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ambassador. In return Diana made it clear that for her children’s sake she would join the
family party at Sandringham for Christmas. Later she changed her mind and rejected
Elizabeth’s invitation.
Thus far Elizabeth had been determined not to become personally involved in the
Waleses’ war nor to be seen to take sides. She still saw both her estranged daughters-inlaw
and spoke to them on the telephone. But ultimately for her the monarchy must come
first. Much as it went against the grain for her, she reluctantly came to the decision that
a divorce would be the most sensible way to end the painful public battle between
Charles and Diana that had done so much damage to the image of the institution to
which she had devoted her life. After three years’ separation, the Waleses showed no
signs of either reconciliation or of either of them taking steps to initiate a divorce. With
the situation in danger of spinning out of control, Elizabeth finally took the initiative.
Just before Christmas 1995 she wrote separately to both Charles and Diana advising
them that they must begin divorce proceedings. In order to avoid any misunderstanding,
the Palace let it be known that she had done so. In not only countenancing but actually
initiating the divorce of the heir to the throne, she was taking the monarchy a long way
down the road towards adaptation to the modern world.
But, as with everything in the tortuous world of the Waleses, the path to the divorce
was littered with pitfalls. On 15 February Elizabeth met Diana at Buckingham Palace to
discuss the first steps; on the 28th Diana and Charles had a private meeting at St
James’s Palace. The meeting was supposed to remain confidential, but Diana struck first
by issuing her own version of the conversation: she had agreed to Charles’s request for a
divorce on the terms that both parents would be involved in decisions regarding the
children, that she would continue to live at Kensington Palace and keep her offices at St
James’s Palace. She would give up the title of ‘Her Royal Highness’ and be known as
Diana, Princess of Wales. The Palace, furious that Diana had broken the confidentiality
agreement, issued a counter-statement specifically denying that Diana had been asked
to drop the HRH. ‘The decision to drop the title is the Princess’s and the Princess’s
alone,’ Charles Anson, the Queen’s Press Secretary, said. ‘It is wrong that the Queen or
the Prince asked her. I am saying categorically that is not true.’ The question of whether
Diana had volunteered to give up the title (as, apparently, she at first did and then later
regretted), or whether the Queen had decided that she must, hung in the air, poisoning
the atmosphere for the future. In July the final settlement was made: Diana was to
receive a lump sum of £15 million, underwritten by Elizabeth; she was to give up her
royal title and yet remain ‘regarded as a member of the royal family’, invited to state
and national occasions. She was to retain royal perquisites such as the use of the state
apartments for entertaining at St James’s Palace, of the royal jewellery and of the
Queen’s Flight. On 15 July 1996 Charles and Diana filed their decree nisi, the document
declaring that their marriage would be officially dissolved in six weeks’ time, on 28
August.
Two days later, on 30 August 1996, an entry appeared in the London Gazette (the
traditional place for such royal pronouncements), clarifying the official Palace position