Diana's age at time of marriage.

[Peedoffo]

I'm in my 20s so I really don't remember Diana. I did more reading on the subject and I can't believe the establishment thought it was ok to marry a 19 year old off to a man 13 years older than her who had no interest in her. No wonder she struggled this was the 1980s as well not the Victorian times! Could anyone around then tell me , why did her family back/support the marriage? Was there any concerns from the public ? I would be horrified at the thought of marrying my DD off at 19 to a much older man who wasn't really interest.

I find it interesting that people rarely ask whether she was in love with him - I think neither was in love and it was a marriage of convenience on both sides. She was probably too young (and not bright enough) to really understand the bargain but I don't think she was desperately in love with him either

It took a bit of hunting... but clearly KC was OK in his day... some of the time. Not my type but you can see why Diana might have become caught up in the hype

I was also 13 when they got married but my DM and family weren’t that interested in it and to be honest, I watched the wedding but heard nothing about him being in love with Camilla.

Agreed with @MarshaMelrose - it seemed all to be a fairytale romance. I do recall before it we had seen him on the beach in Australia looking very much the playboy Prince and having fun.

I remember a report of her throwing herself down the stairs when she was pregnant with William. If the papers were reporting on Charles having an affair, they'd have mentioned it then. And they didn't.

As I recall, public opinion was very divided. ^And Lady Di, Di, Di said Stick it in your eye!' 41 years and I still remember that. No idea how I knew it, I don't think the BBC would have played it! Maybe Capital Radio.

I seem to remember that as the marriage was unravelling there was quite a bit of anti Diana briefing by people such as Penny Junor and possibly Dimbleby. I also suspect that there are royals who ( or have been) are out of bounds for gossip by the press and others who were fair game, Diana being a prime example.

Composed? You are being VERY generous calling it that.

I can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t be startled when an attempt is made on you life while security men are flying everywhere.

Of course this is just one incident, I thought the perception that he was a few sandwiches short of a picnic was common, no?

The interview before they were married “whatever love is”....I mean good grief.

Yes, @SirChenjins , I think other sources have confirmed that this happened. She was clearly very unhappy and mentally unwell to risk hurting her unborn child.

it was a disaster from the outset. ☹️

Diana’s family were in actual fact more Royal than the Royals and had been linked to them for many many generations.

I was married at 18 to someone 8 years older than me. Nothing anyone said would have stopped me and perhaps Diana was the same.

She did say years later that not only did they only meet a handful of times,she had to call him "Sir" up until the engagement!
I think a lot of people genuinely thought it a love match at the time. Obviously with hindsight ....

So many different understandings here. He one I got was that Diana was a dupe - ‘invited to a picnic in a wasp’s nest’ as Hugo Vickers put it later.

Diana was so young because the POW had to marry a virgin, or at least someone without a past. He’d run out of women his own age years back and had moved onto the younger generation. Diana was stunning which makes any teen look older. And the wife/mum type, not a career woman, as they called it disapprovingly then.

Diana agreed to the marriage enthusiastically albeit under false pretences - and after that nothing was too bad for her. She’s agreed, that’s it, was the attitude. And she was posh so they thought she knew the rules: put up and shut up.

Her grandma Lady Fermoy tried to talk her out of the wedding. Diana didn’t listen, not least as Lady F testified in court against her own daughter, Diana’s mother. That’s the kind of people her family are.

The Spencers are a pretty spiky lot - you don’t stay that rich for 400 years without a bit of scheming savvy.

Diana didn’t have a stable background or stable parents and at the time, fears of ‘bad blood’ were rubbished as old-fashioned. But her sister and mother drank, and the other sis was anorexic.

Charles’ advisors should have moved to the next name on the list.

I was 17 at the time. My friends and I all thought it was great in that we all wanted to be a princess too. We were from working class or middle class families and were all headed for university or careers rather than jobs just to pay the bills. Nothing wrong with jobs to pay the bills - I now know that's what we all do but I mean it still wasn't essential to go to university to follow some careers then as it is now.

That's the good thing about being young - you can hold two or more contradictory thoughts in your head. We certainly didn't think it was odd that Diana wanted to settle down at barely 20. Quite a few schoolfriends married at that sort of age. They were from comfortable middle class backgrounds and had SAHMs even in their teens. If anyone remembers the 1980s sitcom Butterflies with Wendy Craig as the restless wife in a big suburban house married to a dentist - that was normal for many of my friends' parents and I assume that was was worked for them. Maybe it didn't but lots of marriages don't work out.

We didn't think Charles was old - well we did, but it was more that he wasn't very attractive and seemed old and we couldn't see what Diana saw in him apart from that he was going to be King. I remember thinking that's not what I would have wanted but not that Diana was wrong or her family was wrong to encourage her - those teenage contradictory and compatible thoughts again.

My mum and my older sister and I were very excited about it and my mum and sister are not what anyone would call stupid women. I am certain that if I or my sister were about to do the same thing - marry someone unsuitable rather than marry young - my mum and dad would have done their best to put us off but would have not have stood in our way. After all, early marriages can work and I can see that in some friends and also my family. But we didn't object because it wasn't happening to us and it was someone else's fairytale that we could enjoy.

