Lady di would have been queen...

[heartbroken22]

Just the thought of it creates butterflies in my stomach as when she died I was really young and it hurt a lot...even though I didn't understand what really happened. I'm sad the queen has died but just the thought of princess diana becoming queen...it would have been amazing.

Of course she did.

But they didn’t call him the Prince Consort either , which was what he was, having renounced his Greek princedom of birth on the eve of the wedding .

Queen Mary and Queen Alexandra and the Kate Queen mother were all Queen Consort as well but we’re called just Queen.

Obviously that should have read ‘late’ Queen Mother

I don't see a problem with this, many women keep their maiden name, and many more regret giving theirs up. I had more than 3 decades of existence and indentity independent of my DH before marrying. Kate had nearly 3 decades, why erase that, I like that we acknowedge these women as seperate entities from their husbands, and their husbands family.

So the 19yo bride was cheating on her 32 yo husband with a bodyguard was she? You really will believe anything baffles me somewhat that people seem to think that a 19 year old would be incapable of cheating?

As the article linked to above suggests she cheated first but was older than that anyway, but statistically people who are that much younger are more likely to cheat in a relationship by virtue of the fact tyey are that much younger and more immature.

And 19 is still an adult. She had an arranged marriage, but she wasn’t a child.

Are you she? (The OP?)

Another thread of people claiming their own lacking knowledge to be fact.
Camilla is Queen consort, as was the Queen Mother, (as in HM Queen Elizabeth), Queen Mary before her, and Queen Alexandra before her.
Camilla hasn't been given a lesser title, she has the same title that Diana would have had.
Just as was the case with her predecessors she will no doubt be known as Queen Camilla. Rightly so.

It is widely acknowledged to have been an arranged marriage, though I suspect Diana may not have been fully aware of that until after the engagement. She was, after all, a fairly naive 19 year old at the time.

She did discover his continued liaisons with Camilla well before the wedding but wasn't able to back out.

I think it's acknowledged as an arranged marriage with the benefit of hindsight, @Topseyt123 but at the time it was sold (to us, the gullible public) as a fairytale and a love match. I think it's fair to say that most were taken in.

What has been fascinating actually in watching the footage of the Queen from the 1980-1990s of my youth is very different to the Queen of the 21st Century who was much more family orientated and much softer. I had forgotten quite a lot of it and seeing it again was an eye opener.

Yes it was an arranged marriage - in much the same way they had been for years before. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert met only a couple of times.

The Queens father had been allowed to marry because he wasnt heir to the throne. The Queen's wasnt but she happened to fall in love with a Prince (Philip was a Prince from birth) so although there was pushback in the end the fact that he was European Monarchy held out.

By the time it came to William they had I think learnt their lesson

You are right about the hindsight. Though I do think that the senior royals of the day knew that that was what was going on.

I was 15 at the time of the wedding, so just 4 years younger than Diana. I thought it must be a terrifying prospect. I remember her being bullied by the press on the doorstep of her London flat and that was awful.

@ageingdisgracefully, agreed. I was almost exactly the same age as Diana. I was not a Royal-watcher by any means, but I'd been dimly aware for years and years that there was a lot of speculation in the press and in sections of the public about who Prince Charles would marry. It was of course taken for granted that the heir to the throne would marry and have children to secure the succession. (What a life! What a system! But that's for another thread ...)

It was also unquestioned at the time that he didn't have a free choice of who to marry. He would have to marry someone from the right background. A young woman from another Protestant European royal family would have fitted the bill, but there weren't many of the right age who were still single. The other acceptable option was to marry a young woman from a British aristocratic family, which was of course what George VI had done, and that had worked out well.

Also, even though the Abdication was a generation ago, it was still casting a long shadow. The idea that Charles could marry a divorced woman, or even a woman known to be 'experienced', was out of the question. In this, of course, the Royal Family and its advisers were totally out of step with the rest of UK society, which had changed massively in the years since the war, especially in the 1960s and 1970s. I would have had no problem with him marrying who he wanted, and I'm sure a large section of the UK public would have accepted it too, but the Establishment wasn't going to risk it.

It was therefore obvious even to me that when Charles married, it was very likely to be an arranged marriage in all but name, and so it proved. It was perfectly obvious from the media coverage of the time that he was a lot less enthusiastic than Diana, and they seemed to have very little in common. If Diana had been a different sort of person, it might still have worked, if she'd been prepared to do as women of her class had done from time immemorial and turned a blind eye to her husband's affairs. Grim, but pragmatic. Her role was to produce the heir and spare (eurgh) with no doubts about their paternity (eurgh eurgh) and then as long as she was discreet she could have done what she liked. But she wasn't that sort of person. All very sad, for everyone involved. But a long time ago. I'm glad Charles and Camilla are happy together now.

Interesting point about the Abdication of Edward V111. It's hard to imagine now what impact that would have made at the time. I'm wondering how HMQ's seemingly unfailing sense of duty was shaped by that event.

A poster upthread mentioned the "softening" of HMQ's image during the more recent years of her reign - that's something that I've noticed too. Her image has no doubt been carefully curated over the years to ensure her ongoing popularity. The image we've been presented with more recently seems to be one of "nation's favourite granny" complete with radiant smile and even a sense of humour.

That's not the image of the Queen that many of us remember though. She's not always been a popular figure.

My understanding is that Charles was much more of a "player" than the royal family wanted the public to know at the time (much more so than good little William has ever been). So the marriage to Diana (very young and attractive) was presumably supposed to clip his wings a bit too, as well as establish an heir.

My DF was two cohorts behind Charles at RAF Cranwell, so overlapped with the cohort in between, Charles reputation for womanising was widely talked about.

I greatly admired Diana for a long time (I was an impressionable age 10 when she married), but you could see before her death that she was always going to be a thorn in the monarchy's side.

True that probably no one covered themselves in glory during and after their disastrous marriage, but with the benefit of hindsight I cannot envisage that, even if they hadn't divorced, Diana temperamentally would have made a good queen.

Yes @Cyw2018 and I think it is that which caused Camilla to walk away all those years ago and unwillingness to wait for him

Agreed @ageingdisgracefully there was a period in the late 60's to 70's then again mid 80's, which I think was dicey. Beginning with Aberfan which her PS has said was her biggest mistake and then the jar between 70's Britain and the establishment generally.

The silver Jubilee definitely picked things up for a bit, then the post Diana years.

I think she was sometimes slow to catch onto the need to adapt, but when she did she nailed it.

I wonder how many affairs William is having that we aren't allowed to know about?

I said to DH after the Kings speech that I am glad he is married to Camilla at this time as I think he needs to have someone he loves, and someone who loves him, by his side during what is a difficult time for him. Obviously I would prefer Princess Diana to not have died however they were separated such a long time before it is irrelevant anyway.

The whole situation was far from ideal but IMO neither of them were happy together and both went into it for the wrong reasons so surely it is better to be with someone you love, especially going through tough times.

She wouldn’t, they were divorced

She shagged a bodyguard called Barry, an art dealer named Oliver something, Will Carling, James Hewitt, Hasnat Khan, Dodi Fayed. Off the top of my head. Don't know about any other guys. No idea other than the last two if she was separated from Charles at the time.

Oliver Hoare. Plagued his wife with silent phone calls. Nice.

Well there was that rumour about his love for a certain sexual practice that Kate isn't willing to perform.