Princess Diana withheld the news that she was expecting a second son because she knew then-Prince Charles wanted a daughter, according to a new biography revisiting her account of the months before Prince Harry's birth.
Ingrid Seward's Catherine & Diana: The Inside Story of How the Princesses of Wales Shaped the Modern Monarchy, published in September, examines that decision against Diana's recollection that the couple had grown unusually close during her pregnancy in 1984.
"Oddly, despite the closeness she had felt with Charles before Harry's birth, she never told him she was expecting another boy," Seward writes. "She knew he longed for a daughter, and her extreme vulnerability made her keep this piece of intimate information from him."
The account draws on a story Diana previously told in recordings for Andrew Morton's Diana: Her True Story. It revisits her description of private family events, rather than presenting newly disclosed medical records or independent confirmation of Charles's expectations.
Diana said a scan had revealed that the baby was a boy and that she "didn't tell him." Seward's explanation of why she remained silent adds the biographer's interpretation of Diana's emotional state to the princess's own recollections.
Harry was born Sept. 15, 1984, at St Mary's Hospital in Paddington, London, two years after William. Buckingham Palace had announced the second pregnancy that February, less than three years after Charles and Diana married in July 1981.
For Diana, the period immediately before Harry's arrival stood apart from the difficulties that came to define her marriage. She described it to Morton as "the closest we've ever, ever been and ever will be," placing the birth at a particularly sensitive point in their relationship.
She also recalled Charles responding to the arrival of another son with: "Oh God, it's a boy. And he's even got red hair." Those words are remarks Diana attributed to her husband; the recordings preserve her account rather than a recording of Charles making them.
A second episode, at Harry's christening, brought Diana's mother into the disagreement. Diana said Charles told Frances Shand Kydd that "we're so disappointed, we wanted a girl," prompting her mother to rebuke him and say they should appreciate having a healthy child.
The reference to "Mummy" in that recollection concerned Frances Shand Kydd, not Queen Elizabeth II. The distinction identifies the dispute Diana was describing as one between Charles and his mother-in-law.
Diana believed the exchange damaged their relationship. "Ever since that day, the shutters have come down," she said. "That's what he does when he gets somebody answering back at him."
