Princess Diana Didn't Want to "Give Up" on Marriage to Prince Charles

(Image credit: Getty/Anwar Hussein)

published 19 November 2021

Even though Prince Charles and Princess Diana's marriage was very far from the fairytale people were hoping it would turn out to be, one royal expert thinks the late Princess of Wales didn't actually want to end it.

"I think that even after the separation in 1992, they still carried on doing engagements. I don’t think Diana ever really wanted to truly give up," Emma Cooper, who executive-produced CNN docuseries Diana told Us Weekly. "Actually, it was the queen in the end [that] said, 'You’re separated. You need to get divorced.' And I think she never, ever—did she really want to do that? Look, I don’t know. It feels to me from the evidence of all the testimony that we had in her own words, that it was hard for her."

Driving the point home that Diana didn't take divorce lightly, Cooper added, "On the day Diana’s divorce papers came through, she sat there on her own in Kensington Palace, and she told [royal correspondent Jennie Bond] that the one thing she wanted to do was just pick up the phone and speak to Charles and I just thought, 'Wow.'

"Then she said, 'Oh, but I couldn’t because I know he’d just think I was silly again.' And I thought, 'That’s somebody who is not walking out of a marriage without feeling emotion.' And actually, on that day, she was also wearing her wedding ring. She was photographed with her wedding ring on. So, I don’t think she ran out of that marriage."

And all of this despite how she was treated throughout her union to Charles, who was seeing Camilla Parker-Bowles while he was married—something Diana knew about, but was told wasn't true.

"[Diana] knew all of this detail about Charles and Camilla, and she was constantly told by the people around [her] that she was crazy, that she was obsessed," Cooper added. "It’s sort of language that has been used around women for centuries, which is, 'You’re hysterical, you’re seeing things, you’re obsessed. There’s nothing in this, let it go.' Well, she was right. … She was aware of everything, and yet she was constantly told that what she was seeing, she was not really seeing."

What a horrible situation all around.

Iris Goldsztajn is a London-based journalist, editor and author. She is the morning editor at Marie Claire, and her work has appeared in the likes of InStyle, Cosmopolitan, Bustle and Shape. Iris writes about everything from celebrity news and relationship advice to the pitfalls of diet culture and the joys of exercise. She has many opinions on Harry Styles, and can typically be found eating her body weight in cheap chocolate.