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.

It was.

I'm not too familiar with the history, but a quick Google suggests that it can't really be compared to the PA situation.

They were cousins who met at an event and kept in touch via letter. As the heir to the throne, I imagine all of Elizabeth's correspondence was read by someone else when she was a teenager. He was on active service throughout the Second World War. They weren't physically together or going on dates, for example.

It's not the same as being supplied young girls for sex by a pedophile.

They weren’t an item until Elizabeth was an adult!! Some people don’t know anything…

I think it’s in ‘Diana - Her True Story’ that Lady Fermoy said she wouldn’t fit in with the royal family and their sense of humour was very different from hers.

I don’t think there is any evidence that the grandmother and Queen Mum cooked it up between them as some people on the thread have said.

I think this is from ‘Diana Her True Story’ as well, though it’s not explicit that she knew she would marry into the royal family, just that she had a sense of destiny.

Shades of Mary & Anne Boleyn.

I agree- she didn't have a clue. A little research shows that some of his other girlfriends turned him down! One even dumped him after a party in which he ignored her and spent too much time on Camilla. All of these girls he dated were attractive and confident but most saw throw him quite quickly. Diana was chosen because he was running out of time

Indeed. Nothing much changed in four centuries.

Just out of interest, is that something Spencer from Made in Chelsea related to the Spencer's (Diana's family)?

I've heard Jamie from the show mention a few times he's technically in line to the throne

Spencer matthews brother, James, married Pippa Middleton. Is that who you meant?

Channel 4’s Made in the 80s documentary series is a really good summary of the decade for those who didn’t live through it. It was an entirely different time of change and social challenge. And casual sexism and misogyny, where the expectations that society had of young women, and young women had for themselves, was very, very different to today.

I was not yet a teenager when Charles and Diana married, but it was a huge worldwide event, and I remember the coverage vividly. It was, as another poster said, sold as a complete Mills & Boon (or even more on point, Jilly Cooper) romantic fantasy. An part of that coverage was male glee that 32 year old, jug-eared Prince Charles had nabbed such a sexually desirable young prize. I still remember the coverage of young Lady Diana Spencer, in one of her last social appearances before her marriage, getting out of a taxi wearing a low cut black strapless dress with ample décolletage on display. “Isn’t that a dainty dish to lay before a king” the male newsreader practically purred. (I was so taken aback by this that I have remembered it after all these years!)

Disgusting.

I dont think things are so different now.

There's no evidence Kate has slept with anyone other than William is there? If she had I'm sure it'd be out there.

She keeps quiet. She's the Diana they wanted.

@Serenster I remember the eighties. I was close to leaving school and starting full-time work. The Sun was disgustingly sexist. But there were people who thought the marriage was very wrong and the age gap too large. There were mixed views at the time. The Sun would not show you that.

That was a comment on the tv news. Antelopevalley, not the Sun - I didn’t have any access to the Sun in 1981!

@Serenster Then it is disgusting.
I remember the BBC News at the time gushing at the time about a fairy tale wedding. They have always been the mouthpiece of the establishment.

I am about a decade younger than Diana. My parents didn’t bat an eyelid when these two married. By the time I was 16, I was dating fully grown men well in their 20s and at 19, many in his 30s. The latter was welcomed in the home for a chat before taking me out to wine and dine me.

There have been threads on the subject from posters with very similar experience to mine born both before and some after me. It was a different world. It turned out the first man was attached and I soon suspected the one in his 30s probably was too. These relationships were never serious thank goodness, didn’t last. I wised up and married someone very close to my age. From about age 9, I was reading Catherine Cookson novels and in my teens, Mills and Boon and similar so my view of the world and the place of women was very skewed.

As a parent to a 14 yo, I wonder what the fuck my parents were thinking. It was a different time and I’m finding the vomiting emojis a bit much as it feels like a it of an affront to me and girls / young women, who lived through that time.

I was one of the few to go to university from my school and therefore delayed marriage. The youngest of my classmates married a much older man in his mid 30s when she was still 16. He was her father’s friend and she was pregnant. The marriage didn’t last and to his shame, he lot intact with his child. That felt wrong and the age gap too large. But my age gap dating did not as there was only 10 years between me and the mid 20s guy at 16 and by 19, early 30s guy the gap was large but not terribly unusual or untoward.

*a man in his 30s (autocorrect)

Average age for women was 25.3 in 1960, 24.7 in 1970, 26.7 in 1980. So there would have been many early twenties marriages as well as later ones. Might depend on social circles, it was very common with my parents, aunts, uncles, and their friends.

I remember 1979-1981 and was at secondary school. It was a very different world and you grew up a lot quicker in those days. Loads of us were smoking, drinking underage in pubs and having sex.

Older boyfriends used to wait outside the schoolgates in their cars to pick up their young schoolgirlfriends. A girl in the year above me was dating the local bus driver who was easily my dad's age. He used to wait at the school gates and no one batted an eyelid.

It was a badge of honour if a girl bagged an older guy with a car. We were jealous.

Lots of my school chums were engaged at 16, pregnant, married young. School girls were sexualised in those days, men could fantasise over them, there was young women (over 18) in the Sun/Daily Star with their tits out every day for the lads.

When Charles married Di her age was barely a consideration. People loved her. The People's Princess.

You can view 1981 with 2022 eyes and judge, but you had to be there at the time. A different world.

Average age at marriage would be distorted in the ‘80s because marriage wasn’t something that wasn’t as commonly done. Yes, lots got married early -often those who left school at 16 - but to some marriage was seen as an outdated institution, anti-feminist etc. This was in the time of women’s lib, Germaine Greer etc. I’m of that era and many people didn’t get married at all, or not until much later. I’ve been with my partner since I was 25 but we didn’t get married until I was nearly 50. This is typical amongst most of my friends.

I was 11 when they got married and do distinctly remember my mum and her friends saying Diana was far too young and commenting on the age gap, so not everyone thought it ideal.
But I do think in the 80s you were probably considered to be more of an adult at 19 than you would be now.
Im sure its been reported that Diana's family were all for it and her grandmother and Charles grandmother orchestrated it. Her family ( most families) would have thought marrying heir to the throne a privilege.
I think the other issue was that Charles needed to marry someone without a past ( virgin) - hard to find a virgin your own age when you are in your early thirties so he probably had a lot of pressure on him to marry.
Just awful all round and I do think she was naive vulnerable and treated badly by Charles, her own family and the royal family.

I don’t agree with this at all. Most people I knew were married by mid twenties.

www.statista.com/statistics/557962/average-age-at-marriage-england-and-wales/
I got it from here. Actually very interesting that the average ages barely changed from 1851 to 1983, 25 to 27 for women and 27 to 30 for men, with a brief dip below 25 for women in the late sixties. The trend upwards only seemed to have started around 1983.

It doesn't say first marriages though, which would skew it upwards.