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.

She was 20 on the 1st July and married him on the 29th July 1981.
She would have been an amazing Queen.

watched news coverage the other week. It was on tea time news the drs had inspected her and confirmed she was a virgin. My jaw is still on the ground!

Don't be silly. There was no way doctors could have inspected her to establish if she was a virgin. There were medical checks re her fertility I understand.

I mean, it's all a big prurient regardless but the 'virginity test' is an invention.

@BrokenCup I got my stay from the Office for National Statistics website- see attached

You don’t need to wait for Kate to see that the virginity requirement only apparently applied to the spouse of the heir to the throne.

Fergie, Sophie, Mark Phillips and Admiral Tim all had “pasts”

The has to be a virgin thing is exaggerated.

He couldn’t really marry someone with a major past, because you don’t want to be dealing with kiss and tells, but she didn’t HAVE to be a virgin by that era.

It was just a line trotted out partly to explain the odd age gap, and to be a point in her favour.

Misogyny does play a part. But also, I would imagine, they didn’t want previous partners coming out of the woodwork and selling stories.

There does seem to be an actual test, Diana never said there was. So it’s not fact that there was a test.

Definitely the norm to be married at 19 in the 80s. There was hardly any living together first. I was 21 in 1989 when I married. My friends all married between 19-22.

I think at the time there was more deference to the royal family, and I only remember this very vaguely, but I think that people really believed they were in love. Even the "whatever love is" was not a thing that was discussed, people weren't big and open with their emotions. It was just a different time,

This is exactly what happened. Charles was in his mid 30s by then, he’d had numerous girlfriends without finding ‘the one’ and he needed a ‘suitable’ bride, ie a virgin from an English upper class background. Lady Diana Spencer, a tall, attractive, not very bright teenage nursery nurse, fitted the bill so she was chosen. She fulfilled her duty by producing a legitimate heir and a spare, at which point Charles went back to the woman he really loved.

I was nearly the same age as her. I just remember thinking she was crackers marrying an old man like Charles. It was obvious from the outset they had nothing in common. There was, however, a huge sense of national relief that Charles was getting married as tabloids and occasional national conversation very much revolved around when he would find a bride.

Diana's mother left the children with their father when the marriage broke down.
Her mother, Lady Fermoy was a close friend of the Queen Mother. They wanted Diana to marry Charles.
In the Divorce Court Lady Fermoy gave evidence against her own daughter resulting in custody being given to Earl Spencer.
This was to maximise Diana's chances of marriage to Charles.

@EarringsandLipstick you are missing my point. It's not about the test. It's about how it was newsworthy that drs had examined her and confirmed her virginity. That poor woman's private life was broadcasted on the news. No one has any right to that information. Poor Di.

She couldn't have 'a past' that the tabloids could find so she had to be a virgin. Not many 32 year old virgins sbout

He was 32.

She was believed to be a virgin. The royal family needed someone without a past that could resurface in lurid tabloid headlines. This was still the era of kiss and tells getting massive publicity and considered 'shocking' so the Royal family could not risk that.
She fitted the bill for a princess and future queen
Young, fertile, no skeletons in the closet, familiar with rules of etiquette required, and an understanding of royal expectations.

It was pretty much accepted in her type of social circle that you married 'well' it was acceptable for the men to have mistresses as long as they were discreet and they didn't threaten the marriage long-term.
Philip was said to have had a few affairs during the early days of his marriage,

She was 19 and swept up in the romantic notion of marrying a prince and being a queen.
She knew about Camilla before the marriage and still went ahead with it.

Worth remembering that Princess Elizabeth was 13 when a 19 year old Prince Philip started "courting" her. (I believe the word is "grooming" M'Lud).

Probably not a great idea to look to the Royals for a lead on how to behave. Honestly, if the upper orders can't set us a good example, what's the use of them ?

No. They. Didn’t.

Grow a brain.

She was actually 20, not 19.

My parents married at a similar age, but almost 20 years earlier. My dad was still at uni when they married. Seems ludicrous to me and I’m sure if they’d waited longer, they would never have married.

I have a son this age. The idea of him marrying so young is horrendous. I always tell my kids they must have loads of partners, travel the world and LIVE before they settle down!

Diana’s only suitability was her background and lack of a past. She was lamentably ill-matched to Charles. As she said she was as ‘thick as a plank’ and far too flakey for life in the spotlight.

Gosh, I remember it completely differently. I was a teenager and was appalled she was being married off so young. That engagement interview was so awkward, it was soooo obvious he didn't love her and it was all doomed.

We were all willing her to walk away, but as her sister famously said 'it's too late now, Duchy - your face is on the teatowels".

She had no one looking out for her - a dysfunctional family and no social media or phones to contact anyone like her mates when she was under virtual house arrest in the palace in the days before her wedding.

I remember me and my friends and actually most people I knew were agog at the spectacle, the lamb to the slaughter.

We willed her to be happy but we knew it was going to be an absolute disaster.

We weren't all simpering royalist thickos in the 80s you know. (Just like people now say 'oh, pervy DJs, sexism, teen marriages etc, well it was the norm back then.' Well it did happen just like it still does today - but that doesn't mean we thought it was OK!)

Times had changed. Folk got married a lot younger back then.

My parents were 21 and 24 when they got married 10 years before Diana.

My mum says she was regarded as old at 21 to being getting married amongst her friends and was the last to do so. Most of her friends were 19/20 when they got married.

I'm sure I remember seeing news coverage too. Although agree it sounds ridiculous.

It was more of a "get on with it". By 1981 the Queen was mid 50s, Charles was into his 30s, it was a recognition that times were moving on, he'd had his 20s doing Uni and gap years and whatever and now was time to settle down and secure the next generation of the Royals.

At that time it was still essential for the "suitable bride" to be an aristo, he was linked with Marie-Astrid of Luxembourg, Diana's older sister Sarah, and the daughter of the Duke of Wellington. There was a limited pool of women marked as suitable - not necessarily a virgin, but without a history. The Spencers absolutely would have known that he didn't love her but pushed the marriage for all the reasons aristocratic women have been married off for centuries - power, alliance, strategy. And don't forget Diana's own parents had divorced acrimoniously and quite possibly were not singing off the same song sheet when it came to advising their daughter.

Yes Diana was naive and sheltered in the ways of the world, poorly educated and living in the sloaney bubble. But she would have been very familiar with the marrying patterns of the aristocracy and I don't buy the fact that she thought he was madly in love with her. More that she really really wanted to be Princess of Wales and thought that the rest of it would follow in time - the idealistic teenage "i'll make him fall in love with me" thing.

Diana was used as a breeding machine.
Very young ,from the right stock and a virgin.
She didn't know it but a lot of the public did.

I wonder how children born from that type of relationship feel ?

Yeah your right. I've just popped on this thread to talk made up shit. It's on one of the Netflix documentaries that I watched about Diana the other week.

Honestly I hope you don't have kids. Talking to people like that. How uncouth.

It was just a story.

You cannot believe all the crap that gets talked about.

You’ll be telling us you think the Megs and Haz show is a fully balanced documentary next.