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.

No getting past the Delia Smith hairstyle.

There is a post at the moment where people are horrified OPs 18 year old DS is seeing a 31 year old woman. This is the same age gap as Diana and Charles, they were just a year older.

That was one photo of her (not a nice one - the press knew exactly what they were doing when they published that infamous one of her), but there are plenty of others where she looked much older.

I don't think the age gap was the problem. It is that he did not love her and deceived her for his own benefit. Happens repeatedly in royal and regular families or at least once every generation.

Shock horror, person had hairstyle popular at the time the photo was taken, and ....

Average age in the 1980s was 22 according to statistics. My mum was 24 and she thought she was old.

Yes sil & BIL just celebrated 30 years, me & dh 25, my parents would have been almost 60 years. In laws the same. I’ve only known one to fail & that’s because a lot of his gambling was hidden.

A lot of stuff is taken out of the equation families background, the bride/groom careers, views on family etc are already sorted out before hand. It’s a joining of families.

Divorce does happen now, but at the time it was frowned on, so most families would get involved to find a solution to save face. I think most marriages have ups & downs & an arranged marriage is no different.

Average age was 22 according to statistics in the 1980s. So you were unusual.

The "whatever love means" comment by Charles was just something someone with his sense of humour would say - nothing more than that.

Gosh I totally disagree. He was veeeery happy to say it to Camilla on the famous tapes - I am sure if he had been allowed to marry Camilla first and he had been standing with her on the steps he wouldn't have been so obtuse and evasive.

Also, the average age may have been 22 for getting married in 1980, but it was not at all common for there to be a huge age gap. If you are both 22 you are likely to have more chance of being on the same page. It was an odd odd match - I am not sure many would have said then that they were perfect for each other At All.

I was 21 in 1983 and my husband was 7 years older. I remember at the time (because were a fairly academic family etc) thinking - typical not very bright person that she was, had hardly any CSEs never mind O levels and just worked in a nursery; but I am sure Charles thought she was right for the role and she certainly had a choice to accept. I think he should have gone for someone a bit stronger and more stable and perhaps more on an intellectual level with him, perhaps even a Princess of another royal house in Europe (his mother married a Greek Prince).

"In those times". It wasn't exactly the antediluvian period.

He had the same problem Harry had though. Previous girlfriends hadn’t wanted that life. No one in their right mind would.

I think in Charles’ case the problem was also that people who might have been ok with the ‘being royal’ element knew full well they would always take second place to Camilla and were not up for that sort of ‘marriage’.
Which makes his marrying Diana who was too naive to understand what his older girlfriends had look even more exploitative.

Doubt it.

Camilla wasn't the only mistress at that point, and no-one could have predicted at that point whether either of the main mistresses would ever become a lasting fixture in his life.

Well, at least one of his long term girlfriends is supposed to have ditched him after they went to a party together and he talked to Camilla all night. Iirc she was the one that said ‘nobody treats me that way, not even you’.

There were photos where she looked older because she is wearing clothes that someone nowadays would not be seen dead in at 50, never mind 18 years old.

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.

If that was the case, you must have had a very unusual social circle.

The average age of first marriage for women in 1980 was 22 years old. As others have said, the Charles' age and the age gap between them were the really unusual bits; getting married at 19/20 was a bit younger than average, but not outside the bounds of normal at this time, especially since women from wealthy families did not all automatically go to university at that time.

That’s the data for marriage overall, not “first marriage.”

The average age “at marriage” (as opposed to “at first marriage”) is always a few years higher, because it’s bumped up by all the people who have a second marriage in their 30s, 4-s or whatever.

I’m old enough to remember people discussing/questioning exactly that. I remember thinking how mortified I would have been if it was me.

That’s the thing - don’t believe there is.

It's fascinating to see how much people's experience of the time vary.

Here's my recollections:

I was 3 years younger than Diana, so at school when they married. I went to a state comprehensive, in a pleasant small town. Everyone went to that school - the nearest fee-paying school was 40 miles away, so it was properly comprehensive.

One girl from our year married at 18 - it was regarded as ridiculously young, and generally explained as a means to escape a difficult home life. I'm sure there were other marriages after that, but the next I was aware of, the bride was 21, then a 22 year old bride. Both regarded as marrying young. Between 23-26 it seemed as though everyone was getting married - engaged at graduation, married the following year was a thing. I was married at 25. 27 was seen as old to be single.

I was baffled by all the positive news stories about Charles getting engaged to a teenager. Up till then, everything I had heard about teen engagement / marriage had been negative. I remember reading one article, in which happily married couples with a big age gap were interviewed, and being quite surprised by it.

One of teachers was outraged by the message the Charles / Diana relationship was sending to young women, and told us exactly what she thought.

I think most of my year felt sorry for her in terms of the speed everything happened at - engaged at 19, married five months later at barely 20, then pregnant almost immediately, and William born just before she turned 21. We knew Charles "had" to marry a virgin, which would have ruled out most women closer in age to him, and we knew she "had" to produce an heir ASAP, but it still seemed like a huge burden for a young woman. The idea that she had no sooner lost her virginity than she was coping with morning sickness with no time to just enjoy getting to know her husband and enjoy being married seemed sad to us, especially as she had to be attractive, well-dressed, well-groomed and smiling in public at the same time.

I think the perceived "correct" ages for marriage probably varied by class and educational status. No idea what the norm for the aristocracy was, though!

I think widely available cheap and council housing probably made a difference; that said, there is no amount of free housing at the world that could be hurled at me that would make me want to get married at 21. I had itchy feet and had way too much travelling to get out of my system first! I know other people who are happy to have married young and felt it was a great choice for them, though.

I went to a comprehensive. Everyone I knew was married by 30 apart from one person who was a bit of an oddball. I got married at 27 and that felt quite old at the time. My closest friend was married at 21. 19/20 was far too young for such an inexperienced girl. I felt desperately sorry for her. I am the same age she was. She really was thrown to the wolves, a phrase Meghan likes to use about herself, but is in no way comparable.

Out of interest, you talk about a lot of people being “engaged at graduation”- what proportion of your year group at your comprehensive went to University or further education? I was berated earlier in the thread, coming from a similar comprehensive, for suggesting it was more than “a very small percentage”.

This is it. She didn’t have to be a verified virgin, but she couldn’t have any previous boyfriends coming out of the woodwork and embarrassing the future queen. Quite a few of his previous girlfriends were problematic in this sense and the press were all over it.