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.

@Peedoffo I think because you are so young, and weren't around at the time, you can't really judge what happened.

A lot of the posts here are also from much younger posters and don't reflect public opinion at the time.

I am in my 60s so was very much around when it all happened.

It was only with 'hindsight' that people began to talk about the pressure C was under to find a wife. His parents were concerned about his playboy image and all the women he'd been linked with.

Of those women, many were 'unsuitable' (Catholics, divorced, not aristocrats, dodgy pasts, or they themselves didn't want to be Queen.)

The age gap is not uncommon, (I had a relationship at 21 with a man aged 35, for many years.)

The real issue was that Diana had led a very sheltered, and perhaps spoiled life. She was unwordly.

It is interesting to compare it to the late Queen, who first set eyes on Philip at 13, was engaged at 20 and married at 21. In comparison, Philip was much more experienced, had a career, had travelled , and had been in relationships.

So, from their perspective, Charles was repeating the pattern, albeit with a bigger age gap.

The world is full of mismatched couples, who married and divorced. Mumsnet is full of them! The simple facts are that C was under pressure from his parents to marry, he certainly liked D a lot, but maybe wasn't head-over-heels. Like many couples, he may have thought he'd grow to love her fully.

Arranged marriages are common in other countries and other religions. Sometimes they work, sometimes not.

She was in love, but she was immature, starry eyed at the RF, and never had a boyfriend before.

It was a bad match and I don't think you can blame anyone for it- it was a complex set of circumstances that turned out badly for them all.

It was not common at all to marry at the age of 19. Nobody I knew married at that age. I married in my mid 30s, as did almost everyone I knew, if they married at all.

It might not have been common to marry at 19, but it certainly wasn't uncommon to marry young in the 1980s. It was a different time, people weren't still going to school at 18 so had a bit more life experience under their belt by 19/20. Just because almost everyone you knew married in their mid 30s doesn't mean everyone did - in fact I didn't get married until I was 30 and everyone I knew had been married for years.

Off topic a bit - I was brought up in Australia and a family member was 21 when she married in 1973. She told me that she actually went to her doctor before marriage to 'have her hymen broken' so that it would be better for her on the wedding night. This discussion has just made me remember that.

I thought it was a bit icky at the time (I was mid 20s I think - now nearly 50) but now I think that is downright creepy.

Has anyone heard of anything like this before- or is this perhaps a really really creepy one-off with a pervy doctor?

In those times??

I think more for daughters of those families?

Her Mum & sister Jane bth married at a similar age & to older men iirc

I watched a documentary about Diana's mother the other week. Her mother (Diana's grandmother, Lady Fermoy) pushed her towards Johnny Spencer because he was going to be an earl and inherit a large estate. He was actually engaged to someone else at the time but apparently his father didn't approve and that engagement was called off.

She was expected to produce a male heir and had to keep having children until she had given birth to Diana's brother. I am sure Diana and her sisters were aware that a boy would be much more celebrated than girls were.

When she left Earl Spencer she took the children with her but when she took them back to Althorp for Christmas was prevented from leaving with them.

Her mother gave evidence during the divorce proceedings saying that the children would be better off with their father and Diana's mother was then branded a "bolter" because she had supposedly walked out on the family. This apparently led to her being ostracised socially.

Diana's grandmother was also close to the Queen Mother and it is suggested that the two of them very much pushed the marriage of Charles and Diana.

Although Charles and Diana married in the 1980s the attitudes of many of the people involved in encouraging the relationship were very much those of the 1950s/60s and before.

Diana clearly had a many issues in her childhood and unfortunately marrying Charles only made things worse. The same could probably be said of him.

Times have really changed and I think people who didn't live through that period will find it hard to believe how different things were then.

Spot on. I'm in my 50s and remember their engagement/wedding, and what was generally said at the time.

Though there's nothing intrinsically wrong with a 13 year age gap, btw. A lot depends on the maturity of the people involved, and their personalities. Plenty of people marry people of their own age who turn out to be shits.

Re Camilla: just before the wedding which was in July 1981 The Sun splashed with an exclusive of Charles meeting a blonde for a late night assignation on the Royal Train which was parked in sidings somewhere in Gloucestershire.

There were grainy pictures of a woman with a layered chin-length bob boarding the train with the help of men presumed to be from Special Branch. Of course everyone took it to be Diana and there was a bit of a debate over whether she could still marry Charles what with probably not being a virgin any more. It was swiftly decided it was probably all right so close to the wedding.

Diana always denied it was her. In my memory Camilla Parker Bowles's name never came up. At that time the only blonde Charles was linked with was the troubled dress shop keeper Dale "Kanga" Tryon who took her own life some years ago.

I'd dearly love to know whether The Sun knew it was Camilla but it was convenient for them and the Palace to let people think it was Diana.

The Spencers behaved the way all aristocrats have done for centuries! Diana's father got her mother put in a looney bin because she wasn't producing male children. I'm not surprised she cleared off. Diana was very naive - and that was what she was brought up to be! It was only when she realised (with media assistance) how beautiful and charismatic she was, that she showed a bit of personality and gumption, and told the sorry RF to naff off! But they are a very powerful bunch and she was doomed. Her whole aristocratic class pulled together with its misogyny and ripped her to shreds. You won't see Kate behave like Di - she is not of the blood - and knows which side her bread is buttered. No she really well put up and shut up - or she'll be dead meat.

