The revealing bracelet
Later, while Charles was away, Diana would learn of a bracelet Charles had made for Camilla, a gift that struck at the heart of her worst fears.
”I walked into this man’s office one day and I said, ‘Ooh, what’s in that parcel?’ And he said ‘Oh, you shouldn’t look at that.’ So I opened it and there was the bracelet.”
”I was devastated,” she continued. “And I said, ‘Well, he’s going to give it to her tonight.’ So rage, rage, rage. You know, ‘Why can’t you be honest with me?’ But no, absolutely cut me dead. It was as if he’d made his decision, and if it wasn’t going to work, it wasn’t going to work.”
Despite the heartbreak, Diana tried to stay strong, even when faced with the painful realities of her engagement.
A lunch with Camilla, meant to be a light-hearted affair, took on a darker meaning when Camilla subtly laid claim to Charles in a way that Diana could never ignore.
”You are not going to hunt, are you?” Camilla had asked.
”I said, ‘No.’ She said, ‘I just wanted to know,’ and I thought as far as she was concerned that was her communication route,” Diana recalled.
Another theory: Tears of rage
Royal biographer Tina Brown, in The Diana Chronicles, believes the tears Diana shed at the airport were not of sorrow, but of anger. ”Diana’s tears at the airport were not of grief but of rage,” Brown wrote. And rage is exactly what Diana was feeling. Her fiancé, the man she was about to marry, had given a deeply personal gift to another woman. In Diana’s eyes, that was a sign of things to come.
“He’d found the virgin, the sacrificial lamb – and in a way, he was obsessed with me, but it was hot and cold, hot and cold, you never knew what mood it was going to be, up and down, up and down,” Diana said, reflecting on the emotional rollercoaster that was her relationship with Charles.
Just before the wedding, Diana went for another lunch – this time with her sisters.
“I went upstairs, had lunch with my sisters who were there, and I said, ‘I can’t marry him. I can’t do this. This is absolutely unbelievable,’” Diana can be heard saying during an audio recording in the documentary Diana: In Her Own Words.
Diana confided in her sisters, hoping for support, but they gave her the harsh reality check she needed. ”Well, bad luck, ‘Duch.’ Your face is on the tea towels so you’re too late to chicken out.”
The wedding went ahead, despite the storm brewing in Diana’s heart. By 1996, after years of infidelity and emotional turmoil, Charles and Diana divorced, following a letter from the Queen advising them to end their troubled marriage.
“There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded,” Diana later said.
When Diana confronted Camilla
According to Charles’ authorized biography, as quoted by Town & Country, Charles and Camilla’s love affair started in 1986. At that time, Charles was still married to Princess Diana, and she found out about it.
In 1989, Diana confronted Camilla over the affair, telling her to back off.
“I know what’s going on between you and Charles and I just want you to know that,” Camilla recalled Diana saying in a tape released by The Telegraph, as quoted by Town & Country.
“[Diana] said to me: ‘You’ve got everything you ever wanted. You’ve got all the men in the world falling in love with you and you’ve got two beautiful children, what more do you want?’”
“So I said, ‘I want my husband.’ And I said, ‘I’m sorry I’m in the way and it must be hell for both of you. But I do know what’s going on. Don’t treat me like an idiot,’” Camilla explained.
Princess Diana would tragically pass away in a car crash on August 31, 1997.
This is how Princess Diana found Prince Charles was cheating on her, 1996 pic.twitter.com/XqhSREsmts
— Historic Vids (@historyinmemes) November 19, 2024
At the time, no one really knew what Diana was feeling, but looking at those photos from Heathrow today, it’s clear they tell a different story.
What seemed like a sweet, emotional farewell was in fact much more complicated.
Looking back, it’s crazy how much more we understand now. What’s your take on it all?
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