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.

Don't be ridiculous. They had been together for 9 years before they got engaged, and lived with others in a houseshare at Uni.

My mum is one of four sisters and similar age to Diana. She was called “on the shelf” because she was still unmarried by 21.

She got married at 23. 2 of my aunties got married at 19, the other at 20. My mum’s friends all got married between 18 and 21. They were very mean to her about her unmarried status. I think it was a thing back then.

In contrast, however, an aunty who married into the family (who was the same age as my mum’s youngest sister and met her future husband at around the same time) didn’t actually get married until she was 29.

I was in my 2nd year of a 6th Form College which which Charles had a special relationship when the engagement was announced, so I was just 2 years younger than Diana. I remember us saying he might as well have come down to college and picked up a student.

In previous centuries, royalty and aristocracy married for reasons to do with dynastic succession, money and strategic alliances. Couples weren’t expected to love each other. The middle classes married for respectability and social advantage or money, and the poor mostly lived over the brush.

You are young. I think you don’t appreciate how much the world has changed since the early 80’s.It was 40 years ago. As long as the early 80’s was to the early 40’s - mid WW2! Totally different.
It was very normal for a 19 year old to marry then. My own mother married at 19 in the late 70’s, my dad was 5 years older so not as big gap but still.
in the early 80’s it was still very frowned upon to be living together whilst not married - so you married and then you could move in together.
My grandparents were also -19 and 34 when they got married. No raised eyebrows at all. 19 was seen as the correct and proper time to be married then. Starting children later than 25 was very unusual.

I'm not sure anyone checked. It was more that a future Queen shouldn't have a history.

I thought their main objection was that he had no money. He didn’t have a pot to piss in.

This is how I remember it too [was mid 20s] the pressure on Charles to settle down, the search for a suitable European princess or home grown aristocratic woman of impeccable 'reputation' It was all a bit weird when it happened.

There was lots and lots of talk about it all in the media for weeks. The truth of virginity thing was never resolved eg tabloidy leaks of trips to Harley St then denied for reasons of 'privacy' and decorum

Charles wasn't taken very seriously at the time - lots of mocking his sticky out ears, his 'strange' interests [environmentalism, architecture] and negative comparisons with Randy Andy who was pretty popular. Quite unkind really.

And a largely unspoken acceptance that it was to all intents and purposes an arranged marriage as anachronistic as that was

Diana was probably 'selected' from an early age to marry him - there were probably a group of these eligible blue blooded girls. They would have had to remain virgins and prove it. This is the aristocracy we're talking about. Diana was expected to put up and shut up. She didn't obviously and paid the price. I don't think Charlie even liked her. Poor poor deluded girl.

Like you say, you have no knowledge of the time so it's difficult for you to understand. There was no one that didn't want the marriage to work. Why would you think that? The Queen had known Diama from a child. She called her auntie. The Queens grandmother was Diana's fathers godmother. The families had known each other forever. Why would the Queen want either of them to be miserable?

I did forget to mention that the two who got married at 19 did get married because they were pregnant though! My mother was considered scandalous because she cohabited with my father before they got married 😆

They did live together.

Catherine had had two or three boyfriends before William, and none have ever talked to the press. Two of them in particular as described as serious, but there really isn't anything to indicate what that might have meant.

What crap. Why would he marry someone he didn't like?

So annoyed by PP saying don't be ridiculous we didn't marry at that age etc... we all went to uni, no one married until... it's the 1980s not the 1880s etc.

It was different in different circles and areas. To ignore that is to ignore social history.

I was married at 19 in 1985. wasn't uncommon. but there definitely was a shift towards later marriage around the 90's.
Uni wasn't common for most people, you left school at 16 and went to work or 6th form then work. training on the job was much more common, so you didn't need a degree to get a decent job. I got a job at 16 that offered day release up to Uni degree level. I bought my first house at 19.

surely she wouldn't have shown herself to be flaky and unstable if she had had a family/husband with whom to create a stable home? her husband and camilla parker bowles treating her with open contempt didn't help her situation. didn't camilla help to choose her wedding dress?

My mum cried every time I saw her when I was living with my bloke. We got married six weeks before my 19th birthday to shut her up.

I had my DD when I was 20, it was not an arranged marriage when we later tied the knot. I'm saying she was probably too young for the media attention and she didn't seem to understand it was a business arrangement.

I remember reading at the time that she had some medical inspection but i really can't believe that to be true now.

Newsflash- attitudes have changed.
Even now there's nothing illegal about a 19 year old marrying a 32 year old. In fact, even a 16 year old can marry someone much older, with parental consent.
You wouldn't like it and neither would I, but if your 18 or 19 year old wants a relationship with someone decades older, there's nothing you can do about it whatsoever.

she didn't seem to understand it was a business arrangement.

I honestly think that's the crux of all her problems, she was expected to produce the heirs, smile and wave and improve Charles' popularity and then go about her life not making waves, while he had Camilla on the side. That was accepted way of things within aristocratic circles.
Her problem was she was looking for the fairy tale ending and he was never going to provide that. He was in it to 'do his duty' and continue the line of succession and she threw a spanner in the works by not following the script.

If it was a love match I could stomach it but this didn't seem to be. It would be me contacting the 30 year old man's family and arranging it.

Everyone at work thought the marriage was far from ideal, based on the age difference, but there was 15 years age difference between my DGM, so that was not so significant to me.
However, Diana has said that she had only met Charles about 12 times before their marriage, so could hardly have loved him, anymore than he loved her.
I soon realised that the age difference was not significant, more that they had very little in common.

My parents were older (34 and 30) in 1982 when they got engaged, but my dad basically proposed because his parents objected so strongly to the suggestion they might live together "in sin." I'm sure in some circles it was less frowned upon at that time, but not small-town Shropshire!

They are still (mostly) happily married 40 years on, so it wasn't such a bad idea.

I think people need to understand their history a bit more and look back over centuries of aristocracy and royalty. Marriages are not about love. Marriages are about creating alliances, gaining land, bringing families together, having lots of children to secure your position. The feelings of the two people involved in that marriage are neither here nor there.

It's very clear that Charles understood this and made the seemingly perfect choice in Diana - attractive, prominent family known to the Royals, titled, no history/ex-boyfriends.

It is also very clear that the idealistic Diana saw things very differently and nobody from the Spencer side of the family had the decency to sit her down and spell out the deal - if you want to be Queen or POW you will need to marry him, produce a couple of heirs and turn a blind eye to lots else. And of course, he will turn a blind eye to your goings-on.

Sorry reading through I see posters share it wasn’t a requirement she had to be a virgin, so I stand corrected. As others have said she was expected to be from the aristocracy and not have a past.

Charles suffered too. He was expected to do his duty and so got on with it, but it was a bad match. They had nothing in common.