, the couple drove to Waterloo Station to
spend the first two days of their honeymoon at Broadlands and their first night in the
same four-poster bed in which the Prince’s parents had slept in 1947. Borne along on
the wave of popular enthusiasm, the Prince and Princess had returned to the euphoria of
the time of their engagement when Charles had written to friends, ‘I do believe I am
very lucky that someone as special as Diana seems to love me so much…’
Charles’s letters home from Britannia, on which the couple spent a fifteen-day
honeymoon, conveyed the picture of married life which his parents and friends wanted
to hear, ‘… marriage is very jolly’. It also presented an unconscious portrait of a middleaged
fogey and his child bride: ‘Diana dashes about chatting up all the sailors and the
cooks in the galley etc. while I remain hermit-like on the verandah deck, sunk with pure
joy into one of Laurens van der Post’s books.’ He might just as well have been describing
a puppy as a wife. Reviewing the official biographer’s account of the honeymoon,
Robert Harris described the Prince’s behaviour as ‘selfish and peculiar’: ‘Bookish older
husband, high-spirited young wife: it is like a scene out of Boccaccio.’ In the Decameron,
however, it is the young wife who cuckolds the elderly husband and not the reverse. The
couple joined Elizabeth at Balmoral for the usual family holiday, where Elizabeth
expected Diana, whom she had been led to believe was a country-lover, to fit in with the
family ways and was surprised and secretly irritated when she did not. She was puzzled