Diana was mentally very immature for 19 and Charles was like an old man. They were poles apart in every respect.

They got married 40 years ago. I don't think it's possible to really comprehend how different the world was back then if you didn't live through it.

I mean, you can read about it, but despite it being relatively recent history so much has changed, it's almost impossible to capture what it was truly like. Some changes arguably for the worse, some for the better. But different. So very, very different.

People knew their match was deeply flawed but there was a determination to frame it as a love story and refusal to acknowledge anything else, at least at the start.

But then again, this was also the decade that a Rolling Stone "dated" a 13yr old and there wasn't any prosecution. Instead of headlines about paedophilia, it was about "wild child Mandy Smith". Absolutely unthinkable really.

Is that not the general view? No?

By all accounts he is a thoroughly decent chap (shouldn’t have married Diana though as she was alone in the marriage) who is a bit, umm, away with the fairies. Unfair?

Didn't he say he talks to trees?

Ive always had a “he’s there but not there kind of thing” with Charles.

I could be underestimating him. He did give a great speech at the 70th shindig as he also did following the Queen’s death. For the good of the RF I fully expected William to take the reins but Charles has been better than I expected.

Average age for marriage has increased a lot but that is mainly because young people co-habit earlier and delay getting hitched. It was the age gap that was awkward then as it would be now

Although Charles and Diana married in the 1980s the attitudes of many of the people involved in encouraging the relationship were very much those of the 1950s/60s and before.

I wish people would stop pushing the narrative that people who were adults in the 1950s or before were socially and sexually repressed creatures so very different to us enlightened folk of 2022.

Attitudes are far more to do with class, race and socioeconomic issues.

He needed a virgin, not because it was 'better' to be a virgin, but because the press would have pursued her ex-lovers and got them to speak.. There would have been a lot of 'I fucked the future Queen of England' stories going around. It would have been terrible for the Royal Family. Prince Rainier, the father of Caroline of Monaco, had to legally pursue a man who claimed to the press that he was Caroline's first lover. The 'lover' was making a lot of money off it. There would have been a much, much more press coverage for the British Royal Family, who are much bigger fish. Also, at that time, the 80s, the press openly discussed things like that. When the Queen married, in the 50s, no-one ever discussed whether she was a virgin or not, or Philip either. It just was not discussed.

Well, no lies there. They were very famous horses. 😂

I am in my mid-fifties. There were people at the time saying the age difference was ridiculous and that Diana was too young.

You know all the posters on MN who claim the hate of Meghan is not filled by racism? They are the same posters who would have been fine with Diana and Charles marriage at the time.

It was widely publicised that whoever Charles married had to be a virgin and that Diana had a virginity tests. At the time that was seen as incredibly anachronistic, but there were also lots of jokes about the reason he had to marry Diana as he would not find a suitable older woman who was still a virgin.

People claim Diana's family wanted the marriage. We did not know it at the time and we still don't. If her family was like any other family there were probably some members who supported it and others who did not.

We do know the Senior Royal Family members supported the marriage.

It was considered heinous by any one involved in the women's liberation movement. Spare Rib were selling badges saying Don't do it Di.

Fortunately it was the last of it's type in a long, long line of monarchical arranged marriages in the UK.

Women's rights were still very new and equality didn't exist in the 80s. Things have slowly improved over the 4 decades.

@Illegally18 There would not have been. When they married, the press were much more respectful of the Royal Family. The press changed during their marriage and subsequent divorce.

Diana "had" to be a virgin, which is what Royal tradition demanded. It fitted in with an older tale of women having to be virgins before marriage. The Royal Family are always slower to modernise than the general public.

It was becoming unusual. Getting married in your early 20s was a 60s thing. Come the late 70s 80s, 25+ was more the norm

Age gap aside, this is why the whole 'she knew what she was getting into' narrative really boils my piss, a 19 year old girl ffs.

I married at 19 in the 1980's,

My friend married the year before me at 18.

In the 1980's in rural areas it wasn't common to live together before marriage. Most of us married before our 20's. Diana's age certainly wasn't unusual, the age gap was.

Times have really changed and I think people who didn't live through that period will find it hard to believe how different things were then.

I agree, but I do find it strange that young people today seem so clueless about life in earlier times. They either can't believe that things were very different to now, or they think it was akin to living in the Middle Ages and wonder how we coped. I have a reasonably good idea of how life was when my parents were young, and my grandparents, but the young today can't see beyond their own times. A friend who is 10 years younger than me also has commented on this.

You need to brush up on how derogatory those descriptions of a person are.

Really? I assume you are being western centric with this sweeping generalisation about modernisation of the general public? The Royal Family are for example less "modernised", whatever that means, than the general public in the Middle East in their approach to women?

This has attracted the usual British haters hasn't it.

Everyone was a punk, right? Everyone?