Princess Diana was loved by many. The Princess of Wales broke the perception of people towards the Royals. Many believe that the royal family members are intimidating and unapproachable, but the former wife of Prince Charles always made sure that the public knew that they were worth her time and energy.
So when Princess Diana passed away in 1997, a lot of hearts were broken. The world just lost one of the most, if not the most, well-loved members of the royal family, and it was a hard pill to swallow for everyone.
When Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s marriage didn’t work out, everyone blamed the former for the failure of their union. The future king was still very much in love with his ex-girlfriend Camilla Parker Bowles when he married the Princess of Wales that led the mother of his children to say that there were three people in their marriage.
With that said, Prince Charles believed that people would also blame him for Princess Diana’s death. Royal biographer Penny Junor shared in her 2005 book "The Firm” that when the Prince of Wales learned about his former wife’s sudden death, he reportedly said, “They’re all going to blame me, aren’t they?”
Knowing how much the public loved Princess Diana, Prince Charles was concerned about the impact of her death to the public. “The world’s going to go completely mad, isn’t it?” he reportedly asked. “We’re going to see a reaction that we’ve never seen before. And it could destroy everything. It could destroy the monarchy.”
The author then noted that Prince Charles wasn’t wrong when he first thought that he would be blamed for the incident. Although the public was aware that the future king didn’t cause the accident that led to Princess Diana’s death, many believe that it would have been avoided if only he was faithful to her. “Had he loved Diana instead of his mistress, people argued in their anger, Diana would still be alive,” she wrote.
Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles met in 1971 at a polo match in Windsor. The pair became lovers while Camilla was having a break from her on-off boyfriend army officer Andrew Parker Bowles.
Camilla eventually got married to Andrew in 1973, and Prince Charles started dating Diana in 1980. A year later, Prince Charles proposed to Diana.
In 1993, Prince Charles and Princess Diana officially announced their split. A month after, a set of tapes came to the surface to confirm the allegation of Prince Charles and Camilla’s affair, dubbed as the “Tampongate.”