I remember my dad saying Diana was a brood mare and us telling him to stop spoiling it so he said no more. My dad was often proved right and I'm sure he noted that one but was far too nice to say. Dad, I never said but you were right.

In the run up to the wedding we were on the train home from school and discussing whether Charles was a virgin too. We decided he was. I remember a woman catching my eye and laughing - not unkindly. She was probably about 35 so like really old. I didn't know what she was laughing at and was affronted at her eavesdropping on our shouted conversation on a packed train. What a cheek!

I married at 28 and my husband was 32. I was older than Diana and not a virgin and though I've never asked I doubt my husband was either. He was and still is better looking and in the words of my dad, more "with it" than Charles was or ever could be. My brother is the same age as Charles and he's also more "with it" without being ridiculous now or at any time in the past.

But Diana and Charles's marriage was not seen as weird by people I knew or either by my husband and his friends who I didn't know and were rather different to me. They had all moved to London from various bits of the country to do entry-level jobs in fashion/showbiz/PR and were living in rented flats in Kensington, Chelsea and one in Earls Court a few streets away from Diana's own bachelor-girl flat. Young people could also do that then though their flats were grottier than Diana's.

Mr Limited tells me he and his mates went out till late on the Friday before the wedding - it was The Embassy in Kensington where a pre-Kajagoogoo Limahl danced in a tutu on the bar, bagged a decent spot at dawn in The Mall for a few hours' sleep and then carried on celebrating after seeing the happy couple.

With hindsight Charles and Diana's wedding was obviously not ideal but it's not as if people are any different now. I'm not a fan of Harry and Meghan but I don't understand why so many people are getting up in the air about them.

“Diana eventually outshone Prince Charles, was popular with the public and had her own specific interests which stole media attention (HIV, landmines”

True, but people forget that before she died, she was loosing favour with the press and people in general because she was leading a celeb life - lots of glamoress holidays etc.

Lots of people got married in their early twenties then. It wasn’t so uncommon. Also, more teens dated older people without anyone batting an eyelid.

There may have been. I don't remember hearing them though. I do remember about Kanga (much more widely known)

This is true. I’m too young to remember the wedding (born the year before) but it was seen as the romance of the century. The kiss on the balcony was an iconic moment (if my memory serves it appeared on the front cover of Encyclopaedia Britannica review of the Eighties...it may have been another similar book though). In the late 80s (my earliest memory) it was still seen as this amazing relationship.

In fairness to him though he had a supremely weird upbringing (as they all have) with every want catered for, so normal human reactions wouldn’t be as easy to come by.

Diana had no chance of sanity being married to him.

Btw I think he’s decent fella, but just not fully with us. I think William is much more grounded in reality (well, as best you can hope for being brought up in that environment).

Ha, ha, you may well be right he is not the full shilling! I know his parents were have supposed to have not shown much outward emotion to him, although I am sure they loved him. He was reportedly a sensitive child and the lack of warm parenting must have been particularly hard with such a nature. Ann seems a much tougher character. There was a big gap after Charles and Ann until Andrew and some say the Queen softened in her parenting by then (although Andrew is obviously a bad ‘un). And they sent him to the school the Duke of Edinburgh went to and which Charles says openly he hated, all outdoor sports, being tough and I think they believe he was bullied.

My point was I don’t think he’s a bad man, but seems we agree on that. Diana too had a dysfunctional upbringing, her mum lost custody, hated her step mother etc. They both sounded wounded, her v young and reportedly quite naive and with little in common made a disastrous match. I think I read they had only met a few times before marrying.

In the world of aristocracy,where the first boy to be born(no matter if a girl was born first) gets the tittle,the houses,the money,marrying your sister off to the heir of the throne is quite a big deal.

a loon

not fully with us

not the full shilling

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Yes, this is what I remembered too 🙁

My DM married at 22 in the 70s. DF was in his 30s. I'm pretty horrified at that now but it didnt seem to be an issue then. They hadn't even known each other a year!

I don't think with Diana it was the age. More that she thought it was a Disney princess love story. Whereas the people making the decision basically knew she was being pimped. They just don't call it that when it's the upper classes. But if she was poor and brown we'd be able to call it out.

The marriage was doomed from the start, I can remember my Great Aunt having a cat's bum face at hearing the "whatever loves means" comment... but there was a precedent in Diana's siblings as one of her older sisters married aged 21 to a man who was 16 years older than her and he was later the Queen's Private Secretary. They are still together but I think that Charles and Diana's ambitious grandmothers plotted and pushed their marriage....and maybe Diana thought her marriage would be like her sister's?

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Supposedly Grace Kelly told them she 'broke' it with some enthusiastic horse riding.

If you watch their wedding, Charles could not look less interested. Diana was merely a brood mare but she was at fault too. When she heard him talking to Camilla in the bathroom on their honeymoon and him telling her he loved her no matter what, Diana should have come home and explained why. Staying, knowing what she knew was only going to work out badly for her.

There was definitely talk of Camilla at the time of Charles and Diana's marriage